Merja,
I have been reading about Action Research for only a couple of years, but to me it always seems to go back to the same issue. Whether you use the scientifice method from within or without. That is, when, where and how you pose the problem, and how you judge the outcomes. Interestingly enough I think this dovetails nicely with the fascinating discussion that Martin, Andy and others are having about interpretations of Marx. Okay, anyway, there is my take.
The scientific method from the outside is you have a scientist who is exploring a problem that he or she has identified in the community. The scientist attempts to see what possible outcomes could occur in relation to this problem, and then sets up the experiment to find out if he or she can actually achieve that outcome. The scientist moves through the process of problem, experimentation, outcome (different people define it differently) and eventually comes out with an outcome. If this was the expected outcome all well and good, and the scientist then defines this as knowledge that will allow others to solve similar problems. If the scientist does not achieve the outcomne either they readjust the method, or they redefine the problem, or unfortunately all too often redefine the mode of analysis. The presumption for this type of research is that a solution can be eventually found and identified to the melioration of the human condition. You write a book about it, everybody buys it, reads it, solves their problems, and everybody is happy. At the base on this outside scientific process, I would say, is the belief that with the right knowledge we can control nature. Scientists are constantly looking for the silver bullet that will cure cancer, make reading universal, make work more efficient. A second aspect of this outside scientific method is that there is a one to one correspondence between problem solving and problems. That is you identify a problem and then you work to develop strategies for dealing with that problem.
Action research, as least I have been reading about it as it is conducted by Friere and Argis (two people who couldn't be more superficially different!) is based on an inside scientific method. That is rather than identifying a problem as a scientist, the scientist becomes a member of the community, and a facilitator in helping the community identify their problem. The scientist does not hold any pre-eminent position in the process, is not an expert, or even a guide, but simply a facilitator who is looking to transfer responsibilities for identification of the problem over to the community that is at risk or trying to deal with issues. The posing of the problem is far more flexible, fluid, and, well, democratic, that it is in the scientific method. And while the outside scientific method seems to put far more emphasis on the experimental methodology itself, the inside scientific methodology tends to put the majority of the emphasis of the recognizing and the posing of the problem. Often times the problem you think you are dealing with is not the actual problem, but the only way to realize this is through democratic discussion of the stakeholders. Once the problem is recognized - through agreement rather than through history or proclamation, then you have to ask, all right what would be the solution for solving this problem? What would occur that would actually solve this problem (rather than give us another step of knowledge in attempting to solve a more universal problem). It is only at this point that you begin to design an experimental model that follows the scientific method but also is tailored to finding out if you have solved the problem. Once you have an outcome, if it is not a solution, you have to go back to the drawing board.
I probably am biased, but I see this as very much a Pragmatically influenced approach. There are those who trace origins back to Lewin, but Gordon Allport wrote a chapter or introduction or something saying that he didn't think there was a dime's bit of difference between the Lewin of the 1940s and Dewey. I think Phillip is right in that this is definitely a progressively based idea, and was really central to the progressive movement for a while.
Anyway, I think this inside scientific method is pretty much common to most of the forms of Action Research I have read about it. I do see a methodology here, the same methodology Hook and Martin see in Marx.
Michael
________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of merja helle
Sent: Sun 1/25/2009 5:25 AM
To: 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'; mcole@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: [xmca] CHAT and Action Research: Special Issue
Colliers work is mentioned also e.g. in the following article
Eden, Max Chisholm, Rubert 1993 Varieties of action research:
Introduction to the special issue Human Relations vol. 46 no 2, 121-142
(For a debate about what is action research see also Reason Peter 1993
Sitting between appreciation and disappointment: A critique of the Special
Edition of Human Relations on Action Research Human Relations vol. 46 no
10, 1253-)
The article as well as the Handbook of action research edited by
Reason and Bradbury raise a question what do we mean by action research as
there seem to be quite many variations. As the following excerpts from my
old congress paper illustrate:
Kemmis and McTaggart (2000) make a distinction between seven different
applications of participatory action research.
1. Participatory action research, or what Brown (1993) calls the
southern version of action research and it is often connected to social
transformation in the third world ( Fals Borda 2001, Whyte 1991)
2. Critical action research focuses on broad social analysis and is
used mostly in educational action research as opposed to the traditional
classroom action research (Carr & Kemmis 1986, McTaggart 1997).
