This paper discusses an on-going study that investigates how it is possible to make sense of the evolution of goals that takes place in action research projects for improving educational practice. As a research methodology to improve real life practice, action research is destined to deal with the complexity of practice situations and numerous factors that emerge in the research process (Herr & Anderson, 2005; McNiff & Whitehead, 2009; Sager, 2005). This often demands action researchers to go beyond their initial assumptions on the practice improvement. There, action researchers are challenged to not only examine how to achieve initially stipulated goals, but also explore what goals they should actually pursue as they see new factors and dynamics affecting their practice improvement process in recursive cycles of actions and reflections. As they go through the research process, action researchers tend to shift and evolve their goals as they develop new scopes and understanding of the targeted practice and what they really need to pursue in the research process. This is considered to create rich opportunities for action researchers to grow and develop in the research process. The question is how we should make sense of this process.

In traditional positivist research, shifting goals in the middle of the research process is typically considered to be a weakness or flaw of the research. There, the goals of the researchers are fixed before the research process, and once the research process starts, researchers are not supposed to change or deviate from the set-goals. However, when it comes to action research, its research process goes through recursive cycles and phases that are expected to evolve as the research process proceeds. Even though the goal may be fixed within a phase, as the research process moves to the next phase, it is often the case that a new goal evolves out of one phase to another based on a new understanding and awareness developed in the prior phase of research.

What is unique about action research as a research methodology is that it takes place in an open system. Its research activities are embedded in a real-life practice that is open to a variety of human, social and institutional factors and dynamics. This requires action researchers to modify their assumptions on the targeted practice. In this sense, attempting educational improvement through action research could be quite a journey for action researchers. It urges them to develop a new understanding of the targeted practice as they go through the research process. According to Noffke (1997), action research is characterized by the personal, professional and political dimensions that dynamically interact with each other. This means that action researchers are destined to deal with numerous moving parts and targets in its research process.

The key question is how to make sense of this process—the ways goals are set and shifted in practice improvement efforts in action research. How do action researchers actually set and shift goals in the research process from one phase to another? Investigating this issue can help us better understand the complex dynamics and process of practice improvement and professional development that take place in action research.

This on-going study makes use of the case study and cross-case study method to answer the above question (Yin, 1989). Currently, it involves 10-20 cases of practitioner’s action research projects to improve educational practice from which a cross-case analysis has been conducted to retrieve common threads and themes that capture how goal-shifting takes place from one phase to another and what factors led to the shifts in goals in the process. All the cases were chosen from the action research projects conducted by undergraduate and graduate students who majored in education at a higher education institution in the greater Tokyo area where students were expected to conduct action research projects to improve a real-life educational practice as their graduation thesis projects. The cases were chosen from the authors’ advisees on the basis of how informative and representative they were in capturing the nature of goal-shifts in action research projects. Some of the projects were action research projects by those who taught in schools or served as learning assistants for students in school settings, and others were by those who conducted educational workshop sessions for those who volunteered to participate in the sessions. The records of academic advising and their thesis papers served as the sources of this study. Through iterative cycles of content analysis, the themes that seem to capture the ways goal-shifting took place in the action research process were extracted (Miles & Huberman, 1994). This process has been quite organic and required multiple modifications of the themes previously captured in each iterative cycle. This on-going study has achieved a certain level of theoretical saturation as inter-rate agreement check is being done to validate the extracted themes.

Though the data analysis is not complete at this point, the study found that the action research projects that have been analyzed involved salient shifts in goals from one phase to another. Through the analyses, we tentatively extracted the following themes regarding the ways goal-shifts took place in the action research projects. Theme #1: Goal-shifting to reflect newly identified students’ needs Many action research projects involved pursuing new goals that are more grounded in the needs of the targeted students in the research process. This often took place due to a new understanding developed through reflections on prior cycles where the pursuit of the initially-set goals was found to be disconnected from actual needs of targeted students identified in the research process. Theme #2: Goal-shifting to reflect new sense-making of practice complexity Some action research projects involved goal shifts due to renewed sense-making of the practice complexity. This often took place due to deep reflections on the nature of the targeted practice that had led action researchers to incorporate new variables (e.g., social relationships, institutional leadership) in their research scopes. Theme #3: Goal-shifting to reflect newly acquired professional identity Some action research projects involved goal shifts due to action researchers’ reflections on their identity as educators in the contexts. Through deep reflections that took place in the action research process, they engaged in explorations of their professional identity and incorporated new goals that reflected who they really want to be for their students in the practice contexts. The study found that the above three types of goal-shifting, but the themes were not necessarily mutually exclusive or independent. This on-going study implies the importance of considering multiple dimensions of goal-shifting for making sense of what contributes to practice improvement and professional development in action research projects.

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