Action research as a professionalizing strategy: issues and dilemmas

Abstract

This paper identifies the need for a debate about the appropriateness of action research for nursing as it seeks to achieve the status of a research-based profession. It also identifies a related need to inform such a debate by bringing together three sets of writings that are not normally united in the nursing research literature-those of action research, organizational culture and professionalization. In nursing, as in education, action research is being deployed as part of a professionalizing strategy, since amongst other things it seems to offer a means of developing reflective practitioners and of producing knowledge for practice. The increasing popularity of action research amongst nurse researchers suggests that it is seen to reflect the attributes to which nursing aspires as a profession, including a concern to realize humanistic values. Action research was embraced by the teaching profession before nursing, and nurse researchers are increasingly drawing on the ideas of influential educationalists in defining action research as an emancipatory strategy and a form of collaborative enquiry rooted in reflective practice. This paper argues that in the managerialist context of the British National Health Service action research may be reduced from a participatory methodology into a method for getting people to collaborate with managerial goals and internalize the values of the corporate culture. The danger is that in the name of reflective practice nursing work may become increasingly individualized. The challenge for action research in nursing is how to respond to this dilemma, and this may require looking critically at the managerial values underpinning the NHS reforms and at the organizational context in which action research strategies are deployed.