You may be quite used to engaging in reflective practice, in which you look back over an action or series of actions and consider what happened and how you might improve the action(s). When we engage in reflective practice, we need not formulate questions in advance of the actions taking place. Instead, we just think back and select what we think is important.

Action research is different from reflection in that it requires that we formulate research questions in advance. Those questions then are used to guide the action research process through the design and conduct of data collection, the analysis and validation (triangulation) of data, and the writing of the report.

Action research is an intentional act, and the research questions can be used to state our intentions.

When writing action research questions, you should keep the following criteria in mind:

• They should be broad in scope.

You likely will have 1-3 questions that guide your action research process. It is unlikely that you will have more than 6. These broad questions can then be subdivided into smaller questions, if you like. However, realize that it generally isn’t possible for one project to cover everything. If you spread yourself thin, you’ll learn a little about many things. If you focus, you’ll learn a lot about the things on which you focus. For future improvement, the latter is probably better.

• They should be research questions (questions about the action) rather than data collection questions (questions to be asked of participants in an interview or on a survey).

Your data collection questions will be derived from the research questions. For example, a research question might be "How do I get my students more involved in class discussion"? whereas in an interview you might ask a student "What would make you want to get more involved in a class discussion"?

• They should, when answered, have an impact on your practices.

This is the very essence of action research – that it involves practitioners on a data-driven journey through which they explore their own practices and develop action plans for improving those practices. Make the questions personal and reflective of your concerns as a practitioner.

• They should be answerable.

This point may seem obvious, but it is surprisingly easy to dream up questions that are too big or involve phenomena we can’t readily study through observations, asking questions of others, and reviewing records and documents.