Hightown Grammar Article 8 by C Lacey, reader Vol 1

The Accidental Action Researcher ...

Once one gets over the fact that the research is so old that dust blows off the metaphorical pages, and the phrasing of Lacey, who gets no gold star for fluency, one realises that something interesting happened back in the 70s. Lacey accidentally got immersed in practitioner-led Action Research. He starts off as an outsider researcher, becomes an insider researcher and produces findings that gain respect for thickness of description and authority that comes from straddling both camps at once; a kind of beneficent double agent bereft of ill intent or perfidy. He was a spy from the beginning, an agent of the headmaster, but, by the end (after a change in headmaster), he was a spy for the boys and the staff. The role changes caused local friction for short periods but, by staying three years and by sociological Chinese theft, he stealthily liberated his study participants from their distrust.

He starts off overly ambitious and naive, but like Mister Tom slow tracks to success through industry and love of the poor boys. He overcomes bias with fairness, convincing most that he plays a fair game of Cricket in more senses than one. The detail (and there is a lot of that) is quaint; talk of caning indeed! The 3 years of being inside the abstract sociological "black box" provided insights that enabled sophisticated, if slightly specious, modeling; what Lacey calls "spirals of knowledge".

It seems to me that Lacey preformed a continuous reconnaissance on the school, finding facts out by whatever method he esteemed likely to succeed or fortuitously was allowed to get away with, even allowing boys to visit his home and he theirs. The validity and relevance of his research must have been seminal in his day, and it resonates today ... a bit like the big bang when time began is evidenced by cosmic particles we may consider background radiation.

Did he achieve his goal of evidence that boys from poor backgrounds underachieve and under performing at Grammar school? No, in fact quite soon he lost sight of it, and then let it go. His own values and preoccupations were transformed by his practice of research, and he believes that he found the evidence why newly trained teachers soon forge new personal and individual practices and coping stratagems on becoming a professional practitioner.

Survival.

The strength of Lacey's research was his earnestness and his honesty as a researcher. His methodology had an intrinsic cultural and catalytic validity; he admitted bias and sometimes lack of understanding. For example, he admits to a feeling that he missed much more than he found and identifies his pre-judgements. The weakness of his research methodology was a lack of definitive structure, being forced continuously to refocus and change actions on findings and on knowledge gained. These are strengths and weaknesses of Action Research and, arguably, qualitative research in general.

In Science, many discoveries were made by accident e.g. Pasteurisation. As an unqualified teacher spying on staff and students, it could have all gone so wrong, but Lacey shows that outside researchers or inside researchers can sometimes have happy outcomes from serendipity. Like the lotto argues, to win it, one has first to be in it.