Professional Learning in Higher Education and Communities

Towards a New Vision for Action Research

O. Zuber-Skerritt, M. Fletcher, J. Kearney

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137455185
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

By integrating neuroscience and social science, this book introduces a bold new vision of Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR). The authors explain and enhance the art of action research through PALAR as a philosophy, methodology and theory of learning and as a facilitation process for professional learning and social justice.

1

Conceptual Framework

Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived.

It is what difference we have made to the lives of others

that will determine the significance of the life we lead.

(Nelson Mandela, 18 May 2002)

Chapter Overview

In this introductory chapter I encapsulate the book’s main message and introduce its purpose, aims and rationale, structure and content, limitations and contributions. I provide definitions of the key concepts of professional learning, critical reflection and action research. I explain the authors’ philosophical and methodological assumptions captured in their preferred methodology of PALAR (Participatory Action Learning and Action Research) within the action research paradigm. I also explain theories that have shaped the action research methodology and the authors’ new vision for action research, in particular, aspects of phenomenology, critical theory, grounded theory, complexity theory, experiential learning theory, living theory, hope theory and negative dialectics. This theoretical integration with critical reflection is intrinsic to identifying the affective-socio-cognitive nature of holistic learning featured in this book. I also identify how the book builds on the authors’ experience and contributes to the literature and towards this new vision of action research that is transformative and holistic in nature and purpose.

Introduction

The 21st century world is troubled by deep-rooted problems that require not simply improvement but more expansive, deeper-reaching responses that are transformational in purpose, process and outcome. But how do people across the world conceive of transformational change and act with others to achieve it? This book responds to the challenge. It is informed by the authors’ extensive experience in research and development (R&D), particularly through professional and leadership development in universities, organisations and communities. It builds on classical and recent work in the qualitative research literature, incorporates new thinking in neuroscience that provides a firm base of evidence for action research, and it further develops the notion of critical reflection towards a new vision for learning and research. This vision is holistic, inclusive and participative to enable transformative improvement in human living conditions wherever it is applied. It is rooted in the concept of PALAR: Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (Zuber-Skerritt, 2011, 2012), the methodology of action research that we further develop, illustrate and exemplify in this book.

We argue that innovative thinking and skills for transformational change need to be engendered not just in the traditional school and higher education systems. PALAR is also needed in the new, alternative, informal educational opportunities for the world’s majority of people who are excluded from formal education. These people are excluded from the formal learning institutions because they are disempowered through poverty and/or distorted notions of gender, race, religion and other factors that are used to entrench their marginalisation in society. This is why as a global community we need a new epistemological understanding. We need to clarify what constitutes, in the widest sense, knowledge (including what is commonly recognised as scientific, conceptual, experiential, intuitive, local, indigenous and cultural knowledge) and learning (including individual, collaborative, professional, organisational, critical and reflective learning). We need to understand how to facilitate the processes of learning and knowledge creation at all levels.

In contemporary times multiple sources of influence worldwide, ranging from policies of international organisations to publications and popular slogans, call for a global society that is inclusive and equitable, ‘unlocking human potential’, offering equal opportunity for all and ‘closing the gap’ between rich and poor. These messages embrace a much-needed call for social justice and economic, social and environmental sustainability for all, recognising as a common interest the wellbeing of humankind at large and of the earth that sustains us. In practice, however, natural and human disasters compound problems of inequity and marginalisation. The wellbeing of society and the natural environment continues to be sacrificed at the altar of human greed and ignorance. Power structures and hierarchies within and among societies from local to global levels are making the distribution of wealth and opportunity ever more unequal, thus widening rather than closing ‘the gap’. So much of the human potential that could, if enabled, contribute new ways of thinking and understanding the world to the creation of knowledge for solving local and global problems still remains ‘locked’.

These circumstances bespeak the need for a transformative change that PALAR as a new integrative concept can be used to achieve. This chapter therefore introduces an epistemology (our assumptions about the nature of knowledge and knowing), an ontology (our assumptions about the nature of being and reality) and a methodology (our consequent approach to problem solving and inquiry strategy). It provides a guide for action to achieve transformative goals locally by thinking globally in a humanitarian way. Such action is to help people at all levels of education and in all contexts to address unprecedented, complex and ‘wicked’ problems collaboratively and effectively to become the best they can.

As authors of this book, while we conceive of PALAR as our preferred action research methodology, we use the general term ‘action research’ in our discussion. We propose action research as a viable and practical solution to problems associated with deprivation of learning opportunities and with social injustice. This is action research with its original purpose of improving learning and social praxis, that is both practice (action) and theory (learning), and with its fundamental values, principles and philosophical assumptions. Here, however, we see action research from new, more complex and critical realist perspectives based on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and Bhaskar’s work (Bhaskar, Frank, Hoyer, Naess & Parker, 2010). We recognise that, to understand why things have happened so that we can take the most effective action, we must not only learn but also reflect critically on what we have learned and how that has been shaped by the limits of our human perception.

