Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

ACTION RESEARCH FOR ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 127
teachers and researchers in higher education, who brought with them a
wide range of knowledge and experience. At the end of my time co-ordinating
INTENT and its extended network, I found myself part of a broad
network of researchers in the field of IT in teacher education who have been
an important support group in the development of my work ever since.
Reflecting on INTENT now, I think one of its main strengths was in
broadening conceptions of action research. It showed that action research
can be powerfully adapted to fit different contexts. Although very different
from the focused work that an individual, or partnership of insider and outsider,
can achieve in a contained setting, such as a classroom, action
research across a whole organization can provide a broad structure for largescale
collaborative effort while also embracing and supporting many small
and diverse action research mini-projects. The key is to allow those who
wish to participate to make research contributions that fit their own values
and needs, rather than constraining colleagues to fit into a tightly defined
template. Another key is to involve individuals at different levels in the
organizational hierarchy working in partnership, each carrying out action
research at their own level, so that barriers to innovation identified at ‘grassroots’
or middle management level can be addressed by exploring possibilities
for changes to structures (e.g. role designation, room allocation and
designated time-frames) at senior management level. INTENT also reinforced
my understanding of management as a moral activity involving
decision making that affects the lives of many people (staff and students in
this case). The core values of action research, which include respect for all
participants, sensitivity to culture, support for risk taking, honesty and
openness, and intellectual engagement to try to understand human and
social processes, ensure that managers remain morally vigilant and resist
the temptation to exercise power thoughtlessly in order to get things done
quickly.
Looking back, it is also possible to identify things that went less well
and that I would want to manage differently if I were to work on a similar
project today. I think that, despite INTENT’s rhetoric of taking into account
organizational culture, I did not fully understand the implications of this
for the way the project was managed. I focused on the way in which organizational
culture influenced the relationships between the five TEIs and
their willingness or not to engage in research. It is only when returning
now to read much of the data again that I realize that organizational culture
also strongly influenced the way in which organizations worked with me as
co-ordinator. It has become very clear in the intervening years that the way
in which universities and further education colleges use IT in teaching is
significantly different from the way in which it is used in schools. In retrospect,
I think that Liverpool, as a polytechnic, embarked on INTENT with
more of an ‘HE-focused’ than a ‘school-focused’ approach. An important
purpose for effective use of IT at Liverpool was the development of learning