Studying Your Own School

An Educator's Guide to Practitioner Action Research

Gary Anderson, Kathryn G. Herr, Ann S. Nihlen

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781452238722
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Recherche dans l'éducation

Extensively revised, this new edition provides the theoretical underpinnings of practitioner action research as well as the "how-to" information necessary for classroom application.

CHAPTER ONE

What Is Action
Research?

Most researchers attempt to study social reality either by decontextualizing variables or by being a fly-on-the-wall observer of a natural setting. These are the hallmarks of objectivity in quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Action researchers, on the other hand, study social reality by acting within it and studying the effects of their actions. All three of these approaches to research have their particular strengths and limitations, but what sets action research apart is that it generates knowledge out of ongoing problem solving in social settings. Action researchers can be outsiders to the setting who collaborate with insiders, or they can be insiders working alone or in collaboration with others. In schools, action researchers tend to be teachers or other school professionals doing what is often called practitioner, teacher, or action research.

While action research remains the most common term across most disciplines, variations of this type of research go by terms such as action science, participatory action research (PAR), community-based action research, cooperative inquiry, self-study, emancipatory praxis, autoethnography, and, as is more commonly the case in education, teacher, practitioner, or action researcher. As we make clear in Chapter 2, each of these terms connotes a different emphasis. In many cases, each represents different research traditions that grew out of very different social contexts.

In the first edition of the book, we used the term practitioner research because we wanted to place practitioners at the center of the enterprise and because we thought it was emerging as the term of choice in education. However, the term action research seems to have held up among educators, and placing school practitioners at the center of the enterprise can sometimes obscure the centrality of action as well as displace other participants, such as students, parents, and community members. Therefore, we have used practitioner action research in the book title, although in the text of this edition we tend to shorten it to action research for the sake of brevity.

Although the plethora of terms used to describe this research also reflects wide disagreement on many key issues, we provide below a working definition of practitioner action research, as well as a few of our working assumptions, that are used throughout the book. Action research is a living, growing movement that is in the process of evolving; it is this evolution that we describe in subsequent chapters.

DEFINING ACTION RESEARCH

In attempting to provide a working definition of practitioner action research, we want to make it clear that every point in the following definition is hotly debated in the burgeoning literature on action research. Thus, we attempt to provide a snapshot of how the definition is taking shape.

In the field of education, the term action research connotes “insider” research done by practitioners using their own site (class-room, institution, school district, community) as the focus of their study. It is a reflective process but is different from isolated, spontaneous reflection in that it is deliberately and systematically undertaken and generally requires that some form of evidence be presented to support assertions. What constitutes “evidence” or, in more traditional terms, “data,” is still being debated. This is particularly the case in self-study forms of action research that rely to a greater extent on experience and narrative.

As mentioned above, action research is oriented to some action or cycles of actions that practitioners wish to take to address a particular situation. For this reason, the term action research has traditionally been used for this type of research. Action research is sometimes described as an ongoing series of cycles that involve moments of planning actions, acting, observing the effects, and reflecting on one’s observations. These cycles form a spiral that results in refinements of research questions, resolution of problems, and transformations in the perspectives of researchers and participants.

Some, including the authors, argue that action research is best done in collaboration with others who have a stake in the problem under investigation, such as other educational practitioners in the setting, students, parents, or other members of the community. Sometimes collaboration involves outsiders (e.g., university faculty, consultants, evaluators) who have relevant skills or resources.

Like all forms of inquiry, action research is value-laden. Although most practitioners hope that action research will improve their practice, what constitutes “improvement” is not self-evident. It is particularly problematic in a field such as education, where there is no consensus on basic educational aims. Action research takes place in educational settings that reflect a society characterized by conflicting values and an unequal distribution of resources and power. Currently, most educators are working with imposed accountability systems based on standardized test scores that may or may not reflect school achievement or improvement from a practitioner’s point of view.

More concise definitions exist in the growing body of literature on practitioner action research. For example, McKernan (1991) describes practitioner action research as “a form of self-reflective problem solving which enables practitioners to better understand and solve pressing problems in social settings” (p. 6).

