Leadership and Management Development: An Action Research Project

This paper discusses the nature of contemporary action research approaches to developing practice and considers how this methodology has been applied to a recent education research project on a tertiary award program. The program was initiated using a co-operative inquiry approach to leadership and management practice development under an action research methodology (Heron 1996, Heron & Reason, 2001). A group of 25 program participants used reflection towards research and understanding of their current practice and action towards trialling new concepts, tools and techniques discovered and learned during the program to develop their practice. The paper discusses the use of co-operative inquiry and action research processes as well as the outcomes from the program.