Although an increasing number of teachers carry out action research inquiries in their educational practice, the role of pupils and students is not still sufficiently explored. In spite of the theoretical requirement for pupils to be equal participants, researchers explored the possibility of their becoming fully-fledged action researchers. This report reveals how ten-years-old pupils take over the whole processes of action research themselves. Researchers realised that action research is not a teaching strategy for gaining better educational results, neither is it a preparation for life: it is life itself. They believe that traditional schooling cannot create a conducive atmosphere for pupils to carry out their own action research. This study shows that it is possible to do this only in a child-oriented school whose main purpose is the development of the creative potentials of all participants. In the inquiry the pupils determined their own challenges with the aim of improving something important in their own lives. Researchers showed that action research is meaningful only if students engage with it on their own terms, on the basis of their own needs, interests and self-chosen values. Anything that hinders pupils' freedom will only compromise the foundations of action research itself and any educational value accrued from it.