693Carr

On Practice
Jane LaChance I appreciated the discussion of practice, origins in the Greek word praxis which means "informed and committed action" rather than a behavior repeated over and over again. Practice, in the context of specific situation, time and place calls for an individual to take action that is based on understanding of personal knowledge and committment to values. //page numbers needed// Since the individual is the one person who has insight into this, the action research is focused on that person's practice. Reflection uncovers personal assumptions, bias and misrepresentation that become the basis to modify practice and the process continues. The relationship between practice, action and reflection are clear. > It reminds me of my recent experience with my work group because the action, rather lack of action, was based in part, on my personal assumption that the group members would not be receptive to my project. In addition, I was feeling very uncertain about the specifics of my group presentation. After, I became more clear on my presentation and reviewed evidence to support the use of story in group, I set off with renewed practice. In spite of some unexpected problems with our meeting site, I plunged in and the outcome was postive. My practice changed only after personal reflection which is challenging because sometimes it is an uncomfortable process. The community of practitioners is appealing; a collaborative group study of practice using what is described in the article as "language frameworks" which is a reference for evaluation, discussion and dialogue. Where does this actually take place? This article helped me to better understand the significance of practice and relationship to theory in action research. I am wondering about the community that supports this though I realize that it starts with an individual.

On Bias: Basically a Summary.
//Joshua Reyes, 7 May 2007//

I liked the idea of education as a educational science.//page numbers needed// (Education could use an upgrade in status, and right now the term 'science' carries prestige.) It was useful to note that no science, including education, founds itself upon immutable, universal laws. In order for any data to be of meaningful substance someone first has to interpret it. Only after someone has married personal values, biases, and other relationships to the raw data does it become consumable information. Action research nods to the interdependence of interpretation and meaning. In order to observe well, we ought to be knowledgeable about the nature of the observer. It seems a little silly for a researcher to study a group of people and to conclude that the way the individuals of group perceive infromation shapes their actions while ignoring the fact that the researcher is him/herself a person constrained by the same observation. In essense, it is impossible to isolate research in a value-free vacuum of objectivity.

Action research can leverage the socially constrained nature of observation to read cues more accurately (given the context of the group) by deriving meaning from within the society itself. Through use of collaborative methods, action researchers enlist their "specimen" as colleagues and resources, not simply objects of study. This collaboration then affords an opportunity for perceptual biases to mingle. In the process, the researchers' interpretative filters yields to those found in the group. Interpretations that are not useful to the group (hopefully) will give way to those views which are. That is not to suggest that action research is a democracy run by mob rule of opinion. A dedicated action researcher engages in a conversation between the individual and group as well between theory and practice. How one resolves discrepancies between the individual and group, however, is not always especially clear---in general, it will vary from community to community. Indeed, I see the dance between individual and group as central to action research, perhaps more important than theory and practice---since theory and practice are tools meant to serve the individuals of a group, and the group as an individual.

Elliot Frank
C & K begin by indicating that “action research rejects positivist notions of rationality, objectivity, and truth in favor of a dialectical view of rationality. This is a pretty extreme statement. I would argue that a better description is that the latter is of more practical use in most, but not all, of educational research.

I am certainly unwilling to give up on the relevance of elements of rationality, objectivity, and truth, even in the kind of of research that we are discussing. Subjectivity is innate to this kind of research, especially given that mounting research that is able to follow positivist/ scientific precepts may be extremely expensive, too slow and difficult to organize, when less formal research may, in fact, be more productive, and more in tune to the rhythms of normal social change.

So, action research to some extent formalizes the everyday social processes by which process decisions are made in organizations. In doing so, it allows us to take note of these processes, extend these techniques, and allow us a systematic exploration of ways in which we can better mine the knowledge, reactions and feelings of the participants …hopefully more simply (and in many situations more effectively) than “objective” methods, because they utilize ritual, conscious extensions of normal processes of social communication. But C & K seem uninterested in basing this kind of change, or even the choice of direction, on knowledge gained rationally and objectively.

I suspect that I am too much of an “interpretivist” …I do not suggest that “ideas alone guide action”, but to some extent it must. I would not suggest that institutions and practices are not “socially constructed and historically embedded”, but they are also as connected to objective, even technological phenomena in a way like the origin of the proletariat is connected to the steam engine. Marx may have “objected to the view that social reality is determined by objective conditions alone”, but that does not make the objective conditions trivial. Even their methodological remarks are subject to this kind of simplification. Yes, teaching would benefit from a “systematic development of knowledge in a self-critical community of practitioners, but most teachers have little or no interest, or too much cynicism, to be interested in doing this.

I found this article to be rhetorically opaque. The explorations of methodology are interesting, but I’ll take Popper over Wittgenstein any day.