Localization or Globalization? The Dynamics of Action Research

1. Localization or Globalization? The Dynamics of Action Research Bridget Somekh Manchester Metropolitan University Summer Institute for Qualitative Research Manchester July 19-23, 2010

2. The ‘braided river’ - a localized phenomenonin a ‘world of flows’

3. Action research feeds globalisation from below • Appadurai describes: ‘a world of flows, a world fundamentally characterised by objects in motion ... Ideas and ideologies, people and goods, images and messages, technologies and techniques ... • the process of globalisation creates opportunities for grassroots activism – ‘globalisation from below’ • Variations of AR can be seen as examples of this process (Somekh and Zeichner, 2009)

4. The Handbook of Educational Action Research (Noffke and Somekh, 2009) • 30 years on from the Action Research Reader ... (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) • Not a definitive text, but a marker of confidence, perhaps ‘an objective correlative’ (T.S.Eliot) through which to appreciate the stature of action research as a methodology. • The intention is to push out the boundaries of definitions and categories of what is valuable in action research. • Providing a dual lens that moves back and forth between a close focus on interpreting the detail of local action and wider meaning making ... • The chapters show that AR is much more richly theorised than it has traditionally been understood to be ... (Quotations are from the final chapter, ‘Conclusions’)

5. Conference CambridgeNov 5 – 7, 2010 • www.did.stu.mmu.ac.uk/carnnew/

6. Analytic Framework to explore dimensions of variation in Action Research (Somekh and Zeichner 2009) • What are the purposes for which action research is conducted? • What are the contextual conditions? • What philosophy toward teachers and their learning is assumed? • Who sponsors the research? • What are the incentives for teachers? • What forms of inquiry – methods etc.? • What relationship does the action research knowledge have to other research? • What are the ways of representing action research to others?

7. Analysis of action research publications • Zeichner’s framework was used to analyse the variations in action research in 46 publications from non-English-speaking countries, dated between 2000 and 2008. The papers present action research carried out in a large number of countries. They include 34 papers published in EAR. • Notes were made on each publication, in columns, under the headings of the analytic framework outlined in the previous slide. • The resulting table was used to derive five ‘variations’ of action research. • In carrying out the analysis we found the framework needed to be ‘stretched’ to include factors relating to how the work of teachers and schools was strongly shaped by the history, culture and politics of local education systems. • We also drew on Zeichner’s work on the impact of the ‘No Child Left Behind’ legislation on action research in the USA.

8. Five variations of action research • Action research in times of political upheaval and transition • Action research as a state-sponsored means of reforming schooling • Co-option of action research by Western governments and school systems to control teachers • Action research as a university-led reform movement • Action research as a locally-sponsored systemic reform sustained over time (Somekh and Zeichner 2009)

9. Questions that arise from this ... • Why and how does the process of variation of action research take place? • How should action researchers respond to these variations, and does it matter if they go by a different name? • Would an insistence on action research remaining ‘pure’ and ‘uncontaminated’ by variations be a form of colonial coercion? • What are the advantages of local variations? And, what is the role of CARN in this global arena of action research flows?

10. Why and how does variation take place? • Action research is dynamic because: • its activist stance, towards improvement, is unpredictable • it is respectful of, and listens to, participants and springs from their values • the context of the AR embodies cultural assumptions and historical structures and practices • the knowledge it generates is immediately usable – and therefore malleable – in the local context • the knowledge is also easily used in other contexts

11. Examples of variations arising from cultural tensions • * AR develops variations in cross-cultural settings • the dynamic quality of action research loosens methodological certainties • Example – the MOHD project (Somekh, 2006) • certainties are rooted in the history of thought within a culture • Example – Li-Peidong and Laidlaw (2006)Western ‘individualism’ versus Chinese ‘collectivism’ (but see Elliott and Tsai, 2008)

12. Appadurai’s critique of ‘the research ethic’ • In his 2001 book on Globalisation – Appadurai makes a plea to transform and revitalise research, to restore the ‘energy of earlier visions of scholarship in which moral and political concerns were central.’ • In his 2006 article – Appadurai describes ‘exploring the democratisation of the right to research, and the nexus between research and action’ through Mumbai’s PUKAR group. These are related to ‘the capacity to aspire’. • * PUKAR practices action-oriented research using the ‘documentation as intervention’ method.

13. Variations develop when action research ‘travels’ to different cultures • Rizvi (2006) drawing on Appadurai and Castadoris • When ideas travel from one culture to another they are remodelled through the creative process of collective imagining. • The ‘social imaginary’ is ‘specific to time and space’ and also ‘multiple and highly contested within and across communities’. • It creates ‘a collective sense of agency’ that mobilises ‘the right to research’ and ‘the capacity to aspire’.

