Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

ACTION RESEARCH AND RADICAL CHANGE IN SCHOOLS 97
researchers are in the position of negotiating their research question in relation
to circumstances, opportunities and the predilections of funding sponsors.
Nevertheless, this is not an easy thing for teachers to do without previous
research experience. If PALM had been a project whose focus was on
the participating teachers’ professional development rather than research
this would not have mattered very much; but PALM set out to generate
knowledge about the kind of pedagogy with IT that would enable pupils to
become autonomous learners. Within this broad frame teachers needed to
be able to focus down on some particular aspect.
We did not suggest or impose any questions, which meant there was a
problem in identifying a question from a position of inexperience, so we
suggested starting with a broad area of interest such as the use of a piece of
software, the interactions of a particular group of pupils, or a particular
lesson. Research for many teachers began, therefore, without a research
question, the project’s theoretical position being that the question would
emerge for each teacher as a result of progressive focusing as described by
McCormick and James (1988: 219). For many, this was, in fact, the case. The
analysis of data brought into focus issues of real concern that could be followed
up and explored. The project officers played a crucial role by sharing
in the analysis and discussions from which these issues emerged. However,
an issue or focus is still not a research question. There remained the difficulty
that a focus needs to be turned into a question, or made problematic,
before it becomes a fruitful field for research. Without this, research can
easily degenerate into a bland process of confirming the already known.
At the beginning of our third term, after six months’ work, some teachers
had identified research questions to which they genuinely wanted to
find some answers; others had identified a research focus of broad interest,
but had yet to uncover its problematic nature in order to give their research
real direction; and a few remained unquestioning and unfocused. Our role
was increasingly one of injecting ideas into the debate, stimulating reflection
and indicating possible problems. One strategy was to raise teachers’
awareness of the problematic nature of learning by putting forward questions
drawn from the literature relating to autonomy in learning. Most were
now familiar with research techniques and confident in the use of computers,
so that the issue of autonomy could now come to the forefront without
constituting a third innovation. The implications of autonomy in learning,
challenging many traditional notions of good practice, were of sufficient
intellectual interest to raise many questions relating to practical action.
Research issue two: the analysis of data
Analysis of data proved much more difficult for the PALM teacher–
researchers than we had anticipated. The first few times we returned
transcripts of tape-recordings of children’s group work to their teacher we