Action Research as Critical Praxis: From Habermas to Classroom Change

The Action Research as Critical Praxis: From Habermas to Classroom Change. This approach goes beyond simply describing practice, critically evaluating and reconstructing it, thereby promoting a more democratic and equitable learning environment.

What is Action Research as Critical Praxis: From Habermas to Classroom Change

“Action Research as Critical Practice: From Habermas to Classroom Change” is a framework that views action research not only as a research method, but as a transformative and reflexive process for transforming pedagogical practices. It integrates Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action to analyze how practitioners can use dialogue and reflection to identify and address issues of power and oppression in the classroom, thereby bringing about meaningful and emancipatory change.

Introduction Action Research through a Critical Lens

Habermas, Knowledge Interests, and a Threefold Typology

Much of the writing in this field of action research draws on the Frankfurt School of critical theory , in particular the work of Habermas. Indeed Weiskopf and Laske (1996:123) locate action research, in the German tradition, squarely as a ‘critical social science’. Using Habermas’s early writing on knowledge constitutive interests (1972, 1974) a three-fold typification of action research can be constructed.

Technical Action Research

Grundy (1987:154) argues that ‘technical’ action research is designed to render an existing situation more efficient and effective. In this respect it is akin to Argyris’s notion of ‘singleloop learning’ (Argyris, 1990), being functional, often short term and technical. It is akin to Schön’s (1987). notion of ‘reflection-in-action’ (Morrison, 1995a). Elliott (1991:55) suggests that this view is limiting for action research since it is too individualistic and neglects wider curriculum structures, regarding teachers in isolation from wider factors.

Practical Action Research

By contrast, ‘practical’ action research is designed to promote teachers’ professionalism by drawing on their informed judgement (Grundy, 1987:154). It is akin to Schön’s ‘reflection-en action’ and is a hermeneutic activity of understanding and interpreting social situations with a view to their improvement. Grundy suggests (p. 148) that it is this style that characterizes much action research in the UK.

Emancipatory Action Research

Emancipatory action research has an explicit agenda which is as political as it is educational. Grundy (1987) provides a useful introduction to this view. She argues (pp. 146–7) that emancipatory action research seeks to develop in participants their understandings of illegitimate structural and interpersonal constraints that are preventing the exercise of their autonomy and freedom. These constraints, she argues, are based on illegitimate repression, domination and control. When participants develop a consciousness of these constraints, she suggests, they begin to move from freedom and constraint to freedom, autonomy and social justice.

Action research, then, aims to empower individuals and social groups to take control over their lives within a framework of the promotion, rather than the suppression of generalizable interests (Habermas, 1976). It commences with a challenge to the illegitimate operation of power, hence in some respects (albeit more politicized because it embraces the dimension of power) it is akin to Argyris’s (1990) notion of ‘double loop learning’ in that it requires participants to question and challenge given value systems.

For Grundy, praxis fuses theory and practice within an egalitarian social order, and action research is designed with the political agenda of improvement towards a more just, egalitarian society. This accords to some extent with Lewin’s view that action research leads to equality and cooperation, an end to exploitation and the  furtherance of democracy (see also Hopkins, 1985: 32; Carr and Kemmis, 1986:163).

What Makes Research Emancipatory?

Zuber Skerritt (1996a) suggests that: emancipatory action research…is collaborative, critical and self-critical inquiry by practitioners… into a major problem or issue or concern in their own practice.

The Collaborative Cycle (Zuber-Skerritt)

They own the problem and feel responsible and accountable for solving it through teamwork and through following a cyclical process of:

1. Strategic planning
2. Action, i.e. implementing the plan
3. Observation, evaluation and self-evaluation;
4. Critical and self-critical reflections on the results of points 1–3 and making decisions for the next cycle of action research.

Zuber-Skerritt (1996a:3) Action research, she argues (p. 5) is emancipatory when it aims not only at technical and practical improvement and the participants’ better understanding, along with transformation and change within the existing boundaries and conditions, but also at changing the system itself or those conditions which impede desired improvement in the system/organization… There is no hierarchy, but open and ‘symmetrical communication’.

