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To cite this article: Robin McTaggart (1994): Participatory Action Research: issues in theory and practice, Educational Action
Research, 2:3, 313-337
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Educational Action Research, Volume 2, No. 3, 1994
ROBIN McTAGGART
Deakin University, Australia
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Introduction
Fifteen years ago, action research and perhaps even qualitative research
would have required extensive Introduction to a conference such as this. 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 enquiry. 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.
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Though it is by no means uncontentlous, 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, and with business
'trainers', Instructional designers, community development workers and
teachers in Australia. 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 t u m to more substantial
versions of action research, but also to versions that seem to have lost their
way.
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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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The attribution of the notion of action research to social psychologist
Lewln Is somewhat misleading. Some recent historical work by Peter
Gstettner & Herbert Altrichter at the University of Klagenfurt shows that
'action research' did not have its origins In the discipline of social psychology
b u t In community activism. The familiar plan, act, observe, reflect spiral
attributed to Kurt Lewln (1946, 1962) was not the beginning of action
research, even though his biographer claimed that Lewln was the Inventor of
the term (Marrow. 1969). Gstettner & Altrichter have discovered that J . L.
Moreno, physician, social philosopher, poet and the Inventor of the concepts
of 'soclometry', 'psychodrama', 'soclodrama' and 'role play' had a much more
'acttonist' view of action research. Moreno was also the first to use the terms
'Inter-action research' and 'action research'. Moreno had used group
participation and the idea of 'co-researchers' as early as 1913 in community
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which they can learn from their own experience, and make this experience
accessible to others. That Is, action research is not merely about learning, it
is about knowledge production and about the Improvement of practice In
socially committed groups. Two of the ideas that were crucial in Lewin's work
were the ideas of group decision and commitment to improvement A
distinctive feature of participatory action research is that those affected by
planned changes have the primary responsibility for deciding on courses of
critically Informed action which seem likely to lead to Improvement, and for
evaluating the results of strategies tried out In practice (Kemmis &
McTaggart, 1988a,b; McTaggart, 1991a).
hi short, we can say that action research Is a form of self-reflective
enquiry undertaken by participants In social situations in order to Improve
the rationality, justice, coherence and satisfactorlness of (a) their own social
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practices, (b) their understanding of these practices, and (c) the institutions,
programmes and ultimately the society In which these practices are carried
out. Action research has an individual aspect - action researchers change
themselves, and a collective aspect - action researchers work with others to
achieve change and to understand what it means to change. Action research
involves participants In planning action (on the basis of reflection); in
implementing these plans in their own action; in observing systematically
this process; and In evaluating their actions In the light of evidence as a
basis for further planning and action, and. so on through a self-reflective
spiral. In deciding j u s t where to begin In making Improvements, a group
identifies a n area where members perceive as cluster of problems of mutual
concern and consequence. The group decides to work together on a thematic
concern b u t to change things they must confront the culture of the
Institution (or programme) and society they work in.
Action research groups are not always homogeneous In composition.
Most often they Involve people from some work site (like a community
development programme) and a support institution (like a university).
Participatory action research engages people from the academy and the
workplace In an entirely different relationship. For simplicity, I will use the
terms 'academic' and *worker' to label the two groups of people typically
engaged In participatory action research, though it is obvious that both
terms are too narrow for the diversity of agencies and people who collaborate
in participatory action research projects. I make the distinction because it
helps to show the common project of participatory action researchers, as
well as the distinctive tasks they may carry out In their own Institutional and
cultural contexts. It, is also appropriate to add a word of caution: the
distinction between academics and workers must not be taken to imply a
distinction ^between 'theoreticians' and 'practitioners' as If theory resided in
one place and its Implementation in another. Such a view is the antithesis of
the commitment of participatory action research which seeks the
development of theoretically informed practice for all parties involved. The
deliberate mix of people from different work contexts is one way of
problematising the work of all parties and of diversifying the value
commitments people must attend to. Justify, implement and problematise.
