Research tonic

Did you spot that an anagram of Action Research is ... A research tonic?

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.

Lawrence Stenhouse, The Teacher As Researcher, Offprints Reader, P31 (1975)

DIY - The Teacher As Researcher into the curriculum

32 years ago Stenhouse wrote his book, and this paper was an extract. I added the italics above because he limits research by teachers to the curriculum. He wrote:

"... all well-founded curriculum research and development, whether the work of an individual teacher, if a school, of a framework of a national project, is based on the study of classrooms. It thus rests on the work of teachers."

Stenhouse has no issue with objectivity for the teacher engaged in research in his or her classroom because "the teacher's subjective perception ... is crucial for practice since he is in a position to control the classroom."

He saw the main barriers to teacher research, a.k.a. action research, to be psychological and social. Notwithstanding the tensions created trying to be both a teacher and a researcher, he sees this research as accessible to teachers and feeding teaching. Indeed the self-motivating teacher-researcher is essential "if education is to be significantly improved"

The observation of one teacher by another seems to be a groundbreaking idea; so much so, that Stenhouse cites a study that provided "the careful and sympathetic help when teacher-researchers are exposed to feedback on their own lessons for the first time".

It is common place today for lecturers in colleges to be observed by colleagues on an informal basis. I wonder if Stenhouse had something to do with that.

M Hammersley (1993) On the teacher as researcher (p211, Vol. 1 Educational Research)

Integration of roles of Teacher and Education Researcher. No thank you!

Nearly 10 years after Hirst, Hammersley wrote to argue that Teacher Research (what we know as Action Research today) was OK but should be done by researchers or by teachers but as an end in itself, not co-erced or incorporated into the job of being a teacher. That was nearly 14 years ago, and the argument looks academic today. Certainly teachers are being loaded with administrative, assessment duties to add to their teaching commitments, rather than being forced to do research to improve their professionalism. But issues examined are still of interest, even if the political impetus that once threatened as, as far as I know, vanished. Action Research done by teachers as participants surely goes on, but, in my experience as a practitioner, it is voluntary and done with almost a hobbyist approach (by which mean it is accepted as self-developing, self-research and inquiry to helping reflection); "if it does not work out, ah well, it was a useful exercise from which we have all learnt something". TR, as Hammersley calls it, is cool, but should not be forced on teachers. TR may be done well by either insiders or outsiders. His teachers' learners seem to be children (see p221), by the way.

Teachers are well placed to research education because they are in a position to test educational ideas. They are also implementers of the curriculum, so perception of professionalism was tied up with curriculum development. Lawrence Stenhouse was seen as an authority and pushed the notion that professionalism should also be judged by TR. Hammersley carefully and respectfully shows this to be nonsense. (I do not yet know much about Stenhouse's work, but I suspect it has wasted a lot of people's time. For instance, he considered teachers as senior learners and that "no intelligible conclusion should be ruled out by a teacher". Well, OK James, you think that it is alright to stab people if you are called Jim. I understand that conclusion, so I won't ask you to rule it out." And I won't mention suicide bombers ... I digress...).

So, the idea came about that education research was best done by teachers than non-teaching researchers. Seems crazy to me, and maybe the likes of Hammersley saved us from this daft practice.

When is a researcher not a researcher? When she/he is a teacher. When is a researcher not a teacher? Never. Sounds like a joke to me.

Anyway, conventional research (CR) was critiqued by Stenhouse, Carr and Kremis and collaborative and practitioner research gained advocacy. Hammersley's article is in support of the conventional and goes on to show why critiques are unbalanced or flawed.

• CR is not irrelevant because although not always leading to a solution, it does sometimes and although some "solutions" are generalised, others are specific or can be adapted.

• CR is not invalid because it is so objective it is removed from practice because being an outsider can enable research and validate it; there are pros and cons to being an insider or an outsider for most research one can think of.

• CR is undemocratic, if it means anything is specious because research is not itself the practice it studies (my words).

• CR exploits teachers. (And TR forced onto a teacher's job description wouldn't?). Researchers can draw praise on themselves away from the teacher, for wisdom more rightly credited to teachers. (Who cares so long as the kids learn? - that is what I thought as I read that part...). This seems to be a reason for caution, not for prescription.

The conclusion is that TR should be an extra activity added on to teaching in classrooms and schools, not a transformation of that teaching. The proposal to integrate the roles of teacher and educational researcher "is untenable from the point of view both of research and teaching".

Not all educational research should be done by teachers. Outsiders are welcome. Nice.