Summary
Contents
Subject index
This handbook presents and critiques predominant and emergent traditions of Educational Action Research internationally. Now a prominent methodology, Educational Action Research is well suited to exploring, developing and sustaining change processes both in classrooms and whole organisations such as schools, Departments of Education, and many segments of universities.
The handbook contains theoretical and practical based chapters by highly respected scholars whose work has been seminal in building knowledge and expertise in the field. It also contains chapters exemplifying the work of prominent practitioner and community groups working outside universities.
The Editors provide an introduction and conclusion, as well as an opening chapter which charts the historical development of action research and provides an analysis of its underlying theories. The handbook is organized into four sections, each beginning with a short introduction:
“Action research methodology: diversity of rationales and practices
“Professional: Knowledge production, staff development, and the status of educators
“Personal: Self-awareness, development and identity
“Political: Popular knowledge, difference, and frameworks for change
This is a key resource for scholars and graduate students at doctors and masters levels, as well as school leaders and administrators.
Susan Noffke is Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign and co-editor with R.B. Stevenson of Educational Action Research (Teachers College Press, 1995). She taught at the primary school level for a decade, and has led masters and doctoral level courses in action research for the past 20 years. She continues to work with many collaborative projects with schools and school districts.
Bridget Somekh is Professor of Educational Research at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is a founder editor of the Educational Action Research journal and has been a co-ordinator of the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) for many years. She is co-editor of Research Methods in the Social Sciences (SAGE: 2005) and author of Action Research: a Methodology for Change and Development (Open University Press: 2006).
Dialogic Inquiry as Collaborative Action Research
Dialogic Inquiry as Collaborative Action Research
About a quarter of a century ago I had a very salutary experience that changed my approach to research in schools and classrooms. At that time, I had newly arrived at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (now OISE/University of Toronto) and was just starting the second year of a longitudinal study; we were following 72 children from different ethnolinguistic backgrounds in order to investigate factors that might be responsible for these groups' differential educational success. At the end of the first year the children moved up a grade and we had to secure the cooperation of a new group of teachers into whose classes these children would be entering in the following year. In all but one case, the new teachers were willing to have us make observations in their classrooms. But one grade three teacher absolutely refused. Immediately I went to talk with her.
Firm in her refusal, this teacher gave the following explanation. Two years earlier she had attended a conference in Toronto at which I had been a guest speaker. Still excited about the longitudinal study I had just completed in England, where I and my colleagues had followed a representative sample of 32 children from 15 months to the age of 10, audio and video recording them in their homes and classrooms (Wells, 1986), I had played short extracts from some of the recordings and offered my comments on the opportunities for learning that each provided. About one particular teacher-whole class discussion I had been rather critical, pointing out how the teacher had engaged her grade one children in an extended episode of ‘guess what's in teacher's mind’.
‘You're not going to do that to me’, she insisted. And as I listened to her, I knew she was right. The stance I had taken in the past was both unethical and unproductive. In effect, I had been exploiting my ‘subjects’, not only giving little in return for their participation but also criticizing them in public when they had no chance to put their own points of view. But my approach to research was also misguided as a way of trying to understand learning and teaching. Classrooms are communities that, over time, develop ways of acting and interacting that cannot be understood by an outsider who pays occasional visits to collect and take away for analysis limited stretches of observational data, extracted from their organic historical context.
Improving the Quality of Education
It seems incontrovertible that the purpose of research in the field of education is to improve the quality of education that students receive. But how often does research actually improve the educational experiences of those who take part in the research? Clearly, there are many ways in which this goal can be served, including research on equitable provision of resources, modes of governance, and procedures for accountability. However, since research on these issues is usually conducted on a very large scale, often involving statistical analysis of aggregated data from many schools or school districts, the beneficial results are likely to be diffused and spread over a long period of time. On the other hand, much research is more local in nature for, within whatever organizational framework students receive their education, it is widely recognized that the quality of their experience is dependent on ‘the company they keep and what they do and say together’.1 A considerable amount of research, therefore, focuses on what happens in particular schools and classrooms and, to this end, teachers and students are asked to allow outsiders to observe, question and interview them and make recordings of these events.
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