The Action Research Dissertation

The idea of the doctorate is undergoing a transformation as experts explore the nature of “doctorateness” and its relevance for current organizational and societal challenges. The professional practice doctorate has emerged as a highly useful framework to address these challenges and it necessarily requires a distinctive approach to the doctoral dissertation.

The Action Research Dissertation: Learning from Leading Change shares a framework for the action research dissertation, outlining the specific ways in which action research fosters the development of scholar-leaders. It offers both doctoral students who are practitioners in applied fields, and the faculty who guide them in their doctoral research, a comprehensive and applied approach to action research that focuses on facilitating and leading change in organizations, as well as ways to address how to translate the findings of this work into a rigorous, dissertation research study.

Throughout the book, the authors explicitly address the connection between the parallel and mutually-reinforcing processes of taking action and conducting research, offering rich insights, tools, and case examples that outline specifically how to use action research to both guide a change effort and generate useful insights to contribute to theory-building.

This is an essential book for a variety of readers, including professional practice doctoral students, faculty directing the studies of those students, program administrators, professional development coordinators, and many others.

Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Action Research, Action Research, Applied Research, Qualitative Research, Mixed Methods Research, and Case Study Research

Dr. Karen E. Watkins is Professor of Learning, Leadership and Organizational Development in the College of Education at The University of Georgia. She holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin. Karen's scholarly interests include organizational learning assessment, informal and incidental learning, action learning, action research, and action science. Watkins & Marsick developed and validated the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (1997) used in over 100 published studies. Watkins is the author or co-author of numerous articles and chapters, and nine books. With Victoria Marsick, she recently completed work on a forthcoming book entitled Rethinking Workplace Learning and Development. Named Scholar of the Year by the Academy of Human Resource Development in 1999, she was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Academy of Human Resource Development Scholar Hall of Fame in 2014. She consults with many organizations including work with OECD on schools as learning organizations and with the World Health Organization on evaluating learning and development among immunization staff. She was one of the founding presidents of the Academy of Human Resource Development and is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Geneva Learning Foundation in Switzerland.

Dr. Erica Gilbertson is the Director of Organizational Impact for the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement. She holds an EdD from The University of Georgia (UGA) where she recently conducted an action research study dissertation in the Learning, Leadership and Organization Development program. She also holds an M.A. in Educational Studies from the University of Michigan. From 2012-2021 Erica served as a public service faculty member in UGA's Office of School Engagement where she led school-university partnership programs. Prior to UGA, she directed both federal and foundation education grants that supported K-12 school improvement and redesign initiatives, worked as the communications manager at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, and taught high school English. Erica has co-authored eight published scholarly articles/book chapters and given more than 20 presentations at regional/national academic conferences. Her scholarly interests include action research, school leadership, new teacher support, social network theory, professional development schools, and boundary-spanning leadership.

Aliki Nicolaides Ed.D, is Professor of Adult Learning and Leadership at the University of Georgia in the program of Learning, Leadership & Organization Development. Her research centers on exploring the intra-active dynamics of learning that generate personal and societal transformation. She accomplishes this by focusing her research on the role that learning plays in activating the vital potential that connects self and society. Her desire for creating tools and scaffolds that grow individual and collective capacity for both inquiry and action is central to her approach to teaching and mentoring the next generation of scholars and leaders of change Dr. Nicolaides is co-founder of the Generative Learning and Complexity Laboratory (GLCL) that brings together scholars and practitioners of learning and complexity science to reimagine learning and development through the lens of generative knowing and complexity learning. The results of her scholarship are shaping a new philosophical strand of adult learning, what she describes as Generative Knowing: ways of being and becoming that liberate potential creatively in her first solo book. Dr. Nicolaides is a founding steward and current Director of the International Transformative Learning Association.