The Ideal Speech Situation (Habermas)

The emancipatory interest is based on the notion of action researchers as participants in a community of equals. This, in turn is premised on Habermas’s notion of the ‘ideal speech situation’ which can be summarized thus (Morrison, 1996b: 171):

• Orientation to a common interest ascertained without deception
• Freedom to enter a discourse and equal opportunity for discussion
• Freedom to check questionable claims and evaluate explanations
• Freedom to modify a given conceptual frame work
• Freedom to reflect on the nature of knowledge
• Freedom to allow commands or prohibitions to enter discourse when they can no longer be taken for granted
• Freedom to assess justifications; furtherance of democracy (see also Hopkins, 1985: 32; Carr and Kemmis, 1986:163). Zuber Skerritt (1996a) suggests that: emancipatory action research…is collaborative, critical and self-critical inquiry by practitioners… into a major problem or issue or concern in their own practice. They own the problem and feel responsible and accountable for solving it through teamwork and through following a cyclical process of: 1 strategic planning 2 action, i.e. implementing the plan 3 observation, evaluation and self-evaluation 4 critical and self-critical reflection on the results of points 1–3 and making decisions for the next cycle of action research. Zuber-Skerritt (1996a:3)

Structural and Societal Transformation

Action research, she argues (p. 5) is emancipatory when it aims not only at technical and practical improvement and the participants’ better understanding, along with transformation and change within the existing boundaries and conditions, but also at changing the system itself or those conditions which impede desired improvement in the system/organization… There is no hierarchy, but open and ‘symmetrical communication’. The emancipatory interest is based on the notion of action researchers as participants in a community of equals. This, in turn is premised on Habermas’s notion of the ‘ideal speech situation’ which can be summarized thus (Morrison, 1996b: 171):

• Orientation to a common interest ascertained without deception
• Freedom to enter a discourse and equal opportunity for discussion
• Freedom to check questionable claims and evaluate explanations
• Freedom to modify a given conceptual frame work
• Freedom to reflect on the nature of knowledge
• Freedom to allow commands or prohibitions to enter discourse when they can no longer be taken for granted
• Freedom to alter norms
• Freedom to reflect on the nature of political will
• Mutual understanding between participants
• Recognition of the legitimacy of each subject to participate in the dialogue as an autonomous and equal partner
• Discussion to be free from domination and distorting or deforming influences
• The consensus resulting from discussion de rives from the force of the better argument alone, and not from the positional power of the participants
• All motives except the co-operative search for truth are excluded
• The speech act validity claims of truth, legitimacy, sincerity and comprehensibility are all addressed.

This formidable list, characterized, perhaps, by the opacity of Habermas’s language itself (see Morrison, 1995b) is problematical, though this will not be discussed in this volume (for a full analysis of this see Morrison (1995b)).

Why Dialogue and Democracy Matter

What is important to note, perhaps, is that:

• Action research here is construed as reflective practice with a political agenda
• All participants (and action research is participatory) are equal ‘players
• Action research, in this vein, is necessarily dialogical—interpersonal—rather than monological (individual); and
• Communication is an intrinsic element, with communication being amongst the community of equals (grundy and kemmis, 1988:87, term this ‘symmetrical communication’)
• Because it is a community of equals, action research is necessarily democratic and pro motes democracy
• That the search is for consensus (and consensus requires more than one participant), hence it requires collaboration and participation.

Two Camps of Action Research: Reflective vs. Critical

In this sense emancipatory action research fulfills the requirements of action research set out by Kemmis and McTaggart above; indeed it could be argued that only emancipatory action research (in the threefold typology) has the potential to do this. Kemmis (1997:177) suggests that the distinction between the two camps (the reflective practitioners and the critical theorists) lies in their interpretation of action research.

