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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.erl-l
Date:         Thu, 7 Jan 1993 10:36:05 -0700
From:         Gene Glass <ATGVG@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Subject:      Action Research

     This notion of "action research" for teachers (it could be for
administrators too, as far as that goes) is not new but could not
be more timely. As some have indicated, the term probably
originated with Kurt Levin, which would have placed the ideas
involved in it at around the 1940s, as Levin was--if memory serves-
-a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who relocated in the US in the
late 1930s. And for anyone who remembers anything about the
Frankfurt School (Adorno, Marcuse and others), there is more than
a hint of the precursors of the likes of Habermas in the notion of
"action research." When I was getting into the educ. research
business about 1960, I was told that Teachers College Columbia was
the center of the action research movement and that I should ignore
it because it fostered bad research.
     There is a tendency today to recast the "action research"
agenda in methodological or epistemological terms and to ignore its
political agenda. Hence, we ask, "Should action research be
quantitative or qualitative? Will action research results be
generalizable or limited? Will action research be valid? Can it
discover causes or must it merely describe?" I think these are the
wrong questions, and I think action research is the wrong agenda
for teachers. Let me explain.
     The persons asking the questions about action research tend to
be "university-types" who imagine hordes of teachers designing
small "studies" that, if accomplished in the quantitative
tradition, will involve formulating hypotheses, selecting
variables, measuring them, analyzing data and the like. The result
is promised to be some improvement in teaching technique, most
likely. The qualitative action study will adhere to the newly
discovered standards of ethnographic analysis: observations,
interviews, content analysis of verbatim transcripts, narrative
presentation of "findings."
     This style of research errs in at least two respects. It is
not what teachers need, and it can not be done well enough or be
focused where it will gain political legitimacy. It will be, in
short, a waste of time for teachers.
     What teachers need--if I may attempt to speak for them--is
more thought to what we call "curriculum" rather than "technique,"
and the activity that we label action research is not up to the
task of informing teachers about key questions regarding
curriculum. (I do believe that among those things that account for
education being rich and relevant, curriculum is many times more
important than technique.) Curriculum is improved by thinking about
it, reading about it, experiencing new things, talking to other
teachers who are trying new things and reflecting on the nature of
the child and the world in which children will live. This sort of
inquiry does not involve formulating hypotheses, measuring
variables and running statistical tests. It does involve a host of
things that teachers have traditionally done for decades (like
attending conferences, being trained in workshops on new
curricula), and it could involve the type of activity that Donald
Schon has described in his many presentations of the concept of the
reflective practitioner.
     Secondly, the type of action research being pressed on
teachers will, rightly or wrongly, be condemned by others as
invalid, inept, non-generalizable and all the other bad things that
can be said about it. Small scale research will be quickly
dismissed in a ny dispute over resourcesbecause it lacks the
panoply of "controls" and incomprehensible statistical
paraphernalia that the professional community has come to expect.
In short, it will not be viewed as legitimate by the broader
professional community. To ask teachers to engage in it then--
arguing that it hardly matters what this broader community thinks
if well-meaning teachers just keep to their own business and do a
better and better job of teaching with the help of what they learn
from their action research--condemns them to a losing position in
all the conflicts over control of educational resources (by which
I mean money, personnel decisions, curriculum and technique).
     Is there an alternative? Of course. Not action research, but
large-scale research that speaks to teachers' political agenda.
Administrators do not perform "actin research," but at all levels
they can command that well-funded, large-scale "legitimate"
research be done on the issues AS THEY DEFINE THEM. Hence, we see
mega-study after mega-study arguing that expenditures don't relate
to outcomes or that school choice produces higher achievement, but
not a single study on sabbaticals for teachers (I'll give 50-to-1
odds that I can do a huge statistical study that will "prove" that
teacher sabbaticals increase students' achievement). Such
organizations as the National Association of School Boards, the
Amer Assoc of School Administrators, and the National Assoc of
Secondary School Principals fund "independent research
laboratories" (in the manner of the automobile and tobacco
industries) that turn out research that supports administrators
political positions. The shame is that the NEA does not do
likewise; indeed it is a mystery to me why the NEA is so near-
sighted as to focus solely on bread-and-butter labor concerns and
lobbying activity and ignore the fact that "research" commands
attention in today's political arena (perhaps the explanation is
related to the fact that the American Educational Research
Association was from 1915 until the late 1950s a bureau of the
National Education Association; it broke away to become an
autonomous organization and left NEA with few ties to the emerging
scholarly community in education).
     Underlying my remarks is the belief that where education is
concerned there is no truth out in the real world to be discovered
by the proper application of research techniques, but rather there
is an on-going debate, if you will, between conflicting interests
(political interests) who wish to impose their agenda on the
institution of the schools. I don't find this article of faith to
be discouraging or depressing in the least; in fact, I think it is
quite invigorating to believe this way and act accordingly.
(Actually, the belief that education is a natural system that must
be researched and charted in some gigantic morphology of boxes and
circles and arrows is quite depressing to me.)

     To recap:

     1. "Action research" as it is conceived of today by the bulk
of university professors who wish to promote it is a reflection of
the worst in the history of educational and behavioral science
research (it ignores ideas about curriculum in favor of a focus on
teaching technique; it is overly quantitative and preordinate.)

     2. "Action research" is a retreat from the political battles
that will shape the schools of the future (It is Dr. Pangloss
saying to Candide, "Come let us cultivate our garden" and forget
the evil outside world about which we can do nothing).

     3. Rather than doing research, teachers should sponsor large-
scale research by trained researchers that speaks to the agenda
that teachers themselves define.

-------**********======================================**********-------
GENE V GLASS                                    ATGVG at ASUACAD.BITNET
College of Education                            ATGVG at ASUACVAX.BITNET
Arizona State University       Internet Address:ATGVG@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU
Tempe, AZ 85287-2411
602-965-2692
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