14. Variations – cause for celebration or tensions? • Variations occur in different countries and different disciplines • They should be a matter of celebration – because of their local vibrancy and collective agency • * But they can be contentious because: • they conflict with ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault 1980) • Discourses become ‘institutionalised’ and community members ‘snipe at one another’ (Pring 2004) • Even at CARN Conferences, we can often see that Health, Education, Community and Social Work have their own different cultures and social imaginaries

15. How should action researchers respond to these variations? • * Guarding the core values and principles that underpin action research is important. • Variations create tensions for the community. • This has been a tension for me personally, because of the shift in my vision and understanding over a period of 20 years • But, also because of my close involvement with CARN and EAR, which have always supported a range of approaches • One response is to develop a set of broad ‘methodological principles’ for action research.

16. Methodological principles of action researchfrom Somekh 2006 • Action Research integrates research and action, investigating innovation • Action Research is conducted by a collaborative partnership of participants and researchers. • Action Research involves the development of knowledge and understanding of a unique kind. • Action Research starts from a vision of social transformation and aspirations for greater social justice for all. • Action Research involves a high level of reflexivity and sensitivity to the role of the self in mediating the whole research process. • Action Research involves exploratory engagement with a wide range of existing knowledge. • Action Research engenders powerful learning for participants. • Action Research locates the inquiry in an understanding of broader historical, political and ideological contexts.

17. * Defining characteristics of action research from Elliott, 2008 • AR expresses a commitment to realizing an aim that embodies an educational ideal or set of values • assumptions and beliefs (tacit theories) that underpin and structure customary practice are problematized • involves holistic experimentation: creating and experimenting with new forms of action to change the practice and render it more consistent with the aim • is a developmental process characterized by reflexivity on the part of practitioners • involves reconstructing the theories that underpin and shape educational practice • involves a dialogical process in which teachers “in-voice” a range and variety of different points of view on their practice during the course of their action research (triangulation) for example, those of their students, their professional peers, and parents.

18. Well-established ways of categorising action research, (1) • ‘Professional, personal and political dimensions to action research’ (Noffke 1997) • Derived from a historical review of the action research literature. • Not conceived as distinct categories, but used as a heuristic for analysis • These ‘dimensions’ were used as the organising framework for the Handbook of Educational Action Research (Noffke and Somekh 2009). They ‘are fluid with porous boundaries rather than essentialist.

19. * Well-established ways of categorising action research(2) • ‘Technical, practical and critical ‘modes of action research’, Grundy (1982) and Carr and Kemmis (1986) • enormously powerful in the development of action research within a critical theory tradition; • but too narrow a framework given contemporary developments in epistemology • also too inherently hierarchical; leads to the ‘them and us’ dichotomies of Kemmis’s ‘five examples of inadequate action research’, (Kemmis 2006) • ‘technical’ AR nearly always develops into a deeper and more challenging inquiry through the processes of reflexivity and praxis

20. Many ‘variations’ go by another name • Some have their roots in action research, others not. They include: • ‘practitioner research’, • ‘dialogic inquiry’, • ‘practitioner inquiry’, • ‘critical pedagogy’, • critical practitioner inquiry’, • ‘teacher research’, • ‘self study’, • ‘learning study’ • ‘participatory feminism’

21. Discursive meanings of action research • A collision of terms • A mixing of discourses • A merging of action/reflection, identities of ‘poet’ : ‘hero’ • The Yin/Yang of Yeats’ interpenetrating gyres (Ellman, 1960)

22. ... But there is often a strength in the slippage of action research’s names, pseudonyms and disguises ...

23. A name can be a semiotic and iconic representation of the ‘social imaginary’ which builds ‘collective force’ • Communities form and develop around names that signal their values and beliefs. • An insistence on action research remaining ‘pure’ and ‘uncontaminated’ by variations would be a form of colonial coercion. • There are forms of research with similar core principles and practices to action research which do not spring from roots in action research and do not see themselves as belonging under an action research umbrella. It would be a form of colonisation to attempt to try to claim them as our own.

24. Variations, among ‘cousins’, as a strength in building collective agency in a world of flows • To contribute with maximum impact to globalisation from below we need to build collective force across cultures. • I suggest that we might claim ‘cousin status, Indian-style’ with groups who share our core values. Such as PUKAR in Mumbai with its action-oriented ‘documentation as intervention’ approach to research. • I mean this in the sense that I understand Indian families to ‘adopt’ numerous aunts and cousins among those who they hold in special affection and intimacy, although they are not blood relations. Perhaps PUKAR would be happy to adopt CARN as a cousin-in-research in this way.

25. The New Zealand example • A history of action research that has lost its political steam • Growing vibrancy in Kaupapa Maori Research • A coming together of individuals to stimulate the founding of a new CARN New Zealand national group

26. Kaupapa Maori Research Four essential components of KMR, according to Graham Smith (quoted in L.T.Smith 1999) : • It is related to ‘being Maori’ • It is connected to Maori philosophy and principles • It takes for granted the validity and legitimacy of Maori, the importance of Maori language and culture; and • It is concerned with ‘the struggle for autonomy over our own cultural well being’.