3. Action learning strives for organizational efficiency and focuses
on management and their problems. (Pedler 1991).
4. Action science utilizes organizational psychology to study
practical problems and organizational learning... The gap between espoused
theories and theories-in-use is used to unmask thought patterns and behavior
that inhibit change in individuals and creating trusting interpersonal
relationships. (Argyris 1992, Argyris & Schön 1978, 1992, 1996)
5. In the Soft systems approach the researcher and participants create
a systemic model of the situation to analyze the present and to envision
change (Checkland 1981, Checkland &Scholes 1991).
6. Industrial action research dates back to work done by the Tavistock
institute in Britain. (Trist t& Emery 1960) It is nowadays often/usually
consultant driven process enhancement.
The Scandinavian version of action research, Communicative action
research (Gustavsen& Engelstad 1986, Gustavsen 1992, 1993, 2001 Toulmin &
Gustavsen 1996) is not included in the list by Kemmis & McTaggart. The goal
was to create spaces for democratic communication in large organizational
networks. This approach was influential in Norway, and Sweden and Finland in
the 1990's and 1980's.
Or is there a generic definition? What about theoretical backgrounds?
Any comments??
Merja
Merja Helle
Head of Research
Education and Development Services
University of Art and Design Helsinki
+358 504485 111
Address: Hämeentie 153 B
00560 Helsinki, Finland
merja.helle@taik.fi
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of White, Phillip
Sent: 24. tammikuuta 2009 19:52
To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
Subject: RE: [xmca] CHAT and Action Research: Special Issue
In some previous postings regarding action research, connections have
been made to Kurt Lewin. In my work on action research and teacher
research, I have found that the work of John Collier predates Lewin's work.
I found Stephen Corey's work (1953), a professor at Teachers College in the
late 40's and later, which set me on a track of finding the historical roots
of action research. Stephen M. Corey, possibly the first university level
advocate of teacher research, preferred the term "action research",
attributing it to John Collier since Collier "used the expression action
research and was convinced that 'since the finding of research must be
carried into effect by the administrator and the layman, and must be
criticized by them through their experience, the administrator and the
layman must themselves participate creative in the research impelled as it
is from their own area of need'" (p. 7). Corey's citation of Collier is from
an article "United States Indian Administration as a laboratory of Ethnic
Relations" Social Research, 12:265-303, May 1945. However, K. R. Philp
(1979) writes that John Collier had long been working in socially active
groups before he became commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Beginning in 1907 when he was civic secretary for the People's Institute in
New York City, he began a long struggle to preserve and build community life
based on Gemeinschaft, of shared obligations. These beliefs he attempted to
implement within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As commissioner, he ordered
the closing of numerous boarding schools. To replace them, day schools that
also served as community centers were built, and a new curriculum that
emphasized skills connected with rural life, such as care of livestock,
homemaking skills, and personal hygiene appeared. From this effort came his
call for action research. Bilingual programs were implemented to improve
Indian literacy. He brought in anthropologists and removed missionaries.
You can see the practices here of early 20th century educational
progressivism that Ravich so dislikes. Collier had a deep belief that for
modern culture to survive the "wastage of cultures and value systems which
ages have made, wastage of natural resources stored by the organic life of a
billion years, wreckage of the web of life" (p. 160), it needs to return to
its roots of small communities, rather than continue "a world of social
isolates".
He was an admirer of Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid and the essential
human value of primary social groups. Collier wrote:
That thesis was that democracy - political, social, and economic
democracy, complexly realized all together - is ancient on earth; that
cooperation and reciprocity were the way of men through many thousands of
generations; that the conserving and cherishing of earth and its flora and
creature life were man's way through these long ages; that the art of
education - the art of informing, enriching, tempering, and socializing the
personality, and of internalizing the moral imperatives - was practiced
triumphantly by village communities in every continent, without ceasing for
tens of thousands of years; and that like countless flowers in a long April
of our world, human cultures, borne by memory alone, illuminated with all
rainbow hues the almost unimaginable thousands of little societies wherein
immensities of personality development were achieved across the aeons of
time.
Touched by his, what seems to me to be utopian, naïve romanticism, I
also find myself admiring his passionate commitment to a particular vision
of life from which he informed all of his activities. For it is out of this
belief in value of small communities that the practice of action research
was formed, and I admire this. It was said the Collier was the only
commissioner of the BIA who was ever on the side of Native Americans.
Later,
phillip_______________________________________________
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