Action Research
Action Research
“There are many types of action research that can be grouped according to their different aims, interests and perspectives. For [education], critical (Carr & Kemmis), participatory (Kemmis & McTaggart) and emancipatory (McKernan; ZuberSkerritt) action research approaches are the most relevant, as they share a common goal of empowerment of individuals and groups to engage in actions for personal, institutional, and societal change.”
– Timothy Bedford (personal communication)
Today we are confronted with the urgent need for transformation: for a paradigm shift, in the sense originally delineated by Kuhn (see reference list below). Such a shift, which presupposes the ability to ‘catch sight of’ one’s assumptions, cannot be dependent on classical research methods, because they are too slow and often too compartmentalised.
Another reason is that most (though not all) of the scientific and technical problems already have more or less adequate solutions. The key question is not how to make the science work, but how to make it work in practice, on a wide scale: it is a political and behavioural problem of how to change mind-sets, attitudes, values and behaviours. In such areas, classical research methods are of limited use.
Action research in education
One of the areas most often mentioned in connection with action research is education. There seems at times to be some fuzziness between action research and Action Learning. A useful distinction is that Action Learning is something you do for yourself: I learn through action/experience, and through seeing the results of my actions.
Action research, on the other hand, is also concerned with learning for the benefit of others. The experience and results must be replicable and transferable (offered, taught) to others not part of the original practitioner population.
Researcher participation/practitioner research
Action Research is not a single phenomenon but rather a range of methods and approaches. What they have in common is the convergence of researcher and practitioner: researchers participate – in some measure – in the activity being studied, while practitioners contribute – in some measure – to the research.
In other words, the intention of an action researcher is not only to observe, study and describe but also to influence, change the course of events – and observe and record the results. Similarly, the intention of a practitioner in an action research project is not only to engage in an effective change process but also to learn from the process – and to contribute to an analysis that will permit others to learn from the process, too. To a greater or lesser extent, the ‘object’ of the research becomes a ‘subject’ (a methodological shift somewhat analogous to that demanded by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle for research into subatomic physics).
One may imagine the scope of Action Research on a scale from R(researcher)-dominated on the left to S(subject)-dominated on the right, where some of the ‘stations’ might be:
Is it possible to research without influencing?
In the classical view of research, the ideal researcher is purely objective and has no relation or interaction with the object. Classical scientific methods intend to isolate single questions, pare away contextual influences and minimize potential subjectivity of the researcher to the greatest extent possible. It may be questioned, however, whether such a pure approach is possible in any situation where the ‘object’ is a person (morally a peer) or a number of people; at the very least the researcher needs to be sensitive to their potential influence.
Dual perspective
A general characteristic of action research is the need for the researcher to hold a dual perspective. They are at one and the same time an active participant and an observer and analyst. This may or may not also be true of the practitioners/subjects, depending on the approach chosen, but is of necessity true of the researcher.
Thus, the practitioner/subject/learner may in principle take full responsibility for evaluating the course of events, including formulating research questions and criteria for success; but the researcher always retains overall responsibility for the broader analysis.
Personal experience
Since the 1990s, I have come to regard all projects as an opportunity for action research, embedding principles of continuous self-assessment by all participants as well as paying careful attention to evaluation criteria. The benefits have been outstanding, resulting for example in some of the work documented in the book A Transformative Edge as well as in this toolbox.
Perhaps the most effective outcome has been the development of successively 'higher' orders of educational materials, for example from kindergarten to university to parents to general population to training for teachers and coaches — and further, to training and certification for national trainers of teachers and coaches.
To take one example: the Learning for Change methodology (qv) was developed through action research, building i.a. on Pattern Language as a powerful action research tool. In turn, Learning for Change (which should perhaps have been called Learning for Transformation) is itself a vehicle for effective action research within an organization.
References
A German social psychologist, Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) is often credited with ‘inventing’ Action Research. He is quoted as saying that “In order to understand a social system one must change it,” and “No research without action, no action without research”.
Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962
Carr & Kemmis 1986, 2005
Kemmis & McTaggart 1990, 2000
McKernan 1996
ZuberSkerritt 1996
post(s)
The melody of our future
project
