THE QUALITY OF PRACTITIONER RESEARCH

The Quality of Practitioner ResearchReflections on the Position of the Researcherand the Researched

Edited by

Petra PonteFontys University of Applied Sciences andLeiden University Graduate School of Teaching,ICLON, The Netherlands

and

Fontys University of Applied Sciences andLeiden University Graduate School of Teaching,ICLON, The Netherlands

SENSE PUBLISHERSROTTERDAM / TAIPEI

Ben H.J. Smit

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-8790-190-5 (paperback)ISBN 978-90-8790-191-2 (hardback)

Published by: Sense Publishers,P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlandshttp://www.sensepublishers.com

Printed on acid-free paper

All rights reserved © 2007 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form orby any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, withoutwritten permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for thepurpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser ofthe work.

CONTENTS

Preface Bridget Somekh (UK) 1. Introduction: Doing research and being researched?

Petra Ponte & Ben Smit (the Netherlands) 2. Participatory action research and the public sphere

Stephen Kemmis (Australia) 3. Philosophy, methodology and action research

Wilfred Carr (UK) 4. Research in, on or with practice?

Marit Honerød Hoveid & Halvor Hoveid (Norway) 5. Questions of quality in practitioner research: Universities in the 21st

Century- the need for safe places for unsafe ideas Susan Groundwater-Smith (Australia)

6. Quality of action research: Reciprocal understanding of academic

researchers and participating researchers Ben Boog (the Netherlands)

7. Critical-collaborative action research: Constructing its meaning

through experiences in teacher education and practice Selma Garrido Pimenta (Brazil)

8. A strategy for practice-based education and research: Built on

experiences in educating vocational teachers Hilde Hiim (Norway)

9. Epilogue: Reflections on the relations between the researcher and the

field of practice Susan Groundwater-Smith & Judyth Sachs (Australia)

About the authors

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PREFACE

This book makes an important contribution to theoretical work on action research. The combined international conference of the Practitioner Research group and the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN), in Utrecht in November 2005, was memorable for the quality of dialogue and participation in its ‘committees of inquiry,’ the high sense of ‘occasion’ at its keynote presentations, and the wonderful energy of the conference singalong in which everyone’s voice was made welcome by a professional singer-facilitator. It was also a conference which has been productive of action over the intervening two years: participants from different countries who came together there for the first time have continued to collaborate; an excellent CARN Bulletin has been published – reviving a tradition of open platform publications; and this book provides a selection of papers of considerable range and variety, engaging with key issues of action research methodology. The Quality of Practitioner Research is notable for bringing together two major action research theorists – Wilf Carr and Stephen Kemmis – who have not actually worked together in the intervening twenty years since they first published Becoming Critical in 1986. As a teacher researcher embarking on postgraduate study, that was the book that led me for the first time into the realms of critical theory; it made an important contribution to establishing action research’s claims to be well grounded methodologically; and it has since become very much an establishment text, widely referred to by those using action research methods in the pursuit of higher degrees, yet aging like the rest of us over time with its roots in the Enlightenment project of reason. So this new book The Quality of Practitioner Research provokes us as we read to ask ourselves the questions – have Carr and Kemmis matured over time? – have they, in Roger Bacon’s terms (Bacon, 1597), developed that scarce human commodity:

Mindes, that have not suffered themselves to fixe, but have kept themselves open and prepared, to receive continuall Amendment, which is exceeding Rare?

Both certainly set out to provoke readers – Kemmis by wielding a scourge on what he calls ‘inadequate action research’ – and Carr by attacking the concept of action research methodology. Are these bandwagon stances looking back to a golden age? Or revolutionary new ways of engaging with human issues, challenging power, and championing knowledge generated through praxis? These seem to me to be interesting questions to ask, not just of Carr and Kemmis, but of all the authors represented here; and with regard to the book as a whole it rises to the challenge with flying colours. Hoveid and Hoveid provide wide-ranging and thought-provoking answers to ‘methodological questions about ways in which the researcher may position herself in relation to the field of practice.’

