Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

24 ACTION RESEARCH
Socio-cultural theories of learning also shed useful light on the process
of collaboration in action research. For example, Lave and Wenger’s (1991)
analysis of communities of practice as sites for ‘legitimate peripheral
participation’ models the process of learning through joint activity alongside
expert role models rather than through overt instruction. Although the
notion of experts and novices at first appears to imply inequality, the
process as described by Lave and Wenger is mutually respectful. In his later
book, Wenger (1998) analyses the characteristics of a productive community
of practice as involving: a ‘joint enterprise’, which is negotiated and for
which all partners are mutually accountably; ‘mutual engagement’, which
involves diversity between the participants but a commitment to doing
things together; and a ‘shared repertoire’ of stories, artifacts, discourses and
concepts, which are built up over time and engender a sense of community
– for example through laughing with each other over shared memories
(Wenger 1998: 72–85). Wenger, too, emphasizes the inevitability and often
desirability of disagreements and stresses that sometimes these can be
accepted and tolerated rather than being the subject of negotiation,
depending, of course, on the seriousness of the disagreement and whether
or not it has the potential to undermine the joint enterprise. In analysing
the tensions arising from cross-national collaboration and our resulting
inter-cultural learning in a European project, Pearson and I used Wenger’s
model of a community of practice as an analytical framework (Somekh and
Pearson 2002).
Social justice and democracy
No research is ever neutral, but action research because it embodies an
imperative for change is always explicitly value laden. Noffke (1997) begins
her review of action research literature with a quotation from Martin Luther
King, deliberately adopting a political stance oriented towards social justice,
while acknowledging that, for some action researchers, the main impetus is
professional and for others personal. Her three categories are not, of course,
mutually exclusive and because all action research is rooted in aspirations
for improvement it always has an inescapable moral purpose. What varies
greatly is the extent to which action researchers engage explicitly with the
larger political structures that play a part in shaping local action. The sites
of struggle in contemporary society such as gender and social class, ethnic
identity and sexual orientation, are inscribed in larger patterns of the global
economy, multi-national enterprises, mass communications media and
international agencies. Action research takes place in local contexts, involving
individuals and groups working together to improve aspects of practice;
but the day-to-day experience of those groups and the action research