Local Professional Improvement

For the former, action research is an improvement to professional practice at the local, perhaps classroom level, within the capacities of individuals and the situations in which they are working; for the latter, action research is part of a broader agenda of changing education, changing schooling and changing society. A key term in action research is ‘empowerment’; for the former camp, empowerment is largely a matter of the professional sphere of operations, achieving professional autonomy through professional development. For the latter, empowerment concerns taking control over one’s life within a just, egalitarian, democratic society.

Whether the latter is realizable or Utopian is a matter of critique of this view. Where is the evidence that critical action research either empowers groups or alters the macro-structures of society? Is critical action research socially transformative? At best the jury is out; at worst the jury simply has gone away as capitalism overrides egalitarian ism worldwide. The point at issue here is the extent to which the notion of emancipatory action research has attempted to hijack the action research agenda, and whether, in so doing (if it has), it has wrested action research away from practitioners and into the hands of theorists and the academic research community only.

Critiques of Emancipatory Action Research

More specifically, several criticisms have been leveled at this interpretation of emancipatory action research (Gibson, 1985; Morrison, 1995a, 1995b; Somekh, 1995; Melrose, 1996; Grundy, 1996; Weiskopf and Laske, 1996; Webb, 1996; McTaggart, 1996; Kemmis, 1997), including the views that:

• It is utopian and unrealizable
• It is too controlling and prescriptive, seeking to capture and contain action research within a particular could—it moves towards con formity
• It adopts a narrow and particularistic view of emancipation and action research, and how to undertake the latter
• It undermines the significance of the individual teacher-as-researcher in favour of self-critical communities. Kemmis and mctaggart (1992:152) pose the question ‘why must action research consist of a group process?
• The three-fold typification of action research is untenable
• It assumes that rational consensus is achievable, that rational debate will empower all participants (i.e. It understates the issue of power, wherein the most informed are already the most powerful—grundy (1996:111) argues that the better argument derives from the one with the most evidence and reasons, and that these are more available to the powerful, thereby rendering the conditions of equality suspect)
• It overstates the desirability of consensus oriented research (which neglects the complexity of power)
• Power cannot be dispersed or rearranged simply by rationality
• Action research as critical theory reduces its practical impact and confines it to the commodification of knowledge in the academy
• Is uncritical and self-contradicting
• Will promote conformity through slavishly adhering to its orthodoxies
• Is naïve in its understanding of groups and celebrates groups over individuals, particularly the ‘in-groups’ rather than the ‘out groups
• Privileges its own view of science (rejecting objectivity) and lacks modesty
• Privileges the authority of critical theory
• Is elitist whilst purporting to serve egalitarianism
• Assumes an undifferentiated view of action research
• Is attempting to colonize and redirect action research.

This seemingly devastating critique serves to remind the reader that critical action research, even though it has caught the high ground of recent coverage, is highly problematical. It is just as controlling as those controlling agendas that it seeks to attack (Morrison, 1995b). Indeed Melrose (1996:52) suggests that, because critical research is, itself, value laden it abandons neutrality; it has an explicit social agenda that, under the guise of examining values, ethics, morals and politics that are operating in a particular situation, is actually aimed at transforming the status quo.

Classic Procedures and Process Models

Procedures for action research Nixon offers several principles for considering action research in schools . There are several ways in which the steps of action research have been analysed.

Two-Stage Model (Blum)

Blum (National Education Association of the United States, 1959) casts action research into two simple stages: a diagnostic stage in which the problems are analysed and the hypotheses developed; and a therapeutic stage in which the hypotheses are tested by a consciously directed intervention or experiment in situ.

Lewin’s Spiral (Plan–Act–Observe–Reflect)

Lewin (1946, 1948) codified the action research process into four main stages: planning, acting, observing and reflecting. He suggests that action research commences with a general idea and data are sought about the presenting situation. The successful outcome of this examination is the production of a plan of action to reach an identified objective, together with a decision on the first steps to be taken. Lewin acknowledges that this might involve modifying the original plan or idea.

