Doing Practitioner Research

This is an ideal text for the growing number of practitioners working in health, education, and social care who are undertaking research. Authors Mark Fox, Gillian Green, and Peter Martin provide the perfect introduction to why practitioners are in the unique position to conduct research that actually improves professional practice. The authors cover in detail the range of skills and techniques necessary to make a successful start to the process of becoming an effective practitioner researcher.

Doing Practitioner Research focuses on helping practitioners conduct research in their own organizations, and attention is given to the best methods for doing this effectively and sensitively. The authors also attend to the theoretical, political, and organizational context of doing research, as well as addressing the ethical and practical issues of undertaking research.

This book will be essential reading for those professionals/practitioners engaged in research in their own organization or undertaking a post–graduate qualification in Health, Social Care, or Education.

After his own initial training at the University of Exeter (some time in the 1980’s), Mark took up a post as an Educational Psychologist in the West Midlands. He moved to work as an EP in Bromley and then to the Essex E.P.S and also began working as an academic tutor on the Educational Psychology training programme at the University of East London. He has since been Head of National Advisory and Assessment Services at SCOPE, where he developed integrated models of assessment, and services for people with complex disabilities. More recently he held the post of EP trainer at the Tavistock Clinic and University of Essex and in October 2009 he was appointed the Programme Director for Educational Psychology at UEL.

Clinical Interests Dr Martin qualified as a mental health nurse in 1983, his on-going clinical career spans 30 years within and with the UK National Health Service. Dr Martin′s work within the clinical arena encompasses direct therapeutic intervention with service users, management of service provision within the NHS and educational interventions within a clinical and academic setting. More recently Dr Martin′s clinical practice has focused on working with service users who have on-going and complex mental health needs.

I am a Medical Sociologist and have been researching social aspects of long-term illness since the early 1990s conducting research with people living with a range of long term conditions. My most recent book ′The End of Stigma? Changes in the Social Experience of Long-Term Illness′ was published by Routledge in 2009.

I am Director of the National Institute of Health Research Research Design Service for the East of England.