Rationale, Assumptions, and Development

For many years I (primary author) worked for one of the Institute of Education Sciences Regional Educational Laboratories (REL-Central). These labs, which are distributed throughout the United States, are tasked with providing technical assistance and consultation to local education agencies (i.e., schools or districts). Within my position at REL-Central, I often found myself consulting with various agencies to help solve some of their most persistent problems. On their face, the challenges seemed quite similar across sites: attenuating high drop-out rates, improving reading scores, integrating English language learners into general education classrooms. It was tempting to simply identify a solution from the literature, implement it, and hope for the best; however, for anyone thinking critically about the problem, this would not suffice. Despite their commonalities, each problem was unique and situationally grounded. Although the literature provided a good starting place, each problem required a contextually responsive intervention.
Developing and implementing a contextually responsive intervention requires a thorough understanding of the problem at hand. It became clear that often no one, including me, possessed a sufficient level of understanding to accomplish this task. We could name the problem and list some of its symptoms; but if pressed, we could scarcely describe the nature of the problem with any degree of clarity, nor its root causes. We had, what I have come to refer to, as a low-resolution problem. I had a few techniques for simply deconstructing a problem such as conceptual mapping, driver diagrams, and failure modes and effects analyses; but none for truly analyzing it with sufficient detail to inform our research. Specifically, none of the techniques I had at my disposal provided a sufficient process for understanding the problem, prioritizing research efforts, and transparently communicating our articulation of the problem to others. To fill this need, I began developing a method that would produce a high-resolution problem: one with a clear ambit, composition, and degree of tenacity.
Two assumptions guided development of this method. The first acknowledges that a problem can be articulated in a variety of ways depending on its situated context and the evolving schema as the researcher engages with the problem \cite{deGrave,Polkinghoime}. This assumption originates from a phenomenological theory of knowledge acquisition proposed by Martin Heidegger known as hermeneutics. This epistemological orientation prioritizes direct engagement with a problem over the mediated process of abstract theorizing. As described by \citet{Packer},
In hermeneutic inquiry and the ontology that grounds it, the primary origin of knowledge is taken to be practical activity: direct, everyday practical involvement with tools, artifacts, and people. Such activity exists prior to any theorizing and has a character distinct from the latter. Most notably, it involves no context-free elements definable in the absence of interpretation (p.1083).
From this perspective, context, prior experiences, and preconceptions serve as the foundation for investigating any new phenomenon. This also includes biases of which a researcher may not even be aware, yet nevertheless mediate the way the problem is interpreted \citep{Safranski}.
The second assumption asserts that any articulation of a problem is a heuristic: an aid for better understanding and communicating the nature of the problem itself. From this perspective, understanding is grounded within a given context and interpreted through the researcher’s schema  \citep{Geanellos}. This suggests that there is no single true way to look at a problem, but what should be expected is a clear articulation of the problem from the researcher’s perspective. Although this may initially seem at odds with the positivist orientation of interventionist research, the practical nature of action research allows for our epistemic orientation to be situational, just as our research is. Because of this, the idea that a heuristic could serve as the basis for follow-on positivist research is not inherently at odds. Even John \citet{Dewey} an ardent proponent of scientific methodology, referred to experimentation as a “trial of ideas” (p. 153) . Despite this capitulation, the subjectivity inherent in a heuristic does underscore the need for transparency in how a problem is articulated. In other words, if we assume our understanding of a problem is merely a heuristic, then we are obliged to be especially clear about our interpretations of it.
Guided by these assumptions and motivated by the need for a systematic and transparent process for analyzing problems for practical action research, I began development of a method that combines the individual strengths of extant deconstruction processes within a framework that captures the situational nature of the scenario. I have moved on from REL-Central and now direct a graduate teacher preparation program, where I teach this method as part of a course in action research. A student enrolled in this program (second author) has been invaluable in helping to refine and operationalize this method for use by practitioners as well as trained researchers.