The next stage of implementation is accompanied by ongoing fact-finding to monitor and evaluate the intervention, i.e. to act as a formative evaluation. This feeds forward into a revised plan and set of procedures for implementation, themselves accompanied by monitoring and evaluation. Lewin (1948:205) suggests that such ‘rational social management’ can be conceived of as a spiral of planning, action and fact-finding about the outcomes of the actions taken.

The legacy of Lewin’s work, though contested (e.g. Elliott, 1978, 1991; McTaggart, 1996:248) is powerful in the steps of action research set out by Kemmis and McTaggart (1981:2).

Kemmis & McTaggart’s Field-Focused Iterations

In practice, the process begins with a general idea that some kind of improvement or change is desirable. In deciding just where to begin in making improvements, one decides on a field of action… where the battle (not the whole war) should be fought. It is a decision on where it is possible to have an impact. The general idea prompts a ‘reconnaissance’ of the circumstances of the field, and fact-finding about them. Having decided on the field and made a preliminary reconnaissance, the action researcher decides on a general plan of action. Breaking the general plan down into achievable steps, the action researcher settles on the first action step.

Before taking this first step the action researcher becomes more circumspect, and devises a way of monitoring the effects of the first action step. When it is possible to maintain fact-finding by monitoring the action, the first step is taken. As the step is implemented, new data start coming in and the effect of the action can be described and evaluated. The general plan is then revised in the light of the new information about the field of action and the second action step can be planned along with appropriate monitoring procedures. The second step is then implemented, monitored and evaluated; and the spiral of action, monitoring, evaluation and replanning continues.

Other Spiral Variants

McKernan (1991:17) suggests that Lewin’s model of action research is a series of spirals, each of which incorporates a cycle of analysis, reconnaissance, reconceptualization of the problem, planning of the intervention, implementation of the plan, evaluation of the effectiveness of the intervention. Ebbutt (1985) adds to this the view that feedback within and between each cycle is important, facilitating reflection (see also McNiff, 1988).

This is reinforced in the model of action research by Altricher and Gstettner (1993) where, though they have four steps (p. 343):

(a) finding a starting point

(b) clarifying the situation

(c) developing action strategies and putting them into practice

(d) making teachers’ knowledge public

They suggest that steps (b) and (c) need not be sequential, thereby avoiding the artificial divide that might exist between data collection, analysis and interpretation. Zuber-Skerritt (1996b:84) sets emancipatory (critical) action research into a cyclical process of: ‘

(1) strategic planning

(2) implementing the plan (action)

(3) observation, evaluation and self-evaluation

(4) critical and self-critical re flection on the results of (1)—(3) and making decisions for the next cycle of research’. In an imaginative application of action research to organizational change theory she takes the famous work of Lewin (1952) on force field analysis and change theory (unfreezing → moving → refreezing) and the work of Beer et al. (1990) on task alignment, and sets them into an action research sequence that clarifies the steps of action research very usefully.

Eight-Stage Practical Framework

In our earlier editions we set out an eight stage process of action research that attempts to draw together the several strands and steps of the action research undertaking. The first stage will involve the identification, evaluation and formulation of the problem perceived as critical in an everyday teaching situation. ‘Problem’ should be interpreted loosely here so that it could refer to the need to introduce innovation into some aspect of a school’s established program. The second stage involves preliminary discussion and negotiations among the interested par ties—teachers, researchers, advisers, sponsors, possibly—which may culminate in a draft proposal.

This may include a statement of the questions to be answered (e.g. ‘Under what conditions can curriculum change be best effected?’ ‘What are the limiting factors in bringing about effective curriculum change?’ ‘What strong points of action research can be employed to bring about curriculum change?’). The researchers in their capacity as consultants (or sometimes as program initiators) may draw upon their expertise to bring the problem more into focus, possibly determining causal factors or recommending alternative lines of approach to established ones.

This is often the crucial stage for, unless the objectives, purposes and assumptions are made perfectly clear to all concerned, and unless the role of key concepts is stressed (e.g. feedback), the enterprise can easily miscarry. The third stage may involve a review of the research literature to find out what can be learned from comparable studies, their objectives, procedures and problems encountered.