27. Kaupapa Maori Research • In Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) sees KMR as a deliberately activist methodology. .. ‘a “localizing” of the aims of critical theory [as] partly an enactment of what critical theory actually “offered” to oppressed, marginalized and silenced groups. • She refutes the suggestion that the emancipatory project is over-idealistic or, indeed, that it has to be closely defined in ‘western’ terms: “The notion of strategic positioning as a deliberate practice is partially an attempt to contain the unevenness and unpredictability, under stress, of people engaged in emancipatory struggles. The broader vision of Kaupapa Maori embraces that sense of strategic positions, of being able to plan, predict and contain, across a number of sites, the engagement in struggle.”

28. Maori culture and activism • Maori people still suffer from the culturally embedded effects of British colonisation • but they have established legal rights to present to the Waitangi Tribunal their case for recompense for breaches of the Waitangi Treaty. • A successful claim for rights over fishing quotas and later land deals have transferred wealth to some iwi (tribes). • The Te Kotahitanga research and development project, led by Russell Bishop at the University of Waikato, is ‘a collaborative response to the rising problem of underachievement among Maori students in mainstream schools.’

29. Initiatives to combat Maori educational disadvantage • Maori values are embedded in the New Zealand national curriculum. Te Whariki, the early childhood curriculum, is a bicultural curriculum grounded in Maori guiding principles: Whakamana ; Kotahitanga; Whanau Tangata; and Nga Hononga • Teacher Education includes wide-ranging strategies to educate NZ teachers to work in a bi-cultural and multicultural society. Including Waitangi Tribunal Workshops for students and overnight stays at Marai (Maori community meeting houses) • The University of Canterbury has appointed Angus Macfarlane as Professor of Maori Education with a university-wide brief.

30. The ‘braided river’ became the metaphor for the Inaugural Symposium of NZ CAandRN

31. New Zealand: Collaborative Action and Research Network • KMR brings political leverage within New Zealand and fits the aspirations of CARN to support the pursuit of social justice, locally and globally. • CARN brings its 30 year history, its networking strengths, publications, conferences and meetings • AR and KMR need to be equal partners in a joint initiative. One cannot be subsumed within the other. • The new CARN logo with a river-like spiral design at its heart suggested a way forward with a name that has the semiotic and iconic power to inspire the local New Zealand ‘social imaginary’

32. New Zealand • In his keynote at the Inaugural Symposium of New Zealand CA&RN, Angus Macfarlane suggested that action research often involves processes in which participants: • ‘are part of a “community of practice” – referred to in Maoridom as a “whanau of interest”, a collaborative approach that often employs a blend of Action Research (AR) and Kaupapa Maori Research (KMR) principles.’ http://nzcarnresearchsymposium.blogspot.com/ • A whanau of interest – an extended family – with shared core beliefs and values, seems to me another way of saying, becoming cousins, Indian-style.

33. References (1) • Appadurai, A. (2001). Globalization. Duke University Press, Durham and London. • Appadurai, A. (2006). "The Right to Research." Globalisation, Societies and Education 4(2): 167-177. • Carr, W. and S. Kemmis (1986). Becoming Critical : Education, Knowledge and Action Research. London and Washington, Falmer Press. • Elliott, J. (2008). Constructing a Professional Knowledge-Base for Teacher Education through Action Research. Improving Teacher Education through Action Research. M.-F. Hui and D. L. Grossman. New York and London, Routledge. • Ellman, R. (1960). Yeats: The Man and the Masks (second edition). London: Faber. • Foucault, M. (1980). Power / Knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972-77. , Bury St Edmunds, UK., Harvester Press. • Grundy, S. (1982). "Three Modes of Action Research." Curriculum Perspectives 2(3): 23-34. • Kemmis, S. (2006). "Participatory Action Research and the Public Sphere." Educational Action Research 14(4): 459-476. • Kemmis, S. and R. McTaggart, Eds. (1988). The Action Research Reader, third edition. Geelong, Deakin University Press.

34. References (2) • Li-Peidong and M. Laidlaw (2006). "Collaborative enquiry, action research, and curriculum development in rural China." Action Research 4(3): 333-350. • Noffke, S. (1997). "Professional, Personal, and Political Dimensions of Action Research." Review of Research in Education 22(1): 305-343. • Noffke, S. and B. Somekh, Eds. (2009). Handbook of Educational Action Research. London and Thousand Oakes CA, Sage. • Pring, R. (2004). Philosophy of Educational Research, 2nd Edition. London and New York, Cotinuum. • Rizvi, F. (2006). "Imagination and the globalisation of educational policy research." Globalisation, Societies and Education 4(2): 193-205. • Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and New York, and Dunedin, Zed Books Ltd and University of Otago Press. • Somekh, B. (2006). Action Research: a methodology for change and development. Maidenhead UK and New York US, Open University Press. • Somekh, B. and K. Zeichner (2009). "Action Research for Educational Reform: remodelling action research theories and practices in local contexts." Educational Action Research 17(1): 5-21.