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PREFACE

Groundwater-Smith uses the powerful metaphor of ‘the need for safe places for unsafe ideas’ as the lead into a scholarly article on the role of universities in the 21st century. Boog presents a fascinating exploration of the nature of the interaction between researchers and participants in the research situation, developing the argument that ‘Quality is measured as the reciprocal understanding and reciprocal adequacy of new knowledge and action ability.’ Pimenta grounds her chapter more explicitly in examples of action research in practice, illustrating how the study generates ‘self-education and teacher praxis situated in the wider contexts of the organisation of schools and of the communities around them.’ Hiim focuses more specifically on considerations of policy, related in particular to development of ‘a practice-based strategy for educating teachers, which has been further developed into a strategy for teacher research’; she engages critically with the issues, drawing on ideas from the work of Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Habermas. These chapters form the core of the book, and chapters by Ponte and Smit on ‘Doing research and being researched?,’ and by Groundwater-Smith and Sachs on ‘Relations between the Researcher and the Field of Practice,’ provide a strong introduction and conclusion. Of central importance to the whole book, however, is the influence of Kemmis, perhaps not so much through the stance he adopts on a hypothetical moral high ground as for the questions about quality his chapter provokes, which we carry forward to inform our reading of other chapters – is ‘critical’ action research the hallmark of quality? – and can we only identify quality in work that uncovers ‘unwelcome truths’? Reading the other chapters I have to say, I am not convinced. There is more variety here than one would expect from a focus on only the ‘critical’. There is also Carr’s meticulous elucidation of a theory of ‘practical philosophy’ in which he celebrates the ‘practical’ in action research, claiming for it equality (if not higher) status – which leaves only the ‘technical’ from the original tripartite typology as a catch-all to encompass Kemmis’ five kinds of ‘inadequate action research.’ My reading of the book as a whole reveals a more fine-grained analysis of quality, which is more in line with Bacon’s criterion for quality in the development of the human mind – that we should be vigilant always to keep our minds ‘open and prepared to receive continuall Amendment.’

REFERENCES Bacon, F. (1597). Of custome and education. In Essays (pp.163-165). London: Oxford University Press.

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Bridget Somekh Professor at the Education and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Manchester Metropolitan University Member of the Coordinating Group of the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) United Kingdom

P. Ponte & B.H.J. Smit (Eds.), The Quality of Practitioner Research: Reflections on the Position of the

© 2007 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

PETRA PONTE AND BEN H.J. SMIT

1. INTRODUCTION

Doing research and being researched?

CONTEXT

The papers in this volume were all presented, among many others, at the Joint International Practitioner Research / Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) Conference held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, 6–7 November, 2005 (organised in collaboration with Leiden University, Graduate School of Teaching and Fontys University, Centre of Inclusive and Special Education). Quality was a central theme of the conference and was discussed in all of the Committees of Inquiry that met on a regular basis during the conference to consider and discuss the various presentations and plenary addresses. The conference was designed for participants to engage in conversation on and offer a substantive contribution to the ongoing and persistent questions that arise in relation to the quality of our work by questioning the ‘what it is’, ‘what is it for’, and ‘what next’ issues. This book contains a number of conference papers that illuminate the quality of action research from various theoretical perspectives and focus specifically on questions of the relation between the researcher, the researched and the field of the researched.

WHAT IS IT AND WHAT IS IT FOR?

According to Furlong and Oancea (2006), there has been increasing interest in the role of research in the development of educational policy and practice, and this interest goes hand in hand with interest in the quality of practice-based research. As these authors state, practice-based research refers not to

methodologically depleted forms of research; rather they can be innovatory modes of research that cater for a different set of needs and define quality in terms of wider social robustness. (p. 94)

Furlong and Oancea (2006) distinguish four dimensions on which this social robustness can be examined: – Epistemic (methodological and theoretical robustness in terms of

trustworthiness, contribution to knowledge, explicitness in design and reporting, propriety, paradigm-dependent criteria).

Researcher and the Researched, 1–8.

PETRA PONTE & BEN H.J. SMIT

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– Technical (value for use in terms of salience/timeliness, purposively, specificity and accessibility, concern for enabling impact, flexibility and operationalisability).