The fourth stage may involve a modification or redefinition of the initial statement of the problem at stage one. It may now emerge in the form of a testable hypothesis; or as a set of guiding objectives. Sometimes change agents deliberately decide against the use of objectives on the grounds that they have a constraining effect on the process itself.

It is also at this stage that assumptions underlying the project are made explicit (e.g. in order to effect curriculum changes, the attitudes, values, skills and objectives of the teachers involved must be changed). The fifth stage may be concerned with the selection of research procedures—sampling, administration, choice of materials, methods of teaching and learning, allocation of resources and tasks, deployment of staff and so on. The sixth stage will be concerned with the choice of the evaluation procedures to be used and will need to take into consideration that evaluation in this context will be continuous. The seventh stage embraces the implementation of the project itself (over varying periods of time).

It will include the conditions and methods of data collection (e.g. fortnightly meetings, the keeping of records, interim reports, final reports, the submission of self-evaluation and group-evaluation reports, etc.); the monitoring of tasks and the transmission of feedback to the research team; and the classification and analysis of data. The eighth and final stage will involve the interpretation of the data; inferences to be drawn; and overall evaluation of the project (see Woods, 1989).

Discussions on the findings will take place in the light of previously agreed evaluative criteria. Errors, mistakes and problems will be considered. A general summing up may follow this, in which the outcomes of the project are reviewed, recommendations made, and arrangements for dissemination of results to interested parties decided.

As we stressed, this is a basic framework; much activity of an incidental and possibly ad hoc nature will take place in and around it. This may comprise discussions among teachers, re searchers and pupils; regular meetings among teachers or schools to discuss progress and problems, and to exchange information; possibly regional conferences; and related activities, all enhanced by the range of current hardware— tapes, video recordings and transcripts.

Hopkins (1985), McNiff (1988), Edwards (1990) and McNiff, Lomax and Whitehead (1996) offer much practical advice on the con duct of action research, including ‘getting started’, operationalization, planning, monitoring and documenting the intervention, collecting data and making sense of them, using case studies, evaluating the action research, ethical issues and reporting. We urge readers to go to these helpful sources. These are essentially both introductory sources and manuals for practice. Kemmis and McTaggart (1992:25–7) offer a useful series of observations for beginning action research:

• Get an action research group together and participate yourself—be a model learner about action research.
• Be content to start to work with a small group.
• Get organized.
• Start small.
• Establish a time line.
• Arrange for supportive work-in-progress discussions in the action research group.
• Be tolerant and supportive—expect people to learn from experience.
• Be persistent about monitoring.
• Plan for a long haul on the bigger issues of changing classroom practices and school structures.
• Work to involve (in the research process) those who are involved (in the action), so that they share responsibility for the whole action research process.
• Remember that how you think about things— the language and understandings that shape your action—may need changing just as much as the specifics of what you do.
• Register progress not only with the participant group but also with the whole staff and other interested people.
• If necessary arrange legitimizing rituals—involving consultants or other outsiders.
• Make time to write throughout your project.
• Be explicit about what you have achieved by reporting progress.
• Throughout, keep in mind the distinction between education and schooling.
• Throughout, ask yourself whether your action research project is helping you (and those with whom you work) to improve the extent to which you are living your educational values (italics in original).

It is clear from this list that action research is a blend of practical and theoretical concerns; it is both action and research. In conducting action research the participants can be both methodologically eclectic and can use a variety of instruments for data collection: questionnaires, diaries, interviews, case studies, observational data, experimental design, field notes, photography, audio and video recording, stoichiometry, rating scales, biographies and accounts, documents and records, in short the full gamut of techniques (for a discussion of these, see Hopkins, 1985; McKernan, 1991).

Participatory Techniques for Data & Consensus

Additionally a useful way of managing to gain a focus within a group of action researchers is through the use of Nominal Group Technique (Morrison, 1993). The administration is straight forward and is useful for gathering information in a single instance. In this approach one member of the group provides the group with a series of questions, statements or issues. A four stage model can be adopted:

Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

Stage 1 A short time is provided for individuals to write down without interruption or discussion with anybody else their own answers, views, reflections and opinions in response to questions/ statements/issues provided by the group leader (e.g. problems of teaching or organizing such and-such, or an identification of issues in the organization of a piece of the curriculum etc.).

