Action Research, 1988, S Kemmis, Vol 1 Reader, p177

Participative Practitioner Action Research is good. Okay?

K Lewin used the term Action Research (AR) in a paper in 1946, illustrating it by describing the process of reconnaissance necessary for a WWII bombing run. His emphasis was that knowledge comes from the action taken by participants in research (fact finding) and influences their next action. As will be significant, the methodology is critical, not any technique employed to carry it out e.g. fact finding is a methodology; how facts are found is the technique.

Kemmis dislike the simplicity of AR defined by Lewin. Kemmis and W Carr developed 5 rules to determine legitimate from illegitimate contemporary action research. It reads like commandments, and starts with

“1. It must reject positivistic notions of rationality, objectivity, and truth;" (sic).

They also insist that the motivation must be emancipatory (rule 4). Any failure renders the research inadequate or incoherent they argue. Their paper was 5 years earlier, in 1983, “Becoming Critical, Knowing through Action Research”. Acceptance is presumed, so I must write at this time that the “requirements” in isolation come across as dogmatic laws without justification. However, Rules 2, 3 and 5 are just re-amplifications of Lewin but applied to education.

Action Research peaked in the 1950’s but had a resurgence last century when Kemmis wrote.

The objects of Kemmis’s AR (KAR) are restricted to praxis, an unconvincing term of specious etymology that seems to be a re-minted coin, with the word practice on its face and with a requirement to be "informed by theory" as the legend on its edge. Actually, praxis is an Aristotelian term. Theory is subordinate to praxis because reason can't always prevent contradiction, which is always overcome by praxis (history, in fact). Is this pertinent? Kemmis seems to misapply it and misunderstand the role of theory, which he makes dominant and a pre-requisite to praxis. This undermines the rest of his paper. He actually writes quoting “theorist of practical action” and seems quite unconscious of his superfluous and pedantic language in the eyes of a non-convert. The difference between this and reconnaissance is mystifying. Praxis is vital to Kemmis. And that is the flaw in his paper – he just does not prove it, but writes as if it is dogma. There is no practical difference between practice and praxis, and Kemis seems again to re-define a word idiosyncratically.

He spends time explaining what AR is distinguished by methodology, not techniques. This is self-evident if his laws are used to prescribe KAR. It is also inevitably so because AR, even as defined by Lewin, is a spiral (or cycle) of methodology – techniques are irrelevant. The methodology is practitioners interdependently apply iterative research and reconnaissance to hopefully attain enlightening conclusions.

He makes clear the AR is associated with Policy Research and Control of Education.

The paper is mostly unconvincing and verbose. I wish I could have read more of Lewin’s paper.