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Action research: Issues in theory and practice
Robin McTaggart
School of Administration and Curriculum Studies Faculty of Education Deakin University
Abstract
Address to the Methodological Issues in Qualitative Health Research Conference, Friday November 27, 1992, Deakin University Geelong.
Fifteen years ago, action research and perhaps even qualitative research would have required extensive introduction. It is a sign of marked progress that we can discuss these matters in terms specific to each methodology and not have to fend off criticisms of each because they do not attend to the canons of positivistic inquiry. No longer need we concern ourselves with what was once the dominant and received view of social science. Gone are the particular cooptions and operationalisations of concepts such as 'validity', 'reliability', 'significance' and 'causality' which dominated the discourse of social science in our youth.
Though it is by no means uncontentious, the term 'action research' is now one of the commonplaces of professional education, and it is refreshing to find it in both common and uncommon places. In the past twelve months I have talked about action research with community medicine specialists, nurse educators and teacher educators in Thailand, with business 'trainers' in Brisbane, with instructional designers in Telecom in Melbourne, with community development workers in Ross House in Melbourne, and with teachers in Footscray. The proliferation of action research marks a significant shift in both the kinds of relationships researchers from the academy have with others and in the locus of knowledge production about professional practice. Proliferation has also led to the diversification and articulation of action research theory and practice. This has led in turn to more substantial versions of action research, but also to versions which seem to have lost their way. Accordingly, people interested in participatory action research face several new dilemmas. They include:
- confusion about what action research actually is
- technologisation and cooption of action research
- casual dismissals of action research by people who ought to know the action research literature better
- proliferations of discourses about discourses supplanting finding out what action researchers do, where they do it, and how they do it
- genuine issues arising from the debate over social research methodology which include profoundly challenging questions about the representation of self and social life, rationality (both its nature and its primacy), the ways in which different ways of inscribing the world are always disenfranchising for some. and the narrative forms of reporting research (if indeed any 'research' reporting can be justified at all)
For some these issues apparently mean the end of action research. but I am more optimistic than that because there is a growing literature which shows that the idea of action research is both engaging and useful for people. It is certain our ideas about action research and the metaphors we use to characterise it will continue to change, but that has always been the intention of serious-minded action researchers.
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