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Academics and workers In participatory action research are Joined by a
thematic concern - joint concern about a practical problem and a
commitment to Inform and Improve a particular practice.[2] This practice is
not a narrowly conceived technical activity b u t "any coherent and complex
form of socially established co-operative activity" (Maclntyre, 1981, p. 175)
with the intention "that human powers to achieve excellence, and human
conceptions of the goods and ends Involved, are systematically extended"
(Maclntyre, 1981, p. 181). In this sense, practices like education, fanning,
social work and automobile manufacture are distinguished from the
institutions like schools, programmes and factories which are created to
enable and protect them. This broad view of practice and the location of
practices In historically formed institutions enables us to identify the
common and distinct contributions participatory action researchers must
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make from their different institutional and cultural contexts. Academics and
workers may join forces to improve the theory and practice of education,
social welfare, agriculture and health, usually in the workers' own work
context.
The common project of participatory action research h a s several
aspects. Each participant, academic and worker, must undertake:
• to Improve his or her own work:
• to collaborate with others engaged In the project (academics and workers),
to help them Improve their work; and
• to collaborate with others in their own separate (academic and worker)
institutional and cultural contexts to create the possibility of more broadly
informing the common project, as well as to create the material and
political conditions necessary to sustain the common project and its work.
That is, participatory action research is concerned simultaneously with
changing individuals, on the one hand, and, on the other, the culture of the
groups, Institutions and societies to which they belong. The culture of a
group can be defined in terms of the characteristic substance and forms of
the language and discourses, activities and practices, and social
relationships and organisation which constitute the interactions of the group
(see Foucault, 1973; Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988a). Changing individuals
and culture, action is accompanied by research - the exploration and
'objectlfication of experience' and the exploration and 'disciplining of
subjectivity' - features shared with other qualitative research generally.
T h e C o o p t i o n a n d C o r r u p t i o n of Action R e s e a r c h
The emphasis on the icons of action research by some of its proponents
encourages it to be seen ass a 'technique' rather than a broad church,
movement or family of activities. This In turn makes Invisible the values it
expresses even when they are explicit in the definitions of action research.
We sometimes find the term 'action research' used as the rubric for activities
such as action learning, for example In the work of 'quality circles',
themselves little more than a post-modern expression of Taylorism In the
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guise of the propagation of 'world best practice' (Watklns, 1992). In these
situations, workers, managers and investors alike are coopted into the
value-system of the organisation, and its fundamental purposes as a societal
institution not called into question. The ordinary expectation among action
researchers is the antithesis of that: a fundamental purpose of action
research is to make practices and the values they embody explicit and
problematic.
Current debates about the internationallsatlon of economics express
this very issue. The ideology of 'economic rationalism' denies and refuses
value problematisation and 'guides' not only the conduct of transnational
corporations, b u t governments and their agencies as well. It does so with
Increasing efficacy and pervasiveness. [3] I use the term 'guides' here in
quotes to make a particular point. Economic rationalism Is not merely a
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knowing the world. In 1981 Stephen Kemmis, with the support of the
Australlan^Educatlonal Research and Development Commission, organised
the invitational National Seminar on Action Research. Though we look back
these days on that conference with some alarm at our naivety, some of the
debates foreshadowed issues of importance. We were also right about some
things. One discussion centred on the idea of the idea of learning In action
research. Garth Boomer, fresh from the well-known Language and Learning
project, intent on making action research accessible to teachers, argued
strongly that action research was about teachers learning. To many
participants, that seemed to understate the idea of action research. They
wanted action research to contest other approaches to research, so It could
not merely be about learning in an individualistic and private sense, it had
to be about 'knowledge production'. As the work of Paulo Freire (1982), Budd
Hall (1979, 1981) and Rajesh Tandon (1988, 1989) was already beginning to
show In the participatory research movement itself, it was necessary to
accomplish what we might term a 'paradigm shift' or a 'discursive shift' in
order that people's knowledge and the methods they developed for
understanding their experience might appropriately be respected.