– Economic (value for money in terms of marketability and competitiveness, cost-analyses, auditability, feasibility, originality, value-efficiency).

– Capacity building and value for people (in terms of partnership, collaboration and engagement, plausibility, reflection and criticism, receptiveness, stimulating personal growth).

A considerable number, but not all, of the discussions and the paper presentations during the conference in Utrecht were focussed mainly on the fourth dimension. The other dimensions certainly came up, as is apparent in the special issue of the Educational Action Research Journal (December 2006), which contains other papers presented at the conference. The epistemic, technical, and economic dimensions seemed to be discussed mainly on the basis of their helpfulness in capacity building and providing value. This illustrates the connection of action research with ethical issues, coming from the premise that practice can be thought of as a space for the use of practical wisdom (Kincheloe, 2003). Practical wisdom is connected with concerns for ‘doing the moral good’ from a critical perspective and, therefore, these concerns can be found in the contributions to this book. For instance, Stephen Kemmis criticises in the second chapter in this volume the growth of technical approaches in action research, concluding that ‘action research (…) has not been the vehicle for educational critique we hoped it would be’. The focus on concerns for ‘doing good’ brings Wilfred Carr in the third chapter to the question whether action research should be regarded as a post-modern manifestation of the pre-modern Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy aimed at defending the integrity of praxis. It is also said that much action research is aimed at the enhancement of ethically authentic action and the development of situated knowledge rather than the accumulation of general theoretical knowledge. Because of this, Reason (1994, p. 325) speaks of the necessity of ‘a robust ‘paradigm’ of research with people’. He distinguishes roughly three approaches: – Co-operative Inquiry (humanist approach, emphasis on reciprocity, so that each

person’s agency is fundamentally honoured in both the exchange of ideas and the action);

– Participatory Action Research (critical approach, emphasis on the political aspects of knowledge production via a process in which people’s role is setting the agendas, participating in the data gathering and analyses, and controlling the use of the outcomes);

– Action Science & Action Inquiry (organisational approach, concerned with the joint development of effective action that may contribute to the transformation of communities toward greater effectiveness and greater justice).

Common to these approaches, according to Reason (1994), is

INTRODUCTION

that the primary outcome of all these forms of inquiry is a change in the lived experience of those involved in the inquiry. Participants are empowered to define their world in the service of what they see as worthwhile interests, and as a consequence they change their world in significant ways, through action (…) and through experience - developing a sense of empowerment and competence. (p. 333)

In sum, connected with concerns for ‘doing the moral good’, the collaborative characteristic of action research is seen by many as crucial for the better understanding of educational practice. The emphasis is on the enhancement of ethically authentic action and the development of situated knowledge rather than on the accumulation of general (generalisable) theoretical knowledge. During the conference, these starting-points stimulated a number of participants to raise fundamental questions about the relationship between the researcher and the researched or the field of the researched. This relation differs fundamentally from that in positivist research, in which a large distance between the two is seen as an essential condition for the development of objective, generalisable knowledge. In this kind of research, the relation between the researcher and the researched is a relation between a subject (the researcher) and an object (the researched). In action research, the distance between researcher and researched should be small, and very small when practitioners do action research in collaboration with an external researcher; actually, this distance is absent when practitioners do action research within their own practice without the interference of others. In action research, the relation between researcher and researched is, therefore, specified as a subject-subject relation (Reason, 1994). It represents a change, even an epistemological shift, from a ‘knower-known’ relation to a ‘two knowing subjects’ relation (Gunzenhauser, 2006).

