During his professional activities a teacher has to face number of problems like, organising teaching, ensure students’ attention, evaluation, maintaining discipline in the classroom, lack of resources, equipment materials, chemicals etc. The other problems may be the students coming, late to classroom not paying fees on time, lack of support material, lack of furniture, equipments etc. A resourceful teacher can solve difficult problems of teaching quite easily with a very small research programme. This action-oriented problem-solving technique is called action research.

Action research is a systematic attempt to solve immediate problems of teachers and the classrooms. According to Zuber and Ortum, “Critical collaboration inquiry by reflective practitioners being accountable and making results of their inquiry public, self-evaluating their practice and engaged in participative problem-solving and continuous professional development. ” Action research calls for better preparation clear definition of the problem and systematic appraisal of the situation for possible solutions.

The teacher education department of NCERT invites teachers every year to present findings of their ‘ investigations for discussions at the national forum. The Indian Science Congress has created a forum for school education in science, where teachers can present innovative ideas, experiments and discuss problems with a view to arriving at solutions to problems and find always for development.

There are so many problems in teaching profession. Action research needs a clear and specific teaching or related problem. Once a problem is indent infield, probable strategies need to be thought of to solve it. A research design suitable for situational problem must be identified. A teacher may develop certain instructional material for teaching a difficult concept or construct and evaluate its effectiveness in the classroom through a well designed stud)’.

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Action researching has the following advantages:

(i) Action research under well planned manner is very helpful in providing teachers with insight into nature of educational problems. A teacher will be able to relate the research problem with the relevant professional literature.

(ii) Teachers learn to avoid unnecessary problems and focus their attention on important problems.

(iii) Action research is completely empirical and local in nature, therefore provides realistic and feasible solutions.

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(iv) Action research is not rigorous and its contribution to the development of education as a science is likely to be secondarily.

(v) It can contribute facts to be integrated into theory and can help in testing of a theory.

(vi) It is help in verification and clarification of a theory and may eventually help integrate previously existing theories.