a family which sometimes argues and falls out, whose members may at times ignore or wish to dominate others, yet a family which sees itself as different from other forms of research and is certainly willing to pull together in the face of criticism or hostility from supposedly 'objective' ways of doing research." (p. xxii).

I am sorry that you have to go through this situation. What you have experienced here is an academic push out against action research . I have encountered the same kind of hostility at first and was able to push back and had action research accepted as a mandatory course in my program. What gave it more credibility is the fact that my students were engaged in action research in their schools and doing excellent work. We received a lot of accolades for pushing high school students and even raising their scores on the state tests. The outcome validity did it.

In my previous email about action research in India, I was thinking about some of the successful economic activities that have taken place there and whose success was attributed to participatory styles of work e.g. , Bhomi Seena, micro lending etc. There is even a recent article by Thelma R. Paris, Abba Sinch & al. (2008) Assessing the impact of participatory research in rice breeding ...A case study in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Another article by Dyer, Choksi & al. (2002) Democratizing teacher education research in India. Those are some of the activities I was alluding to. I was little aware of the academic hostility to action research. And again I am not surprised. This is not something exclusive to India. It is all over the place. Think of the advent of interpretive research when the positivistic paradigm dominated the sciences.

My sense is that action research is still a novelty and people may not have an idea of what it is. The banking concept of education is well alive. Even for those doing action research I am sometimes surprised to see how narrowly it is defined. There are articles that only see action research "as short sighted consulting, seems to argue that one approach is the true form of action research or traces action research back through just one discipline stream to one set of founding (usually masculine) authorities." (Reason et al. 2007, p. xxiii).

I have written an article soon to be published in the Action Research Journal where I discuss action research as critical pedagogy. This paper addresses some of the concerns you have raised about the fine details of action research.

Action research is value-driven, self-reflective. We do not pretend to be objective. Why would one worry about objectivity when there is no objective definition of he concept of objectivity. In a post positivistic era, it makes sense to be real, respect and recognize how emotions and values influence our research. And I also love the McNiff and Whitehead concept about "values negated in practice".

I am glad you met Jack who I never met but whose work I admire. But last but not the least you talked about imagination which has become my obsession for the past five years. Teaching school administrators soon to be I impress upon them that to truly be a school leader one has to be imaginative. I focus on three elements: imagination, creativity and innovation. I have been studying the work of Maxine Greene at the Lincoln Center in New York. YES!!! We need a lot of imagination in action research.

It is not a question of addressing whether they are doing action research or participatory research. I believe the problem is that we here do not understand the finer details of action research. I am going to try to put it very simply and above all please appreciate I am not being mean or petty.

• The problem is that most researchers or persons carrying out a study do not understand action research is not like ‘traditional research’ but it is and should be carried out to make things better. Action research should be an attempt towards improvement. Research here is done in the sense of a study not to build a good community.

• Another detail most researchers forget that action research is a value driven research. Why one is doing what one is doing is important…. What are the values that are negated in practice….This is not to say that we here do not consider are values, principles and morals as important. We have a heavy dose of them at all times… I do not know why we but we believe that values and emotion are a separate part of our lives and that values should not be involved in our research…just like our emotions. They are a private part of our lives not to be drawn on or expressed at work.

• Then two of Winter’s (1989: p. 43-65) ‘six principles of AR’… a reflective and dialectic critique. I have rarely heard of reflective and dialectic critique used in action research here. I have not seen the art of reflection carried out in the research context. Action research is not conducted keeping in mind what Ghaye (1998) identifies as ‘self reflective spiral’ and creation of a ‘personal’ living theory . A dialogue between the teacher and student, a senior and a junior is still unusual. According to the traditional Indian model of education, knowledge is dispensed in a vertical and authoritative way ( ‘ banking style , Freire, 1970 ’ ). In such a system, the teachers are the only agents of legitimate knowledge and they impose it on their pupils. The question of dialogue and negotiation does not arise. Both these are not drawn on seeing that we do not consider these important aspects of research. Even though we are the worlds largest democracy it is difficult for us to follow democratic principles which are an important aspect of an action research

The problem is everything has to be conventional and long-established if it is innovative then it is not proper and thus may not be accurate. I was lucky to have met Jack and I really mean it when I wrote the following lines….

• We in truth very rarely carry out a qualitative research it is more often than not quantitative research. It is traditional. I think I was very lucky to have met and worked with Philip Chambers my DOS and Tony Ghaye. For if I had not met them I too would have, in spite of my abilities, carried out a research without the deeper understanding of it. My work would have been dead, lifeless and clichéd. One more of Winter’s Principles…the role of risk in Ar.. If I had not taken the risks that I did my work would have been clichéd. It would have been passé. Which makes me reflect on something which I believe is never discussed when doing AR….the role of Imagination.

I think imagination allows people to think of things differently. I believe it is the capacity that allows a looking for alternative realities. I am not referring to ‘castles in the air’. I without doubt believe in clear and in-depth thinking. Imagination is that something which allows us to move from taking limited decisions to taking greater risks. It is that something which when we are faced with a practical problem allows us to think of a solution and move on to doing something about it. Elliot (1991) suggests that it is better to take a calculated risk of getting it wrong, and then modifying one’s action retrospectively, than not doing anything at all or not doing anything about the problem until one has fully understood it.’ I think Dickinson has but it very finely when she wrote: