Problems of ‘Method’ and ‘Aims’ in Action Research

Gail Simon

28th October 2006

Subversion

• “Critical researchers”, say Pearce and Walters, “start from an ethical principle and do research designed to emancipate people from patterns of social relations prejudged to be oppressive, to expose patterns of exploitation, or to subvert structures of power that allow some people to be dominated by others." (Pearce and Walters 1996 p10)

“Radical action research is not a method as such; rather it is the transformation of research into a prefigurative political practice”

Ian Parker “Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research” Open University Press 2005

The Place of Change Theory

• ACTION research

• A form of ACTIVISM

• PRACTICE RESEARCH

• Reflection on ACTIVITY

The Problem of Method

• There is no method that can be applied in action research. The application of a ‘method’ in research is always fraught with difficulties, for it presupposes that you can fix what there is that will be of interest to you….

• If you are really following through your decision to let your co-researchers determine the issues that are relevant to them, then the ‘method’ itself is likely to be something that will emerge in the course of the research.

Ian Parker 2005 p125

For ideas re AR process ideasStringer, E. (999) Action Research 2nd Edition Sage

• Modernist discourses encourage an awareness of ethics in research as opposed to encourage ethical research. I propose that ethics in research is an idea at a level of tools and that ethical research is a discursive practice.

Ideological assumptions

Theoretical propositions

Method

Data

Leppington 1991

What count

as data?

What do data count

as?

Ideological assumptions

"Realities" are social stories which come about in language between

people and over time.

Theoretical propositions

1. Political, scientific, cultural, economic, geographical and

professional contexts prejudice the range and type of stories available

to us and the opportunities for alternative stories to emerge.

2. To create the conditions for more useful stories and practices to

emerge, the power of these governing contexts needs to be acknowledged and challenged.

Data

* Discursive practices:* Ways of acknowledging the place

of power and status quo* Respect

* Transparency* Systemic ways of talking

* Reflexivity* New or emergent stories

* Means of recording the practices or the stories

Ways of speaking of the process and its fruits* Agreements

* A Plan* PublicTalk

What count

as data?

What do data count

as?

Atomic" or "Daisy" Model of research

Pearce & Walters 1996

• The Action Research Spiral (Elliot 1980) shows the movement in the process - not necessarily a feedback loop as one might try to create and examine in systemic therapy, so much as a study of a series of events: take action - examine affects - evaluate outcomes and processes - plan next action - take next action – and so on.

Relationships in words

• Participatory Action Research

• Collaborative Action Research

• Co-operative Action Research

• Community-based Action Research

• Educational activism of Paulo Friere (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth. Penguin.

• Hearing Voices Network – Asylum magazine• Paranoia Network• “Talking about gender, race and class” Elizabeth Frazer

in RESEARCHING LANGUAGE: ISSUES OF POWER AND METHOD by Deborah Cameron, Elizabeth Frazer, Penelope Harvey, M B H Rampton, K. Richardson ROUTLEDGE 1992