Action research generally involves inquiring into one's own practice through a process of self-
monitoring that generally includes entering a cycle of planning, acting, observing and reflecting
on an issue or problem in order to improve practice. Wallace (1991: 56-7) maintains that
action research can have 'specific and immediate outcome which can be directly related to
practice in the teacher's own context' and is 'an extension of the normal reflective practice of
many teachers, but it is slightly more rigorous and might conceivably lead to more effective
outcomes'. As mentioned in Chapter 1, systematic reflection means that language teachers·
collect data about their teaching so that they can make more informed decisions about their
teaching; however, whereas reflective teaching can result in non-observable behavioural
changes in the classroom such as increased levels of awareness of a teacher's assumptions,
beliefs and practices, conducting an action research project usually results in some kind of
transformation of the research into actual and observable actions. This chapter outlines and
discusses how reflective language teaching can be facilitated through conducting action
research.