Mj. Newby, EDUCATIONAL ACTION RESEARCH - THE DEATH OF MEANING - OR, THE PRACTITIONERS RESPONSE TO UTOPIAN DISCOURSE, Educational research, 39(1), 1997, pp. 77-86
Consciousness of the distance between scientific research traditions i
n education and classroom practice has now become a presupposition of
educational action research. The reasons for this distance are located
in, and explained by, the reflexivity of knowledge, which draws atten
tion to the hitherto unacknowledged personal element in knowledge clai
ms: they reflect value-preferences, hidden agendas and hidden assumpti
ons. Therefore an emphasis has been placed by many recent action resea
rchers on the self of the investigator as an influence not simply on t
he outcomes, but also the language and techniques of the research. Man
y see the self as becoming, rightly, the main focus of the action rese
arch project, and indeed the main focus of valid educational research
as a whole. We give due weight to such insights and argue that they re
quire educational research outside of the action research tradition to
display reflexive self-awareness and also to understand the importanc
e of practitioner-knowledge in its own right. On the other hand, we ar
gue for a broader approach to educational research, without which the
action researcher is bound to remain detached from traditions of thoug
ht which can enable her to locate her recommendations for practice wit
hin a meaningful long-term and broad perspective on what the education
alist is striving to achieve. Whilst the fact of reflexivity prevents
us from returning to the naive view that research findings can have th
e objective status of timeless and more or less context-free truths, i
t does not condemn us to a view of knowledge which is no more than a m
ultitude of personal accounts of particular situations. Both extremes
being unintelligible, a view of educational research as advance into n
ew knowledge becomes possible in which various methodologies are vital
, but in which no particular methodology suffices without the others.
In its conclusions, the paper draws upon Paddy Walsh's acclaimed, if d
emanding, work to support the position that the gap between theory and
practice requires such a synthesis of approaches, and that this synth
esistic approach must be adopted if the action researcher is to have a
chance of assuring anyone that she has made advances in educational p
ractice.