Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

ACTION RESEARCH AND RADICAL CHANGE IN SCHOOLS 93
possible in collaborations between schools and universities. We drew up a
code of confidentiality at the start which was agreed at the steering group
with the inspectors of the three LEAs and the chair, Ralph Tabberer, from
NCET. The introductory paragraphs included this statement:
The heart of PALM’s work lies in teachers’ investigations of the way
microcomputers can help to build a context favourable to
autonomous learning. It is assumed that teaching is a complex professional
activity and that project teachers are likely to want to
experiment with changes in their classroom organization and their
teaching style. PALM, therefore, needs to establish ground rules for
its day to day work which will ensure honest engagement with,
and open sharing of, problems.
It included guarantees for both teachers and pupils of control over the way
that data relating to their work were made public; of anonymity for pupils
unless they or ‘where appropriate’ their parents had given permission otherwise;
of full recognition of teachers’ authorship of writing and publication
of their work. It also gave head teachers and the LEAs final control of publications
relating to their organization and clarified that the central team
would be reporting formally and informally to MESU and the LEA advisory
teams but ‘these reports will not infringe the ground rules outlined above’.
In terms of outcomes there was a clause stating that ‘wherever possible’
PALM teachers would communicate the outcomes of their investigations
with their school and cluster teams, the central team and the participating
LEAs ‘and more widely where appropriate’. This document was important
as a contract between the central team and the teacher–researchers, clarifying
what was expected, safeguarding teachers’ and children’s rights and
giving the sponsoring LEAs and MESU guarantees of access to information
about work in progress while safeguarding against the project being unintentionally
co-opted into a covert form of inspection.
My own experience in the TIQL project led to the initial structuring of
the project’s work in two strands: research into autonomy in learning to be
carried out by teachers; and research into how best to facilitate this process
by the central team. This was the classic division into first- and secondorder
action research which Elliott (1988) advocated to prevent teachers’
role in action research projects being subverted to that of research assistants
to university researchers. As PALM developed, however, it became clear that
this role was not sustainable. Teachers looked to the project officers to work
alongside them as co-researchers rather than merely acting as administrators;
Bob, Jon and Erica were scarcely out of the classroom and had had no
experience of action research other than what I could provide in a two-week
induction course, so it made much better sense for them to learn to
be action researchers alongside the teachers. The development of a