INTRODUCTION
A. Background
Research is a quest, an attempt to better understand the complex worlds we live in. It is an endeavor that can have the highest possible purpose to help others. In applied linguistics, this means helping language learners, teachers, researchers, materials writers, and program administrators gain a deeper understanding of the multifarious worlds of learning and teaching languages. Qualitative research has evolved over the past three decades into a broad body of knowledge. Within its domain is a wide range of approaches and methods that reflect not only the multiplicity of its root disciplines but also the diversity of contexts and purposes to which it is applied.
A qualitative to research generally involves the researcher in contact with participants in their natural setting to answer questions related to how the participants make sense of their lives. Qualitative researchers may observe the participants and conduct formal and informal interviews to further an understanding of what is going on in the setting from the point of view of those involved in the study. Ethnographic research shares these qualitative traits, but ethnographers more specifically seek understanding of what participants do to create the culture in which they live, and how the culture develops over time.
Qualitative and ethnographic research developed in education in the late 1970s. Ethnographic researchers drew on theory and methods in anthropology and sociology, creating a distinction between ethnography of education (work undertaken by anthropologists and sociologists) and ethnography in education (work undertaken by educators to address educational issues). Other forms of qualitative research drew on theories from the humanities and other social and behavioral sciences, adapting this work to educational goals and concerns, often creating new forms (e.g., a field method approach, interview approaches, and some forms of action research).
The term of Ethnography and Action Research in qualitative research always appear to be essential part of many qualitative discussion, however the research both action research and Ethnoghraphy have their own approach to deal with a certain problem in process of gaining better result. The Action Research for instance have a long story in its development, the research was coined by the social psychologist Kurt Lewin in the United States in about 1944 in connection with research which aimed to promote social action through democratic decision making and active participation of practitioners in the research process. The target group for Lewin's programme of action research was field workers who were trying to improve relations between minority groups in American society. Lewin believed that through action research advances in theory and much needed social change might simultaneously be achieved.
In addition there is a clear understanding that Ethnography research lies on the scope called culture and Action Research is undertaken in the field of workers, teachers, administrators or supervisors in order to change and improve their own practice. The process of each research will bring the researcher into deeper understanding toward the phenomena occur even in everyday practice. Based on this reason, further explanation will include the process of each research and underlining some of data processing both in Ethnography and Action Research.
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