Educational Reality and Action-Research in Education The article investigates the concept of «educational reality» with regard to an epistemology inspired by critical realism. The investigation firstly deals with the function of «educational reality» in action-research by gathering the its relations with «pedagogic problematicism» and with educational planning. In this context, action-research becomes an active cognitive strategy aimed at transforming educational reality. Secondly, the implications between educational reality and ontology are explored. The analysis leads to overcoming the unilateral formulations of exclusively natural and social ontologies in favour of a complex and critical ontological approach. Thirdly, the study analyses the consequences deriving from complex ontology on educational reality through action-research. Educational reality, being the result of previous educational processes, is objectified educational practice and, for the very fact that it is a product of preceding transformations, can undergo further changes. Therefore, action-research enables the implementation of a critical and scientific pedagogic realism. Since it is an active cognitive strategy, it enables an understanding of educational reality, hypothesizes the action of transformation of the educational situation and performs an objective control of the transformation obtained.