Jack.WHITEHEAD's blog

Bob prompted me to develop my suggestion for the ALARA visioning activity for the item "actively working to make a contribution to the world and locally" so here goes.

My initial attraction to action research some 30 years ago was that it appeared to be the only form of research at the time in which the researcher could explore the implications of questions of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' I began my action research programme at the University of Bath in 1973 to see if I could rectify a mistake in the dominant view of educational theory. This mistake was in thinking that the practical, value-charged principles I used to explain my educational influence in my own learning and in the learning of others were at best pragmatic maxims that had a first crude and superficial justification in practice that would be replaced in any rationally developed theory by principles with more theoretical justification. Paul Hirst, one of the early proponents of the mistaken view of educational theory acknowledged this mistake in 1983.

After the Groningen Congress on standards and ethics I agreed to convene the 2006-7 Practitioner-researcher SIG e-seminar for the British Educational Research Association on WHAT STANDARDS OF JUDGMENT DO WE USE IN EVALUATING THE QUALITY OF THE EDUCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATIONAL THEORIES WE ARE CREATING AS PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHERS? You can join the conversation at:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=emotional-literacy&A=1

and access the archives at:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/archives/bera-practitioner-researcher.html