McCutcheon and Jung (1990) provide the following definition: “Systematic inquiry that is collective, collaborative, self-reflective, critical, and undertaken by the participants of the inquiry. The goals of such research are the understanding of practice and the articulation of a rationale or philosophy of practice in order to improve practice” (p. 148).

Kemmis and McTaggart (1982) provide a definition with social justice at its center:

[A] form of collective, self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of the practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out. Groups of participants can be teachers, students, principals, parents, and other community members—any group with a shared concern. The approach is only action research when it is collaborative, though it is important to realize that the action research of the group is achieved through the critically examined action of the individual group members. (p. 6)

While we prefer to remain as eclectic as possible with regard to a definition, we would also like to lay out a few assumptions that form the foundation for this book.

WORKING ASSUMPTIONS

Following are a few assumptions that we share about action research. We feel that these assumptions are also widely shared within the action research community. Throughout this book, we use action research to denote insiders doing research in their own settings, though we realize the term is also used more broadly. For a more complete discussion of insider and outsider action research, see Herr and Anderson (2005) and Noffke (1997).

Action Research Differs From
Traditional Academic Research
Without Necessarily Being Less Rigorous

Although action research can borrow appropriate methods from university-based research, it is different from academic research in that it represents insider or local knowledge about a setting. There is no way an outsider, even an ethnographer who spends years as an observer, can acquire the tacit knowledge of a setting that those who must act within it daily possess. This creates obvious advantages for the insider action researcher, but it also makes it harder for the practitioner doing research to step back and take a dispassionate look at the setting. This subjectivity is one of the reasons some recommend that practitioners do research in collaboration with outsiders or with a critical friend. This critical friend may be another insider who plays a devil’s advocate role. The implications of the differences between insider and outsider research are continuing to be discussed. We review these epistemological (how we acquire and share knowledge) issues in more detail in Chapter 2. It is important to add that action research is not less rigorous than traditional academic research but rather defines rigor differently.

Action Research Is Political

In fact, any research that makes knowledge claims is necessarily political, but action research is political in a double sense. It is political in the obvious sense that asking critical questions about one’s practice, classroom, and school can offend those with a stake in maintaining the status quo. But it is also political in the sense that practitioners creating knowledge about their own practice challenge those who view practitioners as passive recipients of knowledge created in universities. As school practitioners find their voice, they are in a position to challenge reformers who view them as scapegoats for low student achievement.

As mentioned in our definition, we believe that no research is neutral; therefore, researchers should not be naive about how their research will be received within their setting. Although action researchers need techniques for gathering and analyzing data, they also need an understanding of the ways in which action research often threatens the vested interests and ideological commitments of some groups and individuals. Chapter 2 addresses in more detail the “politics” of doing action research.

In Chapter 2, our goal is to discuss epistemological and political issues in a straightforward and clear manner. Many books that deal with these issues, although excellent accounts that are valuable resources for academics, tend to turn practitioners off because their discourse is pitched at academics rather than practitioners (e.g., Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Kincheloe, 1991; Winter, 1987). We want language to serve as an aid rather than an obstacle to understanding for practitioners.

On the other hand, we are disturbed by a growing anti-intellectualism on the part of some who assume that educational practitioners only want a nuts-and-bolts, “what-I-can-do-on-Monday” recipe for answering “safe” and narrow questions limited to the four walls of a classroom or school. We find this trend toward “deskilling” insulting to educational practitioners, who, in our experience, desire a better understanding of their practice and its social effects. We also understand, thanks to Argyris and Schön (1974), that there is no such thing as practice that is nontheoretical. Many of the recipes and tips for teachers that appear in practitioner journals are dripping with theoretical and ideological assumptions of which even their authors often seem unaware. Part of the task of action research is to strip away the unexamined theoretical baggage that has accumulated around almost everything we do in schools. To do this, we must make the familiar seem strange, a task enhanced by both ethnographic and action research.