When we see modern technicist versions of action research and action
learning, which are oriented, for example, towards 'quality control" or 'staff
development' with both being very narrowly understood, we understand how
an emphasis on 'learning' denies the fundamental liberatory aspirations of
Moreno's work with prostitutes in Spittelburg, Vienna, at the turn of the
century, Kurt Lewin's work with those dlsadvantaged by race and poverty in
post-war United States, and Reg Revans's (1980, 1982) work in the mines of
Sheffield in post-war England where the term 'action learning" first gained
currency. [4] Nevertheless, it is worth keeping in mind that Lewin was
interested in 'rational social management' and that Revans's work was
mostly conducted with managers. "Workplace learning' too often means
applying routine Invented by others, believing reasons Invented by others,
servicing aspirations invented by others, realising goals Invented by others,
and giving expression to values advocated by others. In contrast, workplace
knowledge production means participation in the praxis of invention and
construction of new ways of working, in the Justification of new ways of
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working and new working goals, and In the formulation of more complex and
sophisticated ways of valuing work, work culture and its place in people's
lifeworlds.
Educator Garth Boomer once described action research as the
"antidote to elsewhereness". It is an apt description because it identifies
action research as a way of combatting the alienation of unrewarding work
and its individualising of discontent. Further, It opens a much wider door to
the collective and introspective critique of the deep sources of our
dissatisfactions - which In turn propel the excessive consumption and
accumulation which typifies Westemism.
Unfortunately the de-moralisation Broudy described is not restricted to
the business world, it has made inroads into the higher education sector as
well, partly at the behest of business Interests, but also because the
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Traditional Criticism
In 1957, action research was criticised by United States educational
researcher Harold Hodgkinson from a perspective formed by the dominant
ideology of the time. He recognised that a 'case for' action research in
education could be made but condemned it with a 'case against action
research' which was presented in two sections, 'method' and 'theoiy'. Under
method, Hodgkinson was sceptical of the rigour of the critique to which
action research had been exposed. Because the action research literature at
the time Included "only three articles of a critical nature", Hodgkinson
concluded that action research must have been accepted "In an unthinking
and passive manner" (1957, p. 141).
According to Hodgkinson, teachers were not familiar with the basic
techniques of research. He thought It significant that they could not even
remember the statistics courses they had taken In college. And he argued
that the teachers' colleges were not very good places to learn how to do
research, because very little research was conducted there. For example, he
claimed that Teachers' College, Columbia, spent only 7% of its budget on
research, other colleges spent only two-tenths of one per cent (In 1945 and
1946). By comparison, the Land Grant Colleges used about 20% of their
budgets for research In the physical sciences. Hodgkinson believed that
teachers could not learn to conduct adequate research because the ethos
and lack of research activity In their training Institutions had failed to give
them the appropriate skills and outlook.
Hodgkinson thought that "research was no place for an amateur" (ibid.,
p. 142), and that because of the professlonalisation of research, many
teachers were afraid to try it for themselves. There was "widespread
ignorance" of "all phases of research procedure" (ibid., p. 142). Teachers and
students read scarcely any of the educational research journals. The blame
lay with the teachers. "Perhaps if students and teachers became Interested
and Involved In 'professional' research, there would be soon no need for
action research" (Hodgkinson, 1957, p. 142). Hodgkinson apparently
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dismissed the possibility that professional research did not (and perhaps
could not) address the problems which teachers found pressing.
The other methodological criticisms of action research advanced by
Hodgkinson were that teachers did not have the time to do it; and that
principals might not be able to sustain the democratic processes needed.
The theoretical arguments against action research used by Hodgkinson
reveal the way in which Its reinterpretatlon led to its lowly status among
professional researchers. Hodgkinson attacked Corey's (1949) notion of
Vertical generalisation' on the ground that the subsequent classes taught by
any teacher would almost certainly not be (statistically) like the class with
which the action research was conducted. In what may have been an effort
by Corey to legitimise action research, he had unwittingly presented it as
amateurish appropriation of the research that professional researchers were
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make education any better. The second was whether these criteria,
appropriate as they may have been for some kinds of enquiry within and
beyond the field of education, were appropriate or relevant to all (or indeed
any) educational research.
