Hi Sue and others
I agree with your 'complaint' about people doing all kinds of work -
especially evaluative work - and claiming it as action research. I
encounter the same thing here too.
A friend of mine, Eileen Piggot-Irvine, has drawn up a three-stage AR
cycle in which the first stage is termed 'reconnaissance', the
second 'intervention' and the third 'evaluation'. Her reconnaissance
phase could be seen as an evaluation study (the first step in what
psychologists would term a pre-test/post-test study). In that phase, you
gather data on your situation by the usual plan, act, observe, reflect
cycle. Some people don't take that any further - an example may help. If
one of our staff is told to carry out an investigation into why students
drop out of class, they'd probably follow these steps: observe (there's a
retention problem; reflect (what can we do about it?) plan (to carry out a
questionnaire or interview of dropouts); act (do the intervention). The
data collected would constitute the END point of an evaluation study (or
the end of the reconnaissance phase in Eileen's model).
The next stage, which would take the evaluation further and make it action
research, would be to observe the results of the intervention, reflect on
common themes (if any), plan to try out a possible solution or solutions
that might encourage the students to stay on, and put this/these into
practice. Etc, etc...I've found the Bath group's questions around 'act in
the direction of a solution' really helpful when taking this kind of
inquiry forward. But it's REALLY frustrating to find people who do only
the first phase (reconnaissance) claiming the work as AR when they don't
work, either individually or collaboratively, to improve their situation.
Makes you wonder why they bother doing the research in the first place,
except that some, I guess, are faced with 'producing' a piece of research
for a variety of reasons and go through the motions, then claim that the
work was AR. I might be wrong, but I've seen this happen a few times
now. It may or may not replicate what you're talking about, Sue. I think
this slackness can give AR a bad name.
Thanks for the response to Robyn's post and for sharing your thoughts here.
Warm regards
Pip
|