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Book reviews

Ann Taket & Wilfred Carr

To cite this article: Ann Taket & Wilfred Carr (1999) Book reviews, , 7:1, 169-176, DOI:
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 BOOK REVIEWS
Educational Action Research, Volume 7, No. 1, 1999

Bo o k Re vie w s

Finding out Fast: investigative skills for policy and development

ALAN THOMAS, JOANNA CHATAWAY & MARC WUYTS (Eds), 1998
London: Sage, in association with the Open University.
376 pp., ISBN 0 7619 5836 3 £48.00 hb; ISBN 0 7619 5837 1 £15.99 pb

Finding out Fast is an edited collection of chapters dealing with different

methods, approaches and stages of the research process. It is presented as
being aimed at those who carry out or use research designed to inform
policies, particularly on development, but much of what it has to say is also
relevant to the research process more generally. The authors share a common
view that policy (and action) have to be thought of in terms of process, rather
than prescription. The book is also a course text for two Open University
courses in their Global Programme in Development Management.
I was keen to review the book for this journal for two reasons: first,
knowing that some of the chapters are by people whose work involves
action research, I considered that it was likely to be relevant to the
journal’s readership, and I was curious to see what insights they would
present to action researchers. Secondly, I am always on the lookout for
books which offer insightful accounts of the research process and the
dilemmas of doing research, and thus provide a valuable resource for
others.
Lying between an introduction and short conclusion, the bulk of the
book is presented in four parts. Part I deals with the conceptualisation
of investigations in relation to policy questions. There are three
chapters: the first (by Stephen Potter & Ramya Subrahmanian)
explores how different policy contexts make it appropriate to formu-
late different kinds of research questions and use different research
methods. The second chapter (by Chris Blackmore & Ray Ison)
discusses thinking about boundaries and boundary setting as an impor-
tant tool for conceptualising areas for study. The third chapter (by
Joseph Hanlon) discusses how the need for results to have an impact
affects the conceptualisation of the research question from the outset.
The remaining three parts all deal with different skills and/or methods,
some relating to part of the research process, others linked to the entire

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process. Part II, entitled ‘Thinking with paper’ covers working with
written materials in two chapters: one on carrying out a literature study
(by Stephanie Barrientos); the other on the interpretation of institu-
tional discourses as evidenced in reports, publicity materials etc. (by
Bridget O’Laughlin).
Part III, entitled ‘Thinking with people and organisations’, is in five
chapters, and focuses on different methods or aspects of carrying out
fieldwork for research. The first two chapters are on people as infor-
mants (by Philip Woodhouse) and using participatory methods (by
Hazel Johnson & Linda Mayoux). The third chapter, by Chris Roche,
covers investigating organisations and their institutional ‘footprints’,
where footprints are to be understood as the effects or ‘marks’ of
where the organisation has been active. The fourth chapter covers the
dilemmas of researching poverty (by Dina Abbott). Finally in this part,
there is a chapter on communicating results (by Joanna Chataway &
Avril Joffe), presented from the perspective that this is not a task that
should be thought of as happening only at the end of a research
project, rather something that needs to be integrated into the design at
all stages from the outset onwards.
Part IV, ‘Thinking with data’ deals with issues closely connected to
the analysis and use of different types of data. There are four chapters.
The first, by Chandan Mukherjee & Marc Wuyts, is on the analysis of
secondary quantitative data. The second, by Geoff Jones, is on the
analysis of financial accounts for different types of organisation. Third,
is a chapter on critical issues in the use of data and the question of
rigour in the situation where particular changes in practice or policy
are being sought – ‘research for advocacy’ in the terms of the author
(Sue Mayer). Finally, there is a chapter on the use of case studies by
Alan Thomas, where the case study approach is presented as a frame-
work within which the use of several different methods may be
combined.
The book is an interesting and stimulating collection of pieces, and for
the most part, written clearly and interestingly. As the introduction and
conclusion highlight, the authors do not share a common theoretical
perspective, and this is one of the book’s strengths. Both realist and
social constructivist perspectives are included, and the conclusion
helpfully identifies these and discusses some of their implications.
Individual authors, however, are not always explicit about the