We now see criticisms like those of Hodgklnson as easily countered
because of post-Kuhnian challenges to the 'received view' of the natural
sciences and the trenchant criticisms of positivism from both neo-Marxist
and feminist perspectives. This is not to say, however, that ministry
bureaucrats see qualitative research or action research as anything other
than expensive irritations needlessly complicating their efforts at monitoring
and controlling 'systems'. In this view, the articulation of local issues and the
assertion of the dlstlnctiveness and responsiveness of locale is simply error
variance or system noise. One Victorian Education Ministry 'policy- maker'
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What kind of research makes educational and social practice any better
is still an important issue, and is relevant to more modem criticisms of
action research of which I think two are worth engaging: (1) empowerment
and discursive imperialism: (2) reflection, subjectivity and experience.
their avenues for action; and I think that kind of claim is easily supported.
Who these days can promise anyone 'empowerment'? Perhaps there is too
much extravagant language in the discourse of action research, but there is
too much pessimism in the world of its critics. Erica McWilliam (1992) has
recently suggested that "Every paradigm, including historically more trendy
but often disappointing action research, has been revealed to be so fatally
flawed that we dare not remain with our feet firmly planted in one paradigm"
(p. 10). Leaving aside the issue of who has been disappointed, her evidence
for the flaws of the action research 'paradigm' are two pieces, one by Clem
Adelman (1989), which simply emphasised practicality over methodological
purity, and one by Jennifer Gore (1991). As Kemmis (1991) has pointed out
in the article immediately following Gore, these can hardly be viewed as
knockout punches for an activity with its feet already secured in several
intellectual and practical traditions. Experienced practitioners of action
research contest Gore's view, and our own students themselves comment on
the ways in which action research has enhanced their practice, confidence,
knowledgeability and Influence in their worksites. Furthermore, do we really
want to say that all research paradigms are 'fatally flawed'? Should people be
encouraged to believe that nothing the research community has to say Is
justified? Do we want to drive the community Into the arms of those who
have not even thought about these problems?
It is true that critical social science and its most valid expression as
action research claims that It is liberating, emancipatory and empowering for
its practitioners. But these terms need to be relativised as one part of the
many discourses which constitute and contest the ground of action research.
One set of the claims about empowerment come essentially from the
Habermasian theory of knowledge constitutive Interests which argues that
empirical-analytic research and interpretative research do not have an
explicit politics and, because of that, unintentionally establish a hierarchical
relationship between researcher and researched. Action research explicitly
contests that position, though this is not to accept that the issue has melted
away.
It can and has been argued that the discourses of action research can
become a power-play of academics over other workers (Gore, 1991). Of
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course, that is possible, as any learning situation invites the taught to
submit to the authority of a text, practice and way..of relating as a way of
engaging the concrete implications of an idea: 'If I believed the de-schoolers,
what would that mean for me and the people I care about". This risk has
been Identified for years in the action research literature, and is engaged in
concrete practice by anyone who knows anything about action research and
works with others on action research projects. For both teacher and taught
there is a 'hidden compromise', a term used by action researchers in the
HDZ Aachen (Brown et al, 1988). But is the mere possibility of a power play
a reason not t o work with people, people who would regard themselves
patronised by the suggestion that they could not walk away from work in
progress if they were being used or victimised? Do we refuse to believe Helen
Campagna when she asserted and evidenced her claim "I changed - this is
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pedagogy' makes the very mistake Marx and others warned about: the point
is not merely to understand history but to change it - your own as well as
that of others. I think we have to work on our own immediate bit of the
culture if we are to expect anyone to find u s credible. I admit I find that
extremely hard to do. I suspect that's what everyone finds when they begin
to engage in changing themselves.
One interpretation of Ellsworth's (1989) well-known criticism of'critical
pedagogy' is that she has discovered a form of action research. Her
observations of some failings in the use of 'critical pedagogy' are prefigured
in various ways in the action research literature which argues for deeply
engaging participants' life experience and the discursive forms in which they
are expressed. But her observations are important in a more general way
because they do make problematic again the relationship between
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There Is a need to pay closer attention to the ways In which the construction
and reconstruction of Individual Identity and subjectivity Intersects with
changing and reflecting on work, but again these are not exactly new issues
for action researchers to engage (Mas & Groundwater-Smlth, 1988).
Nevertheless, a relevant criticism of the literature of action research is that it
Is still relatively sparse In this respect - there is still too little teachers'
writing, for example. What there is, is too often in the 'fugitive' literature.
