Traces of participatory action research: Reciprocity among educators

Abstract

How is participatory action research sustained, and how are efforts to support it viewed over time? This interview study reports teachers' views about an effort to transform a previously bureaucratic school review process into participatory action research for the improvement of educational practice in a small school. Questions about the reciprocity of relations among the teachers, the principal and a visiting professor are addressed. Postmodernist concerns that the teachers may have been mere ‘dupes’ in the administrative and the knowledge commodification agenda of the principal and academic are allayed by the teachers' views which affirm the value of the collaboration in the enhancement of their educational work. © 1997, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.