RESPECTING DIFFERENT FORMS OF ACTION RESEARCH

The focus on quality sometimes concerns questions about what action research actually is: what the criteria are and what is so distinctive about action research in comparison to other research strategies. In line with what was said in the previous section, the premise of this volume is that criteria with respect to quality must first and foremost meet an ethical test; the work must be directed towards positive change, or in Lewin’s words, ‘research leading to social action’ (1946, p. 203). That is, that it must have a positive and generative impact on practice; it should be transparent and accountable to the field of practice, and it should be trustworthy in its nature and enactment (Furlong & Oancea, 2006; Reason, 1994). The focus on ‘research leading to social action’ could mean that attempts to claim the ultimate form of action research ignore the fact that this kind of research can take different forms in different historical, political, or cultural contexts. We agree with Zeichner (1993, p. 200) that a narrow debate about true forms of action research leads to affirmations of faith. This debate, according to Zeichner (1993, p. 200), ‘although highly informative in an academic sense, is essentially irrelevant

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to many of those who actually engage in action research’. After all, action research is embedded in concrete practice situations; is geared to knowledge-construction, finding meaning, and transformation of practice; and is strongly focused on the local character of problems and issues. In our opinion, this means that we have no choice but to adapt the form of our action research to the local situation. Because of the local focus, there cannot be a single form of action research that is the ‘best’ in all situations.

WHAT NEXT?

The quality of the debate on the quality of action research can only be guaranteed, therefore, when diversity is respected, indeed when diversity is seen as an opportunity for enrichment (Wahlstrom & Ponte, 2005). We do not refer here to enrichment in the sense of presenting our knowledge, meanings, and improvements to each other and taking them home as ready-made solutions for our own problems and issues. Nor it is meant as taking a sort of average of all this diversity and then saying that that is action research. That would only lead to mediocrity. The abundance of situations gives us a unique opportunity to develop meta-knowledge about the quality of action research: intersubjective meta-knowledge that could help us to look at our situations through different eyes, and that could give us the courage to take a close and critical look at our own practice and to go against the mainstream if necessary. Pleading for respect for different approaches in action research is not the same as suggesting that all alternatives are equally good. Nor is it suggested that it is easy to determine the quality of action research. The roots of action research, according to Furlong and Oancea (2006), lie

in ethical concerns (…) it is extremely difficult to capture in the research appraisal process. The best we can hope for is probably to identify some features that might in some way be connected with these aspirations, and try to take them into consideration whilst evaluating it. (p. 97)

That action research can take different forms in different historical, political, or cultural contexts means by definition that quality cannot be conceived of as a universal set of instrumental standards or competencies that function as a kind of compulsory check list: for example, ‘If there is no second cycle, it is not action research’ or ‘If the steps of this or that model are not followed in the given order it is not action research’. Guidelines in the form of instrumental models and rules are important and helpful, but in the end quality is not only a matter of following rules correctly and being corrected when the rules are misunderstood. From the chapters in this book, we conclude that in the end the quality of action research comes down to a commitment to a shared set of underlying values, conceptions, and methodological principles, and this commitment should come with the moral obligation to justify the why, the what, and the how of our choices. We should be accountable to those involved in the research as well as to those who trust the results of the research; we should account for the outcomes as well as the

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INTRODUCTION

processes that lead to those outcomes. We are striving for a democratic, participative, just world, and we aim to do that by formulating a democratic, participative, just methodology that helps us to inform and rationalise our practices in order to realise certain aims. It is only through ongoing critical and collaborative reflection that these values, conceptions, and methodologies can become manifest in concrete local action research projects. In his paper on ways of thinking about educational quality in the Educational Researcher, Burbules (2004) expressed this as follows:

Despite our tendency to view learning and growth as an ever-climbing upward journey, I think a truer perspective is cyclical: that education is often about returning again and again to certain existential and intellectual problems, sometimes in new ways or with particular insights, but not with a sense of ever solving them or making them go away. (p. 9)