This should not be taken to mean that it is teachers alone who should be
conducting and reporting action research, it is a desirable approach for
everyone engaged in any social practice.
An important concern for action researchers is that we still know too
little about how people make use of their own experience and the experience
of others to inform their work, and still less about how tacit knowledge and
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F o r Action R e s e a r c h
Action research makes explicit study of efforts to change and of the ways in
which theoretical discourses inform (or confound) action In context. One of
the most obvious discoveries action researchers make early in their efforts is
that the grand narratives may be useful in providing some concepts for the
relnterpretatlon of personal experience, but that they may quickly be
supplanted. Some, b u t very far from all, of the theory of action research is
grounded In critical social science (not critical theory), but all action research
aspires to authenticity and systematically re-Invents its own discursive,
organisational and practical forms out of the examination of Its own
experience. This is not to say that the concepts of critical social science are
obsolete or do not need extension, nor that its advocates have not recognised
this (Fay, 1988). Unfortunately the debate tends to focus on what words
mean rather than on the nature of the concrete material struggle.
A Colombian Experience
Colombian Orlando Fals Borda discovered a generation ago that the
knowledge production aspirations of the academy did not Inform social
practice and the fight for social justice. He discovered that Informing social
practice required a commitment to reflection among and with those whom
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research was Intended to help. It involved explicit political commitments,
and a new approach to research. Dissatisfied with academic sociology, he left
the National University of Colombia in 1970 where he was professor and
dean, and Joined the peasant movement for land reform in Colombia.
Fals Borda was dissatisfied In three ways: the theory/practice gap in
the practice of the academy; the subject/object divide implicit in doing
research on people rather than with them; and the Cartesian split which
divorced science from consideration of questions of value:
Such problems started with the mortifying discovery that my
university, in its actual condition, could not widerstand adequately
the ever-present theory /practice dialectics. Like many other such
institutions, it remained in an ivory tower learning by rote without
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I had been told to watch out for my values and biases so that a
true scientific attitude would always be respected. No doubt this
well-meant advice took cognizance mainly of the Newtonian
tradition of science and technology based, as is known, on
operational rationality. But as we questioned this rationality from
the ethical and heuristic standpoints... we discovered another line
of reasoning, duly acknowledged by Galileo, Descartes and Kant
themselves, among others, that belonged to another level of
science: that of common people's knowledge based on practical
reason and communicative sociability. (Fals Borda, in press,
pp. 2-5)
When he left the university he joined forces with the participatory action
research movement of the peasant farmers of Colombia. He did not want the
distilled wisdom of methodologlsts, he wanted to learn from people who
actually did political work and found that ordinary people's objectlfication of
their experience through collective reflection was political in instructive
ways. Of course, we can now see that the kind of theoretical work which may
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have informed Fals Borda's thinking was that of the great epistemological
patriarchs, and that this may make a difference to the way in which new
knowledge is Introduced to people to help them understand the possible
causes of their dissatisfactions and perhaps problematlse their current ways
of working and valuing. But perhaps it is just as easy to overestimate the
grand narratives of feminisms, post-structuralisms and post-modernisms as
it is those of the critical tradition.
Fals Borda reported that information gathered systematically by the
peasants of Colombia recovered the history of their struggles. Significantly,
in the light of recent post-modernist and post-structuralist claims to this
idea, he found that the spectre of a "science of the proletariat" based on
Marxist ideas "soon disappeared like a phantom" and was replaced by a local
"theory-ln-action". The peasants "soon discovered that they were gaining
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political clout" (p. 5). Fals Borda indicated that their work had the potential
for a new paradigm for social science: "a more complete, satisfying, and valid
type of science, committed for people's progress" (p. 4). His personal
transitions between political work and the academy combined a sociological
discipline with a political role with new meanings and significances. He
described the role of the new research methodology in these terms:
"Participatory action research assisted in this transition with constant
bearings on science-making with an ideological-ethical orientation".