There Are Many Valid Ways
to Do Action Research

Many practitioners have difficulty imagining themselves as researchers, because they have a particular image of research acquired from a research course they took during their undergraduate or graduate studies. This course work may have exposed them to both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, but our experience indicates that quantitative research is more commonly required for virtually all graduate students. In this approach, representative samples, significance levels, and confounding variables were the order of the day, framing how quality research was considered. Only in recent years have introductory courses presented students with a fuller range of research traditions, and even in these cases, action research may or may not be included. It is hard for most practitioners to imagine doing quantitative, statistical research in their own settings. Although much research in education is of this kind, it represents only one of many options available to action researchers. Some questions may be best pursued with statistical research, and there are books available that address this approach to action research (e.g., Brause & Mayher, 1991; Myers, 1985; Rowntree, 1981). However, the emphasis in this book is on qualitative and narrative methodologies, which tend to be appropriated from anthropology, sociology, history, linguistics, and the humanities. Our current sense is that just as educators appropriated qualitative research from these various areas, we are now in the ongoing process of appropriating and adapting qualitative methods for use in the realities of action research.

By qualitative research, we mean anything from ethnographic methods to journals and essays. We have no interest in policing what “counts” as research and what does not. Our sense is that practitioners themselves are beginning to develop criteria for distinguishing rigor from sloppiness in action research. In Chapter 2, we discuss in more detail how action research challenges traditional criteria for the validity or trustworthiness of research studies.

Action Research Can Empower and
Include a Greater Number of Voices

Action research has the potential for empowerment and the inclusion of a greater diversity of voices in educational policy and social change. We see action research as an opportunity to make the voices of those who work closest to the classroom heard. This includes not only those practitioners who work at school sites but also the students who study there and the people who live in the school’s community. In Chapter 2, we refer to this as democratic validity/trustworthiness.

We see action research not merely as individual practitioners trying to improve their practice but as part of a larger social movement that challenges dominant research and development approaches that emphasize an outside-in, top-down approach to educational change. In other words, we believe that empowerment begins with a group of educational practitioners who view themselves not merely as consumers of someone else’s knowledge but as knowledge creators in their own right. Unless educational practitioners who are committed to empowering themselves and their students insist on a greater voice in school reform movements, action research will be co-opted by those very movements, which are led by special interests more concerned with “national competitiveness” than with the welfare of children. Although these goals are not inherently incompatible, too many children are currently viewed as socially expendable from a purely economic perspective. We personally know and work with many practitioners with a commitment to social justice working at school sites. These practitioners, through their research, are beginning to challenge the mythologies and institutional and social arrangements that lead to school failure for a disproportionate number of poor and minority students.

Action Research Is Best Done Collaboratively

We believe that action research is best done as part of a collaborative effort. Ideally, collaboration is done with others who have a stake in the problem under study; however, it may also be done with a group of other practitioners who are also engaged in research. These other practitioners may or may not work at the same site, but they provide the action researcher with an emotional support group, a group of critical friends who can critique the researcher’s work within a context of support.

Although we do not wish to discourage isolated practitioners—many of whom may have limited access to other action researchers—from engaging in research, the many advantages of collaboration are becoming increasingly apparent. In fact, many action research projects have emerged unexpectedly from teacher study and support groups (Saavedra, 1994; Short et al., 1993).

THE MULTIPLE POSITIONALITIES OF THE
RESEARCHER(S) IN ACTION RESEARCH

Most academic researchers assume that they are doing research on someone. That someone is generally referred to as the “subject,” “informant,” “interviewee,” or “participant.” What makes practitioner action research unique is that practitioners/researchers are their own subjects or informants. They are insiders, not outsiders, to the setting under study. “Insider” may seem self-explanatory, and one’s position with regard to one’s professional setting and relationships with colleagues, students, and community may, at first glance, seem straightforward. However, positionality often becomes a source of confusion for many practitioner action researchers.

Before practitioners began doing their own research, action researchers were seen exclusively as outside change agents who worked closely with their insider participants, often practitioners. We discuss the history and roots of action research in Chapter 2, but here, suffice it to observe that it was often assumed that action research was initiated by an outsider. The central issue for outsider action researchers was how to involve insiders in the research to a greater extent than was the case with traditional research. Much of this research was—and continues to be—contract or evaluation research and usually was funded to solve a particular problem or evaluate a particular program. Such research is still often undertaken in fields like international development, public health, and community psychology. At its most collaborative, it represents ...