Tackling a lingering infirmity: On the nature and warrant of action research in education

Abstract

The BERA initiative on promoting Close-to-Practice (CtP) research raises new challenges for action research, particularly as uncertainties about the standing and rigour of action research were expressed in the report of the education panel for the 2015 Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the United Kingdom. The work of tackling these challenges is essential in advancing CtP research, and it discloses, in turn, new possibilities. In this paper we review some pioneering developments in action research and analyse the difficulties it has experienced in securing parity of standing with other forms of research. We argue that action research is more than, and sometimes other than, a social science. We seek to show that if action research is to be recognised by credentials that are its own, and judged by criteria that are proper to it, not only does it lose any lower standing. Rather, it becomes a major pathway, with deep roots in the critical traditions of Western practical philosophy, through which the defining purposes of education itself, as a distinctive human practice, are ascertained and affirmed, pursued and appraised.