Educational Action Research

There are two distinct ways of engaging in action research which can be classified as educational action research (EAR). One of these designates any action research that is done within the larger field of educational practice—it is action research that is done with a focus on learning, in schools, community settings and other service settings and professions. This is a very large body of work, spanning a time period most often noted as beginning in the1950s in the USA and reemerging strongly in the 1980s. The second and more specific use of the term emerged in the 1970s in the UK, initially through the work of Lawrence Stenhouse, whose work in the Humanities Curriculum Project embodied core ideas of EAR. The focus of this project was on what we might now label as an ‘underserved student population’ and on curriculum as a set of principles (rather than set content) to be trialled in practice by teachers who were seen as researchers in a practice setting rather than as implementers of theories and curriculum established by academics and policymakers. This form of EAR became influential in Australia and has been disseminated widely in many education sectors and in a large number of international contexts.

It is important to note that there are widely differing orientations to the purposes and practices of EAR. Some have a strong professional focus, emphasizing the building of forms of collegiality and knowledge that can serve to enhance the functions and status of educational professions. Others have a strong personal focus, indicative of the identities of the researchers and their growth through the research process. Both of these have connections to social structures and therefore embody political focuses, as they articulate with or in opposition to systems of power and control. All share an emphasis, too, on building capacities for actions that promote learning for both educators and those with whom they work—students and colleagues, as well as community members.

There is a longer and more international context for the term dating back to the early 1900s, most notably in popular education work, well developed in Danish folk high schools, and also in the initial development of social action–oriented forms of social sciences by scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois and C. Wright Mills in sociology and in the social psychology of the Austrian J. L. Moreno. This particular antecedent, alongside work such as Jane Addams' in the settlement houses for immigrants to the USA, is important to understanding the conceptual connections to the more collaborative, democratic (involving students and communities) and socially critical dimensions of EAR that gradually emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in some of the work in the UK and Australia and later in some US efforts.

The next section provides an overview of significant historical lines that have been influential in the development of EAR. It then outlines the unique and shared characteristics of EAR. The final section addresses the recent context and how it potentially both enhances as well as subverts educational agendas in the interests of neo-liberal global capital.

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