THE DESIGN OF THIS BOOK

An international volume like this can be seen as an expression of globalisation. We propose that globalisation leads to a growing number of connections between initiatives in different parts of the world, and it is our personal impression that the debate is becoming less focused on people claiming that they practise the only true form of action research or practitioner research than used to be the case. There seems to be less and less of a tendency to think in terms of an English, an Australian, and an American strand of action research, ‘like different branches of sport’. Despite the different and sometimes opposite perspectives, this discussion does not arise in the chapters of this book. What does arise is a kind of shared concern about the popularity of uncritical and rather technical approaches to action research, especially when they are used to blindly justify government policies. As in other domains of our lives, what Scholte (2000, p. 199) calls a supraterritorial space seems to be growing in the profession, a space where national boundaries seem less important than they were in former times. As a consequence, this book should be seen as a collection of different perspectives on the relation between the researcher and the researched or the field of the researched; these are integrated and commented on in the last chapter by Susan Groundwater-Smith and Judyth Sachs. There are contributions from Australia (Groundwater-Smith, Kemmis), Brazil (Pimenta), England (Carr), the Netherlands (Boog), Norway (Honerød Hoveid & Hoveid), and Sweden (Himm). The relation is illuminated from different institutional contexts, such as the academic world in the chapter by Groundwater-Smith; teacher education in the chapters by Himm and Pimenta; and schools in the chapter by Pimenta. Boog’s chapter is rooted in the anthropological tradition, focussing on the empowerment of different social communities. Finally, various philosophical perspectives are discussed. Thus, the theories of Habermas play a large role in the chapter by Kemmis. Carr bases his discussion on Gadamer, and Honerød Hoveid and Hoveid

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link Ricoeur’s theory to research in, on, and with practice. The chapter by Himm connects with Heidegger and Wittgenstein. The content of the book can be summarised as follows: In the conclusion of his chapter1, Stephen Kemmis focuses on the need for action researchers and practitioner researchers to be willing to tell unwelcome truths, coming from the following picture of action research as he prefers it to be

engaged with the substantial problems of societies and thus the substantial problems of education for changing times, exploring themes of contemporary significance openly and civilly, establishing public spheres in which people realise and enact their communicative freedom, and through communicative action reach towards intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding and consensus about what to do – despite our indissoluble individual life experiences and subjectivities. (Chapter 2 of this volume)

In Chapter 3, Willfred Carr refers to the implications of Gadamer’s rehabilitation of the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy for our understanding of the social sciences. According to Carr, it enables us to provide answers to questions about the role of methodology in action research that are not available from within the confines of action research’s own methodological debate. It clearly demonstrates how the very notion of a ‘methodological debate’ is itself rooted in action research’s acceptance of certain historically rooted prejudices concerning the nature of practice and how practical knowledge can be developed. Marit Honerød Hoveid and Halvor Hoveid in their chapter explore the different worlds of the researcher and the researched on the basis of Ricoeur’s theory of action. They conclude that research in, on, and with practice is about opening up to the complexities of social reality. Flexibility is then about the capacity to move oneself from one position to another, assuming different perspectives; theorising and systematisation of experiences become a highly dynamic process. They propose that action research should never become the search for one pattern, but rather the ability to open up to more than one. Chapter 5 by Susan Groundwater-Smith explores matters of quality in relation to practitioner research and the ways in which these matters relate to work of the academy. She argues that universities should be ‘safe places for unsafe ideas’; that they must go beyond an instrumental purpose where they engage in research and scholarship that responds to but does not question policies set out by powerful agencies. Instead, they can and should be seen as enterprising, risk-taking, truth-seeking environments, according to Groundwater-Smith. Ben Boog (Chapter 6) argues that, when in action research the interaction between researchers and the researched subjects is the basis for quality, quality should be measured as the quality of reciprocal understanding and reciprocal adequacy of new knowledge and action ability. He describes it as a cyclical process with moments: dialogue, getting transformative knowledge, formulating alternative action scenarios, and acting ‘empowered’. These are moments of two-sided learning, learning in the sense of improving action ability and, at the same time,