 Stage 2 The responses are entered onto a sheet of paper which is then displayed for others to view. The leader invites individual comments on the displayed responses to the questions/statements/issue, but no group discussion, i.e. the data collection is still at an individual level, and then notes these comments on the display sheet on which the responses have been collected. The process of inviting individual comments/contributions which are then displayed for everyone to see is repeated until no more comments are received.

Stage 3 At this point the leader asks the respondents to identify clusters of displayed comments and responses, i.e. to put some structure, order and priority into the displayed items. It is here that control of proceedings moves from the leader to the participants. A group discussion takes place since a process of clarification of meanings and organizing issues and responses into coherent and cohesive bundles is required which then moves to the identification of priorities.

Stage 4 Finally the leader invites any further group discussion about the material and its organization.

The process of the Nominal Group Technique enables individual responses to be included within a group response, i.e. the individual’s contribution to the group delineation of significant issues is maintained. This technique is very useful in gathering data from individuals and putting them into some order which is shared by the group (and action research is largely, though not exclusively, a group matter), e.g. of priority, of similarity and difference, of generality and specificity.

It also enables individual disagreements to be registered and to be built into the group responses and identification of significant issues to emerge. Further, it gives equal status to all respondents in the situation, for example, the voice of the new entrant to the teaching profession is given equal consideration to the voice of the head teacher of several years’ experience. The attraction of this process is that it balances writing with discussion, a divergent phase with a convergent phase, space for individual comments and contributions to group interaction. It is a useful device for developing collegiality. All participants have a voice and are heard.

Delphi Technique

The written partner to the Nominal Group Technique is the Delphi technique. This has the advantage that it does not require participants to meet together as a whole group. This is particularly useful in institutions where time is precious and where it is difficult to arrange a whole group meeting. The process of data collection resembles that of the nominal group technique in many respects: it can be set out in a three stage process:

Stage 1 The leader asks participants to respond to a series of questions and statements in writing. This may be done on an individual basis or on a small group basis—which enables it to be used flexibly, e.g. within a department, within an age phase.

Stage 2 The leader collects the written responses and collates them into clusters of issues and responses (maybe providing some numerical data on frequency of response). This analysis is then passed back to the respondents for comment, further discussion and identification of issues, responses and priorities. At this stage the respondents are presented with a group response (which may reflect similarities or record differences) and the respondents are asked to react to this group response. By adopting this procedure the individual has the opportunity to agree with the group response (i.e. to move from a possibly small private individual disagreement to a general group agreement) or to indicate a more substantial disagreement with the group response.

Stage 3 This process is repeated as many times as it is necessary. In saying this, however, the leader will need to identify the most appropriate place to stop the re-circulation of responses. This might be done at a group meeting which, it is envisaged, will be the plenary session for the participants, i.e. an endpoint of data collection will be in a whole group forum.

By presenting the group response back to the participants, there is a general progression in the technique towards a polarizing of responses, i.e. a clear identification of areas of consensus and dissensus (and emancipatory action research strives for consensus). The Delphi technique brings advantages of clarity, privacy, voice and collegiality. In doing so it engages the issues of confidentiality, anonymity and disclosure of relevant information whilst protecting participants’ rights to privacy.

It is a very useful means of undertaking behind-the-scenes data collection which can then be brought to a whole group meeting; the price that this exacts is that the leader has much more work to do in collecting, synthesizing, collating, summarizing, prioritizing and re-circulating data than in the Nominal Group Technique, which is immediate. As participatory techniques both the Nominal Group Technique and Delphi techniques are valuable for data collection and analysis in action research. A fully worked example of the use of Delphi techniques for an international study is Cogan and Derricot (1998), a study of citizen ship education.