An Australian Experience
The Aboriginal people of Yirrkala In Northeast Amhemland have been
articulating an Aboriginal conceptualisation of participatory action research
for several years. In a paper with the title 'Participatory research at Yirrkala
as part of the development of YQlngu', Yirrkala Aboriginal teachers Raymattja
Marika and Dayngawa Ngurruwutthun, and Batchelor College Area Lecturer
Leon White summarised their participatory action research as operating in a
context which:
• Makes explicit that our learning /researching community at Yirrkala requires
an environment in which collective responsibility constitutes the main theme
of our work ... so that we contribute to the development of our community
itself.
• Locates our research in a cooperative working community that has got
ownership and control of the work... to bring us to a position where we can
step back from our practice and reflect on the things that we do.
• Is based on an understanding of the fundamentally important role that
negotiation plays in the research process. Our work always requires
negotiation between the respective groups ...so that our Ngalapal [elder
thinking people] are sure we are not doing things for ourselves as
individuals.
• Rewards us through that negotiation by giving us recognition as learners in
our community ... to develop further skills and knowledge from Ngalapal...
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in order to maintain our culture and pass it on to the other learners that will
follow us.
• Give us respect as teachers because we are humble as learners ... and that
we value learning about our Yolngu reality.
• Is built on explicit understandings of reciprocity as expressed by 'bala lilt'...
Bala lili means giving and then getting something back.
• Establish common objectives - our starting point is always to negotiate the
right place to start... The process of establishing our common objectives gets
us to share ideas, critically analyse each other's suggestions from a Yolngu
point of view, and agree to the plan. This helps us and the Ngalapal reflect
on the things that we do before we make new plans, and establish new
directions to go.
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never pretended to be, a panacea for all ills, participatory action research In
its many guises seems a n indispensable part of that process.
Correspondence
Notes
[1] Keynote address to the Methodological Issues in Qualitative Health Research
Conference, Friday 27 November 1992, Deakln University, Geelong, Australia.
[2] The use of the term 'practice' can be confusing. Maclntyre used It In the broad
sense to embrace all kinds of work under the rubric of something like 'education'.
This sense of 'practice' Includes theory, organisation and practice In Habermas's
(1972, 1974) terms and Foucault's (1973) language, life and labour terms
(discourse, organisation, pracUce; language, relationships, activities). Obviously,
the term 'practice' Is sometimes used for situation-specific patterns of deliberate
activity. The context ought to make It clear here in which of these two general
senses the term is being used.
[3] See Rothbard (1988) for an historical and depressing encapsulation of this in the
USA, and Pusey (1991) for Its Australian manifestation.
[4] Revans himself decried efforts to call him the Inventor of the term regarding such
attributions as a sign of profound Ignorance of the history of Western thought
(Revans, 1980).
[5] Though there are many, for example, those done at Deakln University for the
Human Rights Commission by Colin Henry (Henry, 1992a,b: Henry & Edwards,
1986; Henry et al, 1985); Arphom Chuaprapalsilp's (1989) work in nurse
education, our own work in Aboriginal education (Bunbury et al, 1991; Marika et
al, 1992; McTaggart, 1991b); an extensive list in participatory action research
(Fals Borda & Rahman, 1991); In British education the Ford Teaching Project
and several subsequent publications (Hustler et al, 1986, Nixon, 1981); and
others (Alder & Sandor, 1990; Beasley. 1987; Coventry et al, 1984; Kemmis &
McTaggart, 1988b; Victorian Youth Advocacy Network, 1990; Baldry & Vinson,
1991).
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ROBIN McTAGGART
[6] There Is of course a danger of overvaluing the text as an agent of change. For
example. North American educational philosopher Harry Broudy has argued the
Importance of Imagery In leamtng. action and generalisation:
Less attention has been paid... to ... the generalising potential of images, whereby
a highly complex structure can be apprehended directly through an image. The
idea of holiness, for example, Is the theme of numerous works of art and many
theological tracts. Who is to say that gazing sensitively at pictures of the
Crucifixion or the Madonna will not convey the idea of more adequately and
perhaps even more accurately? Acres of words are needed to explicate the Import
of heroism, while one picture; such as the raising of the flag at Iwo Jtma, or a song
such as the national anthem conveys it Immediately. (Broudy, 1987, p. 13)
[7] See Robert PIrsig's brilliant Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974),
essential reading for all aspiring action researchers.
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