Action Research for Nurses

Jean McNiff is Professor of Educational Research at York St John University, UK. She is also a Visiting Professor at UiT the Arctic University of Norway, and at the Beijing Normal University and Ningxia Teachers’ University, People’s Republic of China. Jean took early retirement from her position as deputy head teacher of a large secondary school in Dorset, UK. She went into business for herself, and developed her writing. Her textbooks on action research and professional education are now used internationally on workplace-based professional education courses and on higher degree courses. Jean provides interdisciplinary consultancy work to institutions around the world where she gives lectures and conducts workshops on planning, doing and writing action research.Jean aims to contribute to personal and social betterment through educational research. She encourages everyone to make their stories public in the form of their personal and collaborative theories of practice; and she firmly believes that each individual is able to contribute to social and planetary wellbeing by explaining how they hold themselves accountable for what they do. In this way she links education with moral accountability. She tries to bring the university to everyday contexts, and everyday contexts into the university, for it is only by involving everyone, she feels, that the world will become a better place for us all.

In our evidence-led culture, this is a research text with a difference. By helping nurses to research their own practice and generate their own evidence, this gently subversive book attempts to restore professional power to practising nurses.

• PART 1: WHAT IS ACTION RESEARCH? WHAT IS ITS RELEVANCE TO NURSING?Chapter 1: What do you need to know about action research?Chapter 2: Why should nurses do action research?Chapter 3: Ethical issuesPART 2: HOW DO YOU DO ACTION RESEARCH?Chapter 4: Planning and designing action researchChapter 5: Drawing up and carrying out action plansChapter 6: Monitoring practices and gathering dataChapter 7: Monitoring practices and gathering dataPART 3: SIGNIFICANCE OF YOUR ACTION RESEARCHChapter 8: Writing up your action researchChapter 9: The significance of your action research