Reflexivity: Researchers as Participants

The analysis so far has made much of the issue of reflection, be it reflection-in-action, reflection on-action, or critical reflection (Morrison, 1995a). Reflection, it has been argued, occurs at every stage of action research. Beyond this, the notion of reflexivity is central to action research, because the researchers are also the participants and practitioners in the action research—they are part of the social world that they are studying (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983:14).

Hall (1996:29) suggests that reflexivity is an integral element and epistemological basis of emancipatory action research because it takes as its premises the view of the construction of knowledge in which:

(a) data are authentic and reflect the experiences of all participants

(b) democratic relations exist between all participants in the research; the researcher’s views (which may be theory-laden) do not hold precedence over the views of participants.

What is being required in the notion of reflexivity is a self-conscious awareness of the effects that the participants-as-practitioners-and researchers are having on the research process, how their values, attitudes, perceptions, opinions, actions, feelings etc. are feeding into the situation being studied (akin, perhaps, to the notion of counter-transference in counseling). The participants-as-practitioners-and-researchers need to apply to themselves the same critical scrutiny that they are applying to others and to the research.

Practical & Theoretical Considerations

Much has been made in this blog post of the democratic principles that underpin a considerable amount of action research. The ramifications of this are several. For example, there must be a free flow of information between participants and communication must be extensive (Elliott, 1978:356) and, echoing the notion of the ideal speech situation discussed earlier, communication must be open, unconstrained and constraining—the force of the better argument.

That this might be problematic in some organizations has been noted by Holly (1984:100), as action research and schools are often structured differently, schools being hierarchical, formal and bureaucratic whilst action research is collegial, informal, open, and collaborative and crosses formal boundaries. In turn this suggests that, for action research to be successful, the conditions of collegiality have to be present, for example (Morrison, 1998:157–8):

• Participatory approaches to decision-making
• Democratic and consensual decision-making
• Shared values, beliefs and goals
• Equal rights of participation in discussion
• Equal rights to determine policy
• Equal voting rights on decisions
• The deployment of sub-groups who are ac countable to the whole group
• Shared responsibility and open accountability
• An extended view of expertise
• Judgements and decisions based on the power of the argument rather than the positions power of the advocates
• Shared ownership of decisions and practices.

It is interesting, perhaps, that these features, derived from management theory, can apply so well to action research—action research nests comfortably within certain management styles. Indeed Zuber-Skerritt (1996b:90) suggests that the main barriers to emancipatory action research are:

(a) single-loop learning (rather than double-loop learning (Argyris, 1990))

(b) over dependence on experts or seniors to the extent that independent thought and expression are stifled

(c) an orientation to efficiency rather than to research and development (one might add here ‘rather than to reflection and problem posing’)

(d) a preoccupation with operational rather than strategic thinking and practice. Zuber-Skerritt (1996a:17) suggests four practical problems that action researchers might face:

• How can we formulate a method of work which is sufficiently economical as regards the amount of data gathering and data processing for a practitioner to undertake it alongside a normal workload, over a limited time scale?
• How can action research techniques be sufficiently specific that they enable a small-scale investigation by a practitioner to lead to genuinely new insights, and avoid being accused of being either too minimal to be valid, or too elaborate to be feasible?
• How can these methods, given the above, be readily available and accessible to anyone who wishes to practise them, building on the competencies which practitioners already possess?
• How can these methods contribute a genuine improvement of understanding and skill, beyond prior competence, in return for the time and energy expended—that is, a more rigorous process than that which characterizes positivist research?

She also suggests that the issue of the audience of action research reports is problematic: The answer to the question ‘who are action research reports written for?’ is that there are three audiences—each of equal importance. One audience comprises those colleagues with whom we have collaborated in carrying out the research reported… It is important to give equal importance to the second audience. These are interested col leagues in other institutions, or in other areas of the same institution, for which the underlying structure of the work presented may be similar to situations in which they work… But the third, and perhaps most important audience, is we.