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theoretical perspective they adopt, and this was an aspect that could
have received more attention.
Throughout most of the book, the material presented is illustrated with
a wealth of detailed and interesting examples drawn from studies
carried out by the authors and others. This is another strength. The
carefully reflective descriptions given by researchers of aspects of their
own work should be a source of insight and stimulation to many. I was
particularly struck by Dina Abbott’s interesting reflections on her
research into the khannawallis (women who make cooked meals for
migrant workers in Bombay), and Stephanie Barrientos’s careful
description of the steps involved in carrying out a literature review in
connection with her research into women workers in agribusiness in
Chile. The examples of how to interrogate quantitative data given by
Chandon Mukherjee & Marc Wuyts are also extremely well explained
and useful. Finally, the careful consideration of the use of case studies
by Alan Thomas also struck me as of particular value to action
researchers.
As an observation rather than any sort of value judgement, the book
does not present the research process in its entirety, nor does it deal
with all the main methods of data collection or analysis. It is, however,
extremely valuable as a complement to other texts, since its selectivity
enables it to treat the issues and methods it selects in some depth. It is
of particular value since many of the issues it deals with are those that
are often not well covered elsewhere.
Though entitled Finding out Fast, the issues discussed are relevant to
all research, regardless of the speed (or lack of it) with which it is
carried out. Indeed some of the examples presented in the book were
not particularly fast pieces of research. Perhaps it is important to stress
that this is not a book that falls into the trap of encouraging ‘quick and
dirty’ research; it gives careful attention throughout to issues of rigour
and validity, while recognising that research often needs to be carried
out to demanding timescales if it is to succeed in informing policy
debate and influencing policy change.
So, in conclusion, I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone
embarking on research or action research. It will not be the only text
that anyone needs, but it certainly reaches some of the parts that others
completely fail to address, and should help those who wish to develop
their research skills to do so reflectively and productively.

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ANN TAKET
South Bank University, London, United Kingdom

The Curriculum Experiment: meeting the challenge of social change

JOHN ELLIOTT, 1998
Buckingham: Open University Press.
208 pp., ISBN 0335 19430 3 £45.00 hb; ISBN 0 335 19429 X £15.99 pb

Anyone acquainted with John Elliott’s work will know that he is Lawrence
Stenhouse’s successor and heir. In reviewing any part of Elliott’s published
work it is, therefore, always important to recognise its unity and continuity
with that of Stenhouse by understanding how Elliott is always trying to extend
and refine his mentor’s work in order to demonstrate its continuing value and
relevance. It is for this reason that Elliott’s work should always be read as an
attempt to answer questions which Stenhouse did not, at the time he wrote,
feel any need to ask but which, in the educational environment of today,
Elliott cannot avoid.
In the course of undertaking this mission, Elliott has become the
principle architect and chief exponent of a distinctive tradition of
educational inquiry which, because of the comprehensiveness of its
scope, can be put to work in the service of empirical research, policy
analysis and theoretical critique. It is thus unsurprising that Elliott has
been able to deploy the Stenhousian ideas and arguments constitutive
of this tradition in at least two different ways. First, it has allowed him
to express an ethically principled and intellectually coherent under-
standing of such diverse matters as the theory and practice of educa-
tion, educational research methodology, teacher education and curricu-
lum development. Secondly, it has enabled him to develop a funda-
mental theoretical critique of many current educational orthodoxies
and reforms such as: the National Curriculum, school-effectiveness
research, competency-based teacher education and ‘objectives’ models
of curriculum development.
It would be an example of ahistorical thinking of the worst kind to
assume that the tradition of educational inquiry that Stenhouse and
Elliott represent somehow emerged ready made from their individual
minds. Indeed, Elliott has himself acknowledged that it has its intellec-
tual origins in the Aristotelian insight that education, like politics, is a
species of praxis: that non-instrumental form of human practice which
is undertaken in order to realise some ethically worthwhile and

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internally related ‘good’. Within this tradition, educational practice is

always understood as ethically principled action constituted by the
values intrinsic to the practical understanding – or ‘practical theory’ –
which permeates the thinking of those engaged in educational pursuits.
From this perspective, improving education, raising educational
standards or enhancing teaching quality is never simply a matter of
increasing the effectiveness of teachers by improving their technical
competencies and pedagogical skills. It is also and always a matter of
developing more reflective teachers by developing their capacity to
reflect, systematically and critically, on the problems they experience
in trying to practice in a more educationally worthwhile way. From
this perspective, ‘improving practice’ always involves teachers
improving the extent to which the abstract educational values implicit
in their own practical understanding of what they are doing are being
realised in the concrete classroom situations in which they work. The
method that Elliott and others have developed to enable teachers to
improve their practice in this way is, of course, action research.
In this book, Elliott brings this tradition of inquiry into critical
confrontation with questions of fundamental contemporary importance
and concern. How is education to meet the challenge of social change?
What kind of curriculum development is needed in a postmodern
society – a society in which social change is rapid, continuous, unpre-
dictable and uncontrollable? As befits the tradition he represents,
Elliott begins to examine these questions by describing his own
personal experience of, and involvement in, the curriculum policies
that have been introduced over the last 30 years. By reflecting criti-
cally on this experience he is drawn to the conclusion that these
policies have failed to eradicate the educational problems they were
designed to solve. And, by drawing on a range of theoretical resources
drawn from political philosophy and social theory, he argues that this
failure is due to the impoverished theory of social and educational
change on which these policies were erected.
The key features of this theory of change to which Elliott draws our
attention are familiar enough. It sees social change as something that
can be rationally planned and implemented through a process of
‘social engineering’: a process in which desired changes are deter-
mined at the ‘centre’ and then disseminated to ‘the periphery’. When
this theory is applied in the context of education, it entails that the

