Emerging and evolving issues of action research praxis: An Australian perspective

Abstract

In recent times, educational action research in Australia has developed in the context of a variety of initiatives in school-based curriculum development, school-level evaluation, in-service education and participatory decision-making in schools, many supported through Commonwealth and State-funded intervention programs. Since the early 1970s, the responsibility for improvement of the curriculum has rested more heavily on practitioners at the school level than ever before. In response to what was seen as the technicization of action research in the U.S.A. in the 1950s, and also to the more practical British action research initiatives in the 1970s, some Australian educational researchers called for a form of action research embracing a more explicitly and emancipatory impulse (Grundy & Kemmis, 1981a, 1981b; Carr & Kemmis, 1986). Hence, there has been a strong Australian advocacy for a form of action research with an epistemology rooted in critical social science and philosophically aligned to democratic values of participation, collaboration and emancipation. The accumulating experience of Australian action researchers in a variety of projects has increased understanding about the rationale for action research and the directions in which it can be developed. (Brown, Henry, Henry, & McTaggart, 1982; Carr & Kemmis, 1986; McTaggart & Garbutcheon-Singh, 1986). Much of this thinking was consolidated at a National Seminar on Action Research held at Deakin University in 1981. The view of action research which emerged was subsequently developed and refined by