The process of writing involves clarifying and exploring ideas and interpretations (p. 26). Action research reports, argues Somekh (1995:347), unlike many ‘academic’ papers, are typically written in the first person, indeed, she argues, not to do so is hard to defend (given, perhaps, the significance of participation, collaboration, reflexivity and individuality). They have to be written in the everyday, commonsense language of the participants. (Elliott, 1978:356) We have already seen that the participants in a change situation may be a teacher, a group of teachers working internally, or else teachers and researchers working on a collaborative basis.

It is this last category, where action research brings together two professional bodies each with its own objectives and values that we shall consider further at this point because of its inherent problematic nature. Both parties share the same interest in an educational problem, yet their respective orientations to it differ. It has been observed (Halsey, 1972, for instance) that research values precision, control, and replication and attempts to generalize from specific events. Teaching, on the other hand, is concerned with action, with doing things, and translates generalizations into specific acts. The incompatibility between action and research in these respects, therefore, can be a source of problems (Marris and Rein, 1967).

Another issue of some consequence concerns headteachers’ and teachers’ attitudes to the possibility of change as a result of action research. Hutchinson and Whitehouse (1986), for example, having monitored teachers’ efforts to form collaborative groups within their schools, dis covered one source of difficulty to be not only resistance from heads but also, and in their view more importantly, from some teachers themselves to the action researcher’s efforts to have them scrutinize individual and social practice, possibly with a view to changing it, e.g. in line with the head teacher’s policies.

Finally, Winter draws attention to the problem of interpreting data in action research. He writes: The action research/case study tradition does have a methodology for the creation of data, but not (as yet) for the interpretation of data. We are shown how the descriptive journal, the observer’s field notes, and the open-ended interview are utilized to create accounts of events which will con front the practitioner’s current pragmatic assumptions and definitions; we are shown the potential value of this process (in terms of increasing teachers’ sensitivity) and the problem it poses for individual and collective professional equilibrium. What we are not shown is how the teacher can or should handle the data thus collected. (Winter, 1982)

The problem for winter is how to carry out an interpretive analysis of restricted data, that is, data which can make no claim to be generally representative. In other words, the problem of validity cannot be side-stepped by arguing that the contexts are unique.

Conclusion—Promise and Problem of Critical Praxis

Action research is an expanding field which is commanding significant education attention and which has its own centres (e.g. at the Universities of Cambridge and East Anglia in the UK and Deakin University in Australia) and its own journals (e.g. Educational Action Research). It has been seen as a significant vehicle for empowering teachers, though this post has questioned the extent of this. As a research device it combines six notions:

1. A straightforward cycle of: identifying a problem, planning an intervention, implementing the intervention, evaluating the outcome;
2. Reflective practice;
3. Political emancipation;
4. Critical theory;
5. Professional development; and
6. Participatory practitioner research.

It is a flexible, situational responsive method ology that offers rigors, authenticity and voice. That said, this blog pot has tried to expose both the attractions and problematic areas of action research. In its thrust towards integrating action and research one has to question whether this is an optimistic way of ensuring that research impacts on practice for improvement, or whether it is a recessive hybrid.

Coming Next—Strategies for Data Collection (Part Four Preview)

This section moves to a closer-grained account of instruments for collecting data, how they can be used, and how they can be constructed. We identify eight kinds of instrument for data collection in what follows, and have expanded on the previous edition of the book by new posts on testing (including recent developments in item response theory and computer-adaptive testing), questionnaire design and observation, together with material on focus groups, statistical significance, multilevel modeling, laddering in personal constructs, telephone interviewing, and speech act theory (echoing elements of critical theory that were introduced in Part One).

The intention of this part is to enable researchers to decide on the most appropriate instruments for data collection, and to design such instruments. The strengths and weak nesses of these instruments are set out, so that decisions on their suitability avoid being arbitrary and the criterion of fitness for purpose is held high. To that end, the intention is to intro duce underlying issues of principle in instrumentation as well as to ensure that practical guidelines are provided for researchers. For each instrument the purpose is to ensure that researchers can devise appropriate data collection instruments for themselves, and are aware of the capabilities of such instruments to provide useful and usable data.

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