Abstract
Action research began as an ambitious epistemological and social intervention. As the concept has become reified, packaged for methodology textbooks and professional development workshops, it has degenerated into a cure that may be worse than the disease. The point is not the trivial one that action research, like any practice, sometimes shows up in cheap or corrupt forms. The very idea that action research already exists as a live option is mystifying, distracting us from the deep challenge that action research ultimately represents. Though Joseph Schwab is sometimes credited as a forerunner of action research, it is likely that he would see the new talk of ‘the teacher as researcher’ as indicative of the very epitomization of which he warned. Dewey’s new conception of knowledge, action, and communication—and the vision of the teacher as learner it entails—requires nothing short of a radical rethinking of teaching and inquiry, schooling and teacher education. This essay recalls the promise of action research, exploring its pitfalls, and attempts to get clear on the ongoing challenge it represents.
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- 1.
On the divorce of philosophy and psychology see Lear (1998, 7 and passim).
- 2.
The problem is not merely one of perception. Far too many doctorates are granted in education, many to practitioners seeking only professional advancement but with no real proclivity toward scholarship . On this, see McClintock (2004, paragraphs 26–7). Here and in the paragraph that follows what I say applies especially to the U.S., though parallels surely exist in other national contexts.
- 3.
- 4.
For a colorful use of the trope of bad, worse, and really bad news , see Egan (2008, Chap. 2).
- 5.
I refer to Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Clifford Geertz, and Barbara Ehrenreich.
- 6.
- 7.
Much of what I say here echoes my exploration of the teacher as intellectual in Higgins (2011, Chap. 8). On education as a dialectical conversation about the ends and means of human growth, see pp. 254–71. For implications for teacher education, see pp. 271–78.
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Higgins, C. (2018). Schwab’s Challenge and the Unfulfilled Promise of Action Research. In: Smeyers, P., Depaepe, M. (eds) Educational Research: Ethics, Social Justice, and Funding Dynamics. Educational Research, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73921-2_11
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