Stephen Kemmis

The action research planner

The Action Research Planner is a guide for teachers and administrators interested in improvement and change in their schools. It provides a way of thinking systematically about what happens in school or classroom, implementing critically informed action where improvements are thought to be possible, and monitoring and evaluating the effects of the action with a view to continuing the improvement. Above all, the Planner is designed for school communities themselves (teachers. parents. students. administrators and others) to manage the process of improvement. By using the methods suggested here, school communities can improve not only what they do, but also their understanding of what they do.

Participatory action research and the public sphere

Some action research today lacks a critical edge. This article identifies five inadequate forms of action research, and argues that action research must be capable of ‘telling unwelcome truths’ against schooling in the interests of education. It reasserts a connection between education and emancipatory ideals that allow educators to address contemporary social challenges. It suggests how educational trends in recent decades may have led to the domestication of educational action research, and concludes with three messages about quality in educational action research. It re‐thinks educational action research initiatives as creating intersubjective spaces for public discourse in public spheres.

Action research as a practice-based practice

Action research changes people’s practices, their understandings of their practices, and the conditions under which they practice. It changes people’s patterns of ‘saying’, ‘doing’ and ‘relating’ to form new patterns – new ways of life. It is a meta‐practice: a practice that changes other practices. It transforms the sayings, doings and relating that compose those other practices. Action research is also a practice, composed of sayings, doing and relating. Different kinds of action research – technical, practical and critical – are composed in different patterns of saying, doing and relating, as different ways of life. This paper suggests that ‘Education for Sustainability’, as an educational movement within the worldwide social movement responding to global warming, may be a paradigm example of critical action research.

ACTION RESEARCH IN PRACTICE: Partnerships for Social Justice in Education

This book presents a collection of stories from action research projects in schools and a university. This collection is more than simply an illustration of the scope of action research in education - it shows how projects that differ on a variety of dimensions can raise similar themes, problems and issues. The book begins with theme chapters discussing action research, social justice and partnerships in research. The case study chapters cover topics such as: * school environment - how to make a school a healthier place to be * parents - how to involve them more in decision-making * students as action researchers * a state system - a collaborative effort between university staff and a state education department * gender - how to promote gender equity in schools * improving assessment in the social sciences * staff development planning * doing a PhD through action research * writing up action research projects.

Knowing practice: searching for saliences

Abstract The notion of ‘professional practice knowledge’ has been significant in some recent explorations of the nature of practice and discussions of the development of practitioners and practices. This article begins by outlining ‘professional practice knowledge’ as a window into practice, but suggests that practice has features that cannot be understood just from the perspective of knowledge ‘in the heads’ of individual practitioners. It suggests that practice has a number of extra-individual features that need to be elucidated. These include such features as being formed and conducted in social settings, shaped by discourses, and being dramaturgical and practical in character. Taking these into account yields a richer view of practice, and makes it possible to understand more readily why changing practice is not just a matter for practitioners alone, but a task of changing such things as the discourses in which practices are constructed and the social relationships which constitute practice. The article then offers suggestions about how changing practices might occur through public discourse among different kinds of people associated with particular practices (not just professionals alone), drawing on some of Habermass insights into the nature of public spheres.

What is to be done? The place of action research

Action research concerns action, and transforming people’s practices (as well as their understandings of their practices and the conditions under which they practise). Sometimes we may feel that action research works best when it contributes to our understandings. In this paper, by contrast, I want to explore the ‘happening‐ness’ of action and practice, as they are lived and changed by action research. I want to explore the place of action research in shaping and making history by changing what is done. The central argument of this paper is that, while action research certainly does contribute to theory, it also, and perhaps more importantly, contributes to history.

Research for Praxis: Knowing Doing.

Educational action is a species of praxis in both an Aristotelian sense and a post‐Marxian sense: in the first, it involves the morally informed and committed action of the individual practitioners who practise education; in the second, it helps to shape social formations and conditions for collectivities of people. In this paper, it is argued that, in the context of a profession like education, research into praxis has two main purposes that parallel these two senses of ‘praxis’: (1) to guide the development of educational praxis, and (2) to guide the development of education itself. Some approaches to researching praxis that have emerged in recent years include ‘praxis research’, ‘phronetic research’, ‘praxis‐related research’ and ‘research as practical philosophy’. These approaches are briefly analysed in terms of their ability (or inability) to strengthen and extend praxis. In contrast to earlier approaches to studying practice/praxis, which usually regard practice as an object of study external to the researcher or observer, the practical philosophy approach regards practice and especially praxis as ‘internal’ to the persons and groups whose practice/praxis it is, and as ‘internal’ to the practice traditions which give meaning and significance to a practice like Education. Following this insight, the paper outlines a new view of what it might mean to ‘research’ praxis by studying praxis and practice traditions ‘from within’. It is argued that this can only be achieved by those whose own individual and collective praxis is both their proper work and, at the same time, the focus of their critical investigation. The paper also invites further exploration of the relationships to be found between different kinds of practices and praxes – particularly the relationship between different kinds of research practice/praxis and different kinds of educational practice/praxis.

Researching educational praxis: spectator and participant perspectives

This paper describes two parallel research programmes exploring educational practice/praxis. The first, including a theory of ‘practice architectures’, aims to contribute to contemporary practice theory that views practice from the perspective of a spectator. The second aims to contribute to an emerging (practical philosophy) tradition of ‘researching practice from within practice traditions’ and views practice (and praxis) from the perspective of participants. It is argued that these particular spectator and participant perspectives are complementary. They offer a dual approach to researching educational practice and praxis and allow us (educational actors, educational researchers) to see ourselves as formed by a collective praxis, within which teacher–researchers can aspire to act educationally in the sense of acting for the good for each person and for the good for humankind.

Ecologies of practices

This chapter proposes that a fruitful way to think about practices is to view them as living things. Thought of this way, practices are interdependent with one another, being connected in ‘ecologies of practices’. The key idea underpinning this approach is that practices themselves are embedded in ‘practice architectures’. This approach takes us beyond previous relational and ecological understandings of practices and offers a fresh perspective on the notion of ‘learning practices’. The value of these ideas is illustrated with findings from a current project involving a cluster of schools in rural Australia. This project is examining how practices of educational leadership, professional development, teaching and student learning connect with one another, with each influencing and being influenced by the others.

Education for Sustainability (EfS): Practice and Practice Architectures.

This paper reports some findings from an investigation of educational practice in ten (formal and informal) education for sustainability (EfS) initiatives, to characterise exemplary practice in school and community education for sustainability, considered crucial to Australia’s future. The study focused on rural/regional Australia, specifically New South Wales sites in the Murray-Darling Basin (crucial to Australian agricultural economy, under substantial environmental threat, undergoing significant social and demographic change). The research used and explored new developments in practice theory, aiming to achieve innovative rich characterisations of individual and extra-individual (cultural, discursive, social, material) aspects of practice. The study aimed to derive implications for theory, policy and practice in relation to sustainability and EfS, practice theory, education, and more specifically education for the professions (including the initial education and continuing professional development of educators).