Newsgroups: bit.listserv.erl-l
Date:         Wed, 27 Jan 1993 08:13:15 +1100
From:         kemmis@DEAKIN.EDU.AU
Subject:      Re: Educators as Inquirers
Comments: To: "Educational Research List (TCSVM)" <ERL-L@VM.TCS.Tulane.EDU>

Rebecca Clemente has raised some important practical issues about teaching
action research and overseeing students conducting it in settings away from
the university classroom.  Three grab my attention:
(1)  About AR being a new concept for most students:  As with most
teaching, I try to find what students already know about, or approximating
to, a topic before beginning to introduce the new.  As Rebecca has done, I
find teachers do know lots about reflection and other systematic ways of
observing what they are doing before they hear about AR.  I try to build on
those things, showing how AR attempts to make them more systematic,
rigorous and trenchant, and also how it aims to get deeper into why things
are as they are, and how they could be otherwise.
(2)  About the political ramifications of AR:  If social practices are held
in place by webs of interactions and expectations, then changing practice
means disturbing these webs, with old patterns of interaction losing their
smoothness, and old expectations being unmet.  So, when someone in the
situation starts AR-ing, those involved may become anxious about how things
are going, and there is often (usually?) some (small-p) political
galvanization.  We sometimes fail to notice that all research interventions
cause such galvanization - it's not just an AR problem.  So...
(3)  About preparing teachers for fallout in their situations and taking
responsibility for guiding them in their conduct of AR:  A first lesson for
me is that this is THEIR AR, not mine, and that they must take
responsibility for it - but that doesn't mean I can be "hands off".  It
means I must help them think through the issues of who might be affected,
how, with what possible results (Think Ahead!), so they can make their own
judgements.  In the "Action Research Planner" that Robin McTaggart and I
developed (third edition, Deakin University Press, Geelong, Victoria,
Australia, 1988 - if you would like me to facilitate your ordering one from
DUP, Rebecca, e-mail me direct!  pardon the advertisement, folks!), we gave
some attention to these issues, so students working at a distance from us
can make an analysis of the politics of the changes they propose before
they begin.  It' not perfect, of course, but it does make them aware that
the problems need to be worked through and watched all the time.  There is
a good deal of AR literature on such issues, and some of the best of it is
in the highly political context of community development in the Third World
- see, for example,  Fals Borda, O. & Rahman, M. (1991) "Action and
Knowledge:  Breaking the Monopoly" (Apex Press, N.Y.  The chapter by John
Gaventa, "Toward a Knowledge Democracy:  Viewpoints on Participatory
Research in North America", shows how some of these things work out in a
First World context.  By the way, a reading of the work of Myles Horton
from the Highlander Center in Tennessee would give many insights on these
issues:  the work of the Highlander Center provides a wealth of powerful
experience for US AR-ers to draw on.
********
Stephen Kemmis
Head of Graduate School, Faculty of Education, Deakin University - Geelong,

Victoria 3217, Australia
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