Riding the Wave: Student Researcher Reflection on the Action Research Process

Source: Educational Action Research, Volume 20, Issue 2, May 2012, pages 291-312

This article focuses on the exploration of and an explanation of student researchers’ affect and activity in an action research project.

The authors argue that the researcher group as a whole constructs a wave process and at the same time each individual researcher in the group creates a wave process that may be similar or different to that of the group.
These processes shape each other, through phases of engagement and disengagement in the researcher cycle, and make the research experience richer.

The authors examine five separate researcher narratives, extracting excerpts, to show how these examples showcase this wave phenomenon.
Two themes, activity and affect, are identified in the narrative excerpts provided;
sub-categories such as roles on a team and context of research are explored in these themes.