Celebrating the problematics in action research

Abstract

The range of articles in this edition fulfils the aspiration of this journal to invite writers and readers to engage in good conversations about action research. The quality of the papers can be seen in the number which offer stimulating disruptions for readers by challenging some of the popular assumptions that can be held about action research. Writers tackle the gaps between their research plans and their research experiences, showing how positive intentions to improve participation need to be constantly modified as they gain heightened awareness of the complexities of shifting practice. Other papers show the variable benefits of adapting action research approaches to address national education policy changes or question the claimed outcomes from building practitioner research into student teacher programmes. There is a healthy challenge from a Deleuze-inspired paper to the limitations of grounded data approaches. A classroom-based research project examines the practical paradox of using teacher authority to help learners become more self-disciplined, while other papers highlight how movements towards more active, integrated and holistic teaching environments need to be adapted to make incremental and provisional progress. Each paper provides evidence of critical development towards the goal of achieving more socially just practices, as practitioners and participants develop a greater sense of agency to help themselves and others. For example, Stuart’s article, ‘Problematic participation: reflections on the process and outcomes of participatory action research into educational inequalities’ highlights a range of power differentials that are often implicit when academics attempt ‘participatory’ research. Her account examines an international project that aimed to engage Higher Education students in working with groups of schoolchildren to examine their educational experiences. Stuart acknowledges the complex power relationships between academics, their HE students, and the schoolchildren with whom the HE students were researching, and concludes that structural differences cannot easily be erased, but barriers can be reduced if these differences can be acknowledged and articulated. She describes how participating groups were encouraged to devise social activities which enabled the researchers ‘to name and semi-manage the power dynamics present’. This paper is filled with valuable reflective insights from a research team struggling to reduce inequalities, and highlights the tensions of the team in appreciating that they were conducting research with co-researchers and on young people, and Stuart concludes that their work may be considered ‘participatory practice’ rather than ‘participatory research’. This openly reflexive account acts as a meditation on how action research methodology needs to be continually revised and reimagined when attempting to realise our ambitions in the fluid world of research relationships. Continuing the focus on the problematics of participatory engagement, Oosterhoff and Nanda’s paper ‘Participatory action research on alcoholism and bonded labour in times of prohibition in India’ provides a fascinating analysis of attempts to engage EDUCATIONAL ACTION RESEARCH 2022, VOL. 30, NO. 3, 337–341 https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2079823