Accordingly, each chapter of this book constitutes an action research project that we three authors planned collectively and discussed in regular meetings. Together we thought through, designed and implemented (acted on) our plan for the book in cycles of action and reflective learning. We each drafted our own chapters, carefully considered and evaluated drafts of all chapters as they were completed, and critically reflected on both the nature and evolution of our thoughts and writing, and on what these revealed about our practice and new vision for action research. We then made changes in each chapter and across the book until we achieved what we recognised collaboratively as a coherent narrative that truly presents our new vision. This evolution has also played out in our behaviour and assumptions, as our vision of and for action research evolved through the action/learning/reflection process. Both this book and our new vision are therefore our meta-action research, that is action research on action research, which self-critically, gradually and consciously builds our new vision of action research.

This new vision sees action research as an ever emergent paradigm of many different, even conflicting or divergent schools of thought, whose proponents challenge, communicate and debate with each other. Action researchers question themselves and one another, valuing and learning from their differences. They accept that action research is a struggle as it leads to positive change, practical improvement or, as we articulate here, to a deeper-reaching transformation, but never to certainty, absolute knowledge or ‘objective truth’. Instead of a ‘happy ending’ (Holloway et al., 2009, p. 7) there are hope and lessons to be learnt in struggling on and finding ‘provisional resting places’ (Barber, 1992, p. 110). As the ancient Greeks used to say, ‘panta rei’, acknowledging that ‘everything flows’ or changes.

Action research continues to evolve from diverse philosophical assumptions, theories and conceptual frameworks. Some of these began life as the ideas of radical outsiders or challengers of educational research, before becoming established as new action research methodologies. Figure 1.1 sets out the main ones we have adopted in our theoretical framework for transformative action research in this book and that are explained later in this chapter.

We encourage readers to reflect on and explore the theoretical frameworks that have guided their own action research praxis by drawing a diagram with roughly four to eight fields, before reading the following explanation of Figure 1.1. Some readers may find it useful to read the ‘Definition of Terms’ section that follows below to clarify terms before proceeding with this reflective, exploratory exercise. Exploring one’s own conceptual framework is important because the methods, tools, instruments and techniques used in action research projects depend on and need to be consistent with this framework, whether they involve quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods. This means generally that our philosophical assumptions underpinning our action research design and written presentations are of primary consideration; our choice and use of methods are of consequential, secondary importance.

In explorative, early stages of ‘reconnaissance’ (Lewin, 1952), as well as in ‘grounded theory’ (Corbin & Strauss, 2013), we may use interviews or focus groups first and let the data speak for themselves to inform consideration of answers and perhaps further questions. Yet we must always be aware that the researchers who design and carry out the data collection and who analyse and interpret the data do so through their particular glasses or windows on the world. This is the dialectic between deduction and induction towards ‘abduction’ and ‘thick description’ (Moser, 1999; Corbin & Strauss, 2013). We believe that knowledge can be created by action researchers through their (1) being influenced by (and starting with) existing, personal theories and value systems, and (2) being able to create new knowledge on the basis of their concrete experience by critically reflecting on that experience and formulating general concepts that can be tested in new situations, thus providing new concrete experience and continuing the next cycle(s) of knowledge creation (Kolb, 1984). Our affective-socio-cognitive approach (discussed in Chapter 2) emphasises the need for us to be conscious of our prior knowledge and beliefs to open opportunities for new ideas to take hold.

Figure 1.1 Theoretical embeddedness of participatory action learning and action research

In the main body of this chapter I first explain the terminology we use in this book before discussing the main philosophical assumptions and selected theories that have influenced and shaped our paradigm and praxis of action research. I then outline the book’s aims and rationale, structure and content, limitations and contributions. Like all chapters in the book, it ends with a conclusion, discussion starters and suggested further readings.

Definition of Terms

This book focuses on professional learning through critical reflection using action research in higher education and communities across all learning contexts. Here are brief explanations of our understanding of these key concepts.

Professional learning

Throughout this book we conceive of learning in the widest sense, including all types of adult learning: personal, professional, individual, collaborative, group, organisational and community learning. We prefer the term ‘learning’ to ‘development’, as in ‘professional learning’ instead of ‘professional development’, because ‘development’ can have the connotation that what should be learnt and how it should be learnt are controlled from outside the learning context. However, we conceive development as a process of self-directed, lifelong learning from the simplest to the highest levels. In this way learning becomes increasingly professional, that is, work related and specialised in a particular area or field of one’s choice.

The simplest level of professional learning has been demonstrated by Zuber-Skerritt and Teare (2013) in case studies in developing countries. In these case examples, illiterate people in remote areas without opportunities for education or employment learn to improve their life conditions through a system of step-by-step lifelong action learning and become financially independent by participating in an indigenous learning system. At the end of each stage in this system, they are recognised and rewarded on their journey in professional learning and knowledge creation within their action learning ‘sets’ or teams, as also demonstrated in Chapter 7 in the present book. In other chapters in the book when we use the term ‘development’ – for exampl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Conceptual Framework
• Part I  Professional Learning through Critical Reflection
• Part II  Case Studies in Higher Education and Communities
• Part III  Implications and Conclusions
• Appendices
• Author Index