G)+Tensions+&+Contradictions

Tensions and Contradictions

Tensions from WITHIN the field

__Kemmis and McTaggart__
believe that action research is NOT individualistic. It must be a group activity. Others, such as Stenhouse and Whitehead, believe that the view of action research soley as a group activity might be too restricting. Thus enters the "Teacher-as-Researcher" movement - teacher asking herself "What do I see as my problem?"

__John Elliott__
thinks that there are signs that action research has become hijacked in the service of technical rationality. Teachers are being encouraged to view action research as an inquiry into how to control pupil learning to produce predefined curriculum objectives or targets without any consideration of the ethical dimension of teaching and learning. I am anticipating that action research will become highly recommended as a strategy for helping teachers to maximize pupils’ achievements of national curriculum targets.

=__Reason (2004)__=

Taking time.
Creating democratic spaces takes enormous amounts of time and care. It is easy to bandy about words like participation, and these days some funding bodies like them. But the process of drawing people together and creating a framework for collaborative work always takes longer than one imagines. At times building collaboration will seem to get in the way of directly addressing practical problems.

Histories of oppression and silencing
Last year at the World Congress of Action Research I listened to an African and a Dutchman talk as colleagues about their experience of trying to establish participatory groups in the north of South Africa. They spoke of the systematic neglect and intentional deprivation that this community had experienced under apartheid. And then the African man said, 'Just how do you form communicative spaces with people who have been so deprived?'

Working against denial.
Where the issues are significant and profoundly difficult to address, there will be quite active processes of denial, which make it very difficult to sustain conversations. My colleague at Bath Elizabeth Capewell, working with communities which have experienced significant disaster (such as random shootings, major train or aircraft crashes or terrorist acts) finds that there is a strong tendency for people to deny the extent of the trauma and try to get 'back to normal' as possible; they often claim that their community is strong, that the children are resilient, and will recover naturally. This acts against any moves to open up spaces for dialogue and represses discussion of the impact of the disaster (Capewell, in preparation).

Errors of consensus collusion.
Participation can have a shadow side in that human persons in primary association can band together in defence of their version of reality and refuse to countenance alternatives.

Tensions in facilitation.
There is a constant and fascinating tension between the organizing ability and facilitation skills of an outsider-a professional action researcher, a community organizer, an animateur-and the community that is there to be helped. The outside facilitator is always in danger of 'helping' in a way that is not helpful because it is controlling or patronizing or suffocating, or just doesn't understand. The community is always in danger of irrationally rejecting the outsider or of becoming over dependent. For this reason action research facilitators must follow disciplines of reflective practice and carefully monitor their practice.

Peter Reason would suggest we must attend to three points.

 * 1) First of all, the creation, development and maintenance of democratic dialogue and the establishment of institutions for democratic inquiry are forms of action in their own right. The establishment of democratic dialogue may well be a far more important and compelling purpose in an action research initiative than the addressing of immediate practical problems.
 * 2) Second, the establishment of participation in a world increasingly characterized by alienation and individualism is both far more urgent and far more complex than we allow ourselves to believe. We need to keep deepening our understanding of what we are up to.
 * 3) Third, forming participative spaces takes more time, energy, skill, persistence, optimism and resources than we usually reckon on.

=__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sharon Nodie Oja and Lisa Smulyan __= <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Between 1953-1957 university scholars attacked action research as methodologically poor and unscientific. The action researchers withdrew to the universities to produce studies more acceptable to their colleagues.