Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

AGENCY, CHANGE AND THE GENERATION OF ACTIONABLE KNOWLEDGE 25
process itself are always embedded in these larger social structures.
What has changed over time is not the inescapable social justice imperative
underpinning action research, whether or not explicitly stated, but
the level of awareness of action researchers about the social justice implications
of their work and the rejection of over-simplistic notions about equity
and emancipation. When I had been working for a year on the PALM
project Melanie Walker came to the University of East Anglia from South
Africa and joined our project team as an adviser. Having just completed a
major study of action research as a means of empowerment for teachers
working in the Bantu education system within the South African political
structures of apartheid, her primary interest was not in if and how teachers
could use computers to help children to become more autonomous learners,
but in whether or not our action research was exploring the social and
political implications of the policy that had put computers into schools in
the first place. Her questions were challenging for me on two levels. First,
they raised my awareness of my own possible collusion in oppressive practices
were I not to address questions of this kind explicitly; second, they signalled
for me the radical differences in our points of view and how these
had been constructed by the social and political contexts in which we had
both worked, first as teachers and later as leaders of action research projects.
Political structures and differences rooted in personal experiences both
need to be addressed explicitly in action research. Whose interests will be
served by the work? What are the hegemonic structures within which it will
be carried out? What are the differences in background and experience of
the different partners and their client groups?
Moreover, my new understandings of the formation and operation of
power within organizations and groups, stemming from the work of
Foucault and Giddens, has increased my understanding of the complexity
of social justice issues. It is no longer sufficient to operate with simple concepts
such as equity, partnership, empowerment and ‘giving voice,’ since
these are what Stronach and McNamara (2002: 156) call ‘political weasel
words’. As Walker points out:
discourses are never closed fields; there are always many ways of
seeing and understanding, some of which accord with dominant,
hegemonic discourses which then appear ‘natural’ and appeal to
‘common sense’. Other discourses challenge the common-sense
view.
(Walker 2001: 12)
So the pursuit of social justice in action research involves keeping open definitions
for the organizing concepts and categories we develop, remaining
sensitive to the different interpretations that individuals bring to words and
actively seeking to identify and respect difference and diversity. It is