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management and control of educational policy is located in the hands

of national government agencies and thereby formulated in isolation
from the professional cultures of teachers and schools. For this reason,
the only way that the policies can be implemented and evaluated is by
specifying quantifiable and measurable outcomes – usually in the form
of ‘objectives’ ‘targets’ or ‘performance indicators’ – and holding
teachers and schools accountable for their achievement. As Elliott
makes abundantly clear, it is only by first accepting the validity of this
theory of change that ‘school effectiveness’ research can acquire any
credibility or legitimacy and the ‘objectives’ model of curriculum
development can make any coherent sense.
Elliott’s critique of this theory of educational change, and of the
research paradigms and models of curriculum development that inform
it, is far ranging and shows, for example, how the objectives model
assumes a wholly untenable distinction between ‘means’ and ‘ends’
and how school effectiveness research lacks the theoretical or
methodological sophistication that would enable it to distinguish an
effective school from a good school.
Two further aspects of Elliott’s critique are also worth mentioning.
The first is his compelling argument that the ‘social engineering’
approach remains wedded to an outmoded and morally impoverished
view of how education should confront the challenge of social change.
In an advanced, postmodern democratic society, argues Elliott, schools
can no longer pretend that they are preparing their pupils for a predict-
able future. Rather must they equip them with the intellectual and
cultural resources, which will allow them to confront the uncertainties
and anxieties that are endemic to everyday life in a world which is
continuously changing.
The second aspect of Elliott’s critique worth stressing is his demon-
stration of how the ‘social engineering’ theory of social change and
‘school effectiveness’ research that informs it both assume that the
educational ‘system’ can somehow exist independently of the situated
activities of teachers and hence that changing the practices of teachers
is primarily a matter of making changes to those structural features of
the system which determine what teachers can do. Drawing on
Anthony Giddens’s theory of ‘structuration’, Elliott shows how this
kind of deterministic thinking fails to appreciate the dialectical
relationship between the structure of a system and the agency of its

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individual members and so fails to recognise the extent to which teach-

ers themselves shape the structure of the system which shapes their
practice. For Elliott it is teachers, rather than politicians and policy
makers, who are the primary agents of educational change.
From this analysis of the relationship between structure and agency in
education, Elliott concludes that any meaningful change in education
always originates in ‘the reflexive and discursive consciousness of
teachers’ and always necessitates ‘the collaborative reconstruction of
the professional culture of teachers’. This is, of course, a modern
restatement of Stenhouse’s famous dictum, ‘no curriculum develop-
ment without teacher development’ and it provides the starting point
for Elliott’s alternative vision of how education should meet the
challenge of social change. As the title of the book indicates, what is
central to this vision is Stenhouse’s definition of the curriculum as a
set of educational proposals to be tested by teachers in their class-
rooms. Hence, for Elliott, curriculum development should be under-
stood as ‘an innovative pedagogical experiment’ in which teachers, as
action researchers, continuously seek to improve and develop the
educational validity of their curriculum by critically testing and reflec-
tively reconstructing both their pedagogical practice and their practical
understanding of this practice.
In proposing this alternative approach to curriculum development,
Elliott is not simply restating the familiar arguments for adopting the
‘bottom-up’ approach of action research in favour of the ‘top-down’
approach that now prevails. Indeed, he makes it clear that if action
research is to become an effective vehicle for curriculum change, it
will need to revise its theory and methodology in ways which recog-
nise that schools do not exist in a social vacuum. In particular, action
research has to take note of the fact that schools are just one of a
number of interlocking subsystems such that it is only possible to initi-
ate change in schools by initiating changes in the other subsystems to
which they relate. For Elliott this means that policy makers, adminis-
trators, parents and employers should participate in discussions of data
of classroom practice that teachers, as action researchers generate. It
also means that the focus of action research needs to be broadened to
cover the range of practices represented in this wider group. ‘Only in
this way’, he concludes, ‘can the different cultures that shape practices

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within the different subsystems develop a basis of mutual understand-

ing’ (p. 189).
For a tradition of educational inquiry to survive and flourish, its adher-
ents have to accomplish two closely related tasks. The first is to show
how the tradition they represent is able to transcend the limitations of
what has previously been thought and said within that tradition and so
grasp the future possibilities that are available for its own progressive
reconstruction and development. The second is to show the superiority
of their own tradition of educational inquiry over other rival traditions
by showing how it can accommodate to a changing agenda of educa-
tional problems in a way which other traditions of educational inquiry
cannot. In The Curriculum Experiment John Elliott manages to accom-
plish both of these tasks. For this reason it is a book that will be
welcomed by all those who share the ethically principled conception of
education he has sought to advance and who, like him, are opposed to
all those traditions of educational inquiry which undermine and
degrade it.
WILFRED CARR
University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

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