A fully-updated and reworked version of the classic book by Stephen Kemmis and Robin McTaggart, now joined by Rhonda Nixon, The Action Research Planner is a detailed guide to developing and conducting a critical participatory action research project. The authors outline new views on ‘participation’ (based on Jürgen Habermas’s notion of a ‘public sphere’), ‘practice’ (as shaped by practice architectures), and ‘research’ (as research within practice traditions). They provide five extended examples of critical participatory action research studies. The book includes a range of resources for people planning a critical participatory research initiative, providing guidance on how to establish an action research group and identify a shared concern, research ethics, principles of procedure for action researchers, protocols for collaborative work, keeping a journal, gathering evidence, reporting, and choosing academic partners. Unlike earlier editions, The Action Research Planner focuses specifically on critical participatory action research, which occupies a particular (critical) niche in the action research 'family'. The Action Research Planner is an essential guide to planning and undertaking this type of research.

The nature of the workplace and the workforce has changed rapidly in post-industrial society. Most workers are now facing the need for high levels of preparatory education, retraining for new jobs and the ability to continue learning at work in order to keep up with new developments. The book, first published in 1987, argues that training in the workplace often fails because it is based on conditions that no longer prevail in modern organisations. The mechanistic approach of the behaviourist paradigm, it is argued, views the organisation as a machine and training as the preparation of workers for machine-like work according to their levels in the hierarchy, much as on an assembly line. The humanists’ advocation of collaborative learning has changed but not fundamentally altered this conception. This book will be of interest to students of education and business management.