Action research is a term used to describe a family of related approaches that integrate theory and action with a goal of addressing important organizational, community, and social issues together with those who experience them. It focuses on the creation of areas for collaborative learning and the design, enactment and evaluation of liberating actions through combining action and research, reflection and action in an ongoing cycle of cogenerative knowledge. While the roots of these methodologies go back to the 1940s, there has been a dramatic increase in research output and adoption in university curricula over the past decade. This is now an area of high popularity among academics and researchers from various fields—especially business and organization studies, education, health care, nursing, development studies, and social and community work. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research brings together the many strands of action research and addresses the interplay between these disciplines by presenting a state-of-the-art overview and comprehensive breakdown of the key tenets and methods of action research as well as detailing the work of key theorists and contributors to action research.

Based on a previous book by the same authors, Understanding Performance Appraisal delineates a social-psychological model of the appraisal process that emphasizes the goals pursued by raters, ratees, and the various users of performance appraisal. The authors apply this goal-oriented perspective to developing, implementing, and evaluating performance appraisal systems. This perspective also emphasizes the context in which appraisal occurs and demonstrates that the shortcomings of performance appraisal are in fact sensible adaptations to its various requirements, pressures, and demands. Relevant research is summarized and recommendations are offered for future research and applications. Graduate-level students, organizational development consultants and trainers, human resource managers, faculty and scholars, and psychologists in human resource management as well as other professionals who conduct research on performance appraisal programs will find this book not only interesting but also a valuable resource.

This comprehensive text provides a detailed review and analysis of the building-block theories in the macro-organizational behavior field. John Miner has identified the key theories that any student or scholar needs to understand to be considered literate in the discipline. Each chapter includes the background of the theorist represented, the context in which the theory arose, the initial and subsequent theoretical statements, research on the theory by the theory's author and others (including meta-analysis and reviews), and practical applications. Special features, including boxed summaries of each theory at the beginning of each chapter; two introductory chapters on the scientific method and the development of knowledge; and detailed, comprehensive references, help make this text especially useful for every student and scholar in the field.

Although experts agree that various types of learning disabilities do exist, few attempts have been made to classify learning disabled children into subtypes. The editors of this collection feel that the lack of subcategorization has frustrated previous research efforts to obtain a generalizable body of knowledge in the field. To meet this critical need for definitive information, this book presents basic reviews and theoretical approaches used to subtype learning disabled children -- ranging from a behavior genetics approach to a dimensional approach. It also demonstrates actual research methods utilizing theoretical approaches.

I have attended quite a few conferences and meetings devoted to the ideas of Kurt Lewin. Among these the 1984 conference at Temple was out standing for its high quality. What made it so successful? Several things. The conference included a stimulating mix of generations. The first generation of women who obtained their Ph. D. 's in psychology in Berlin in the 1920's strike me as a remarkable group. Now in their 80's, they are characterized by enormous vigor and energy. They are still professionally active. Two of them - Tamara Dembo and Maria Rickers Ovsienkina - joined us. Other participants in the Temple conference had been in Iowa in the 1930's and 1940's, or at MIT. Of course there were many who had learned about Lewin from their own teachers, and in some cases, their teachers' teachers. There was a good mixture of ap plied psychologists and academics. Father said on several occasions that he did not want to found a school of psychology as such. Rather he wanted to introduce the field theoretical viewpoint and approach. I think he would have been stimulated by and enthusiastic about the many diverse areas to which Lewinian analy ses, ideas, and concepts are applied today, as illustrated by this volume. He would have been pleased to see so many people applying basic theoreti cal concepts to important social problems. Father loved to discover new things about America.

"Showing how science is limited by its dominant mode of investigation, Lincoln and Guba propose an alternative paradigm--a "naturalistic" rather than "rationalistic" method of inquiry--in which the investigator avoids manipulating research outcomes. A "paradigm shift" is under way in many fields, they contend, and go on to describe the different assumptions of the two approaches regarding the nature of reality, subject-object interaction, the possibility of generalization, the concept of causality, and the role of values. The authors also offer guidance for research in the field (where, they say, naturalistic inquiry always takes place). Useful tips are given, for example, on "designing" a study as it unfolds, establishing "trustworthiness," and writing a case report. This book helps researchers "both to understand and to do naturalistic inquiry." Of particular interest to educational researchers, it is valuable for all social scientists involved with questions of qualitative and quantitative methodology."--Publisher's description.