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INTRODUCTION

learning as a pathway from ‘internal validity’ towards ‘external or ecological validity’. In Chapter 7, Selma Garrido Pimenta tells how principles of action research imposed themselves while she sought for adequate strategies in two research projects involving teams of universities and public schools. This happened chiefly out of the practical wish to conduct research with the professionals in the school and not about them. She links these practical needs to a number of theoretical notions about critical collaborative action research. On the basis of this, the potency and the complexity of the chosen strategy are illuminated. Hilde Himm examines leading principles in the development of a new national teacher education curriculum (Chapter 8). She concludes that both Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s pragmatic views on knowledge may be criticised for a kind of relativism, which implies that the direction of critique and change is vague, and that the relation between understanding and power is obscure. Habermas, on the other hand, may be criticised for a relatively one-sided focus on verbal aspects of knowledge. The philosophical and methodological fundament of practitioner research in teacher education needs further clarification and development. Susan Groundwater-Smith and Judyth Sachs conclude the book in Chapter 9 by returning to some deep and profound discussions regarding dispositions towards research, and focussing on questions of quality in research in education. They identify a missing ethical dimension as a determinant of quality, and they pose a series of ethical guidelines for practice-based research. Next, they turn to those engaged in the professional practice by discussing what ‘professionalism’ is, what it means, and what its implications are for overall quality.

NOTES

1 The chapter by Stephen Kemmis is an extended version of his keynote speech at the CARN/PRAR Conference 2005, Utrecht, the Netherlands.

REFERENCES

Burbules, N.C. (2004). Ways of thinking about educational quality. Educational Researcher, 33(6), 4-

10. Furlong, J., & Oancea, A. (2006). Assessing quality in applied and practice-based research in education:

A framework for discussion. Review of Australian Research in Education. Special Issue, 6, april, 89-105.

Gunzenhauser, M. G. (2006). A moral epistemology of knowing subjects: Theorizing a relational turn for qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(3), 621-647.

Kincheloe, J.L. (2003). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. New York: Routledge Falmer.

Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2 (4), 34-46. Reason, P. (1994). Three approaches to participatory Inquiry. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S Lincoln, Handbook

of qualitative research (pp. 324-340). London: Sage Publishers. Scholte, J.A. (2000). Globalisation: A critical introduction. New York: Palgrave.

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Wahlstrom, K., & Ponte, P. (2005). Examining teachers’ beliefs through action research: Guidance and counselling / pastoral care reflected in the cross-cultural mirror: Educational Action Research Journal, 13(4), 543-561.

Zeichner, K.M. (1993). Action research personal renewal and social reconstruction. Educational Action Research: An International Journal, 1(2), 199-219.

Petra Ponte Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Department of Special and Inclusive Education & Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching, ICLON The Netherlands

Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Department of Special and Inclusive Education & Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching, ICLON The Netherlands

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Ben H.J. Smit

STEPHEN KEMMIS

2. PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

ACTION RESEARCH TWENTY YEARS AFTER ‘BECOMING CRITICAL’

In our (2005) article ‘Staying Critical’ in the issue of the Educational Action Research Journal commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Becoming Critical, Wilfred Carr and I argued that we had been surprised by the extent to which action research became widespread to the point of faddishness in the years that followed – not due to our advocacies alone, of course. We were also surprised by the extent to which other more technical approaches to action research had been adopted by many educational action researchers rather than the critical form of action research we had described. Although Wilfred Carr and I did not make the point in quite this way, I believe that some – perhaps most – action research no longer aspires to having this critical edge, especially in the bigger sense of social or educational critique aimed at transformation of the way things are. Much of the action research that has proliferated in many parts of the world over the last two decades has not been the vehicle for educational critique we hoped it would be. Instead, some may even have become a vehicle for domesticating students and teachers to conventional forms of schooling. What are some of the kinds of action research that I am complaining of?

EXAMPLES OF INADEQUATE ACTION RESEARCH

1. Action research that aims only at improving techniques of teaching – classroom questioning or assessment, for example – without seeing these as connected to broader questions about the education of students for a better society. By not addressing these broader questions or presuppositions about them, this action research takes them for granted, works within them, and at best improves the efficiency of the schools and school systems in which it is conducted.

2. Action research aimed at improving the efficiency of practices rather than their efficacy and effectiveness evaluated in terms of the social, cultural, discursive and material-economic historical consequences of practices. By not taking a critical view of the social, cultural, discursive and material-economic consequences of schooling, this action research is more likely to reproduce than transform irrational, unjust and alienating consequences of many existing

P. Ponte & B.H.J. Smit (Eds.), The Quality of Practitioner Research: Reflections on the Position of the

© 2007 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. Researcher and the Researched, 9–27.