  Action research provides the opportunity to explore the usefulness and
usability of software engineering methods in industrial settings, and makes it
possible to develop methods, tools and techniques with software engineering
practitioners. However, as the research moves beyond the observational
approach, it requires a different kind of interaction with the software
development organisation. This makes action research a challenging endeavour,
and it makes it difficult to teach action research through a course that goes
beyond explaining the principles.
  This chapter is intended to support learning and teaching action research, by
providing a rich set of examples, and identifying tools that we found helpful
in our action research projects. The core of this chapter focusses on our
interaction with the participating developers and domain experts, and the
organisational setting.
  This chapter is structured around a set of challenges that reoccurred in the
action research projects in which the authors participated. Each section is
accompanied by a toolkit that presents related techniques and tools. The
exercises are designed to explore the topics, and practise using the tools and
techniques presented. We hope the material in this chapter encourages
researchers who are new to action research to further explore this promising
opportunity.
