Context, Critique and Change: Doing action research in South Africa

Abstract

While this article is located in a specific country, South Africa, the arguments developed are more generally useful for action researchers internationally. The author first discusses the critical importance of the broader context within which any action research project is embedded. Here, the point is to understand the specificity of the local political, research and educational policy climate, and how one's own biography as a researcher is shaped by this setting. Fragments from the author's life, together with three South African action research projects, are then outlined to illustrate these points. The case is then developed for the notion of critique in action research, arguing in effect for the central practical importance of rigorous theory-based projects if action researchers are going to be able to step outside their taken-for-granted reality and push at the edges of their own experiences. This case is supported with reflections on the author's own educational development, shaped over time and grounded in the dialectical play of sociological theories and her empirical texts. Finally, the author considers what all this means for change: for her personal understanding, for wider questions of collective political action and for action research projects. © 1995, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.