Abstract:

Views on the emergence of an action research (AR) focus on Gestalt psychology, observations of Colliers' mission, Kurt Lewin's model of AR, and Moreno’ studies. AR was first applied in the field of education by Corey (1953) in the America, and then it was often used in educational research. The term educational AR was produced by Carr & Kemmis in 1986, and this term was used as an umbrella term in educatinal studies in the world. Although there are many AR studies in Turkey, too, some of these AR studies do not explain the processes clearly step by step, in terms of action models and action cycles. Besides, some of these AR are not available until certain date because the thesis holder has put restriction. In addition, nearly all of the AR studies undertaken in Turkey do not mention if the study was first order AR (FOAR) or second order AR (SOAR). Moreover, some of the AR studies offer a general discussion of findings instead of explaining each action plans clearly. Furthermore, the lenght of action cycles was also among the controversial issue. For the above mentioned reasons, firstly a brief overview of the history (origion) of AR is presented. The reason is that there are hundreds of AR study in the literature and it is not possible to refer to all of them. Secondly, the paper displays the models of AR, action cycles and action plans in detail, which are the objective of this study. In this context, the paper presents a shortened form of the cycles (processes) of an embeded (FOAR and SOAR) AR study to illustrate the action models, cycles and plans step by step. The paper concludes by discussing some of the key issues that emerged from the study.

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