ACTION RESEARCH AND THE REFLECTIVE

TEACHER
 Action inquiry is unlike this traditional approach to
research. The political context is crucial.

One of the first starting points should be an analysis of

the constraints on ones action.

It’s purpose is not the generation of reports, articles or

books and the problems; nor is it about the advancement
of once professional career through publication-although
this maybe important o the researcher.
 The teacher as researcher is tough-minded and
thoroughly professional.

In the same vein, the main problems of teaching and

curriculum are the twin problems of authority and
emancipation.

The goal is not only to emancipate practitioners but to

allow such as strategy to empower students so that they
are emancipated as learners.
 Research yields knowledge. Yet knowledge as
instructions is merely a rhetoric of conclusions – a
rehearsed set of authoritative statements.

Research into teaching will yield up new curriculum

knowledge in the same way that research by
mathematicians and sociologists provides a basis for
teaching those disciplines

Applied research is such a conception of teacher

inquiry; it suggests that not only will practitioners learn
from such a course of action, but students will likewise
be enlightened.
 Research can be undertaken by reactive methods such
as observers, questionnaires, interviews, dialogue
journals, or through such non – reactive techniques as
case studies, field notes, logs, diaries and etc.

Arguing for action research as cultural innovation.

Elliott (1991) envisages transformative possibilities for
the culture of teaching and teacher educators. With this
view in mind, Elliott explains the role of action
research as creative response of resistance to the
enforced technical rationality underpinning present
government education policy, within the context of the
National Curriculum and teacher appraisal.
CONCLUSION!
 School will serve as centres for curriculum inquiry to
the extent that they achieve a true understanding of the
nature of their curriculum problems and foster the ideals
of emancipation, participation, and reflection on practice.

Part of the solution is financial; it would cost to allow

teachers time to do inquiry work. Part of the answer is
ideological. That is, teaching is about instruction and not
inquiry.

The task of teacher in onerous. The present situation

would seem to suggest that a strengthened school-college
partnership should be undertaken in which collaboration
may be started.
 Three prescriptive suggestions: first, school practitioners
need time and resources to engage in practitioner research.
Can ways and means be found to redirect current
expenditure on educational research, particularly at school
district level, to allow for support in addressing these major
constraints so that curriculum may be improved at local
levels? Second, action research writers particularly second-
order university facilitators, need to have ongoing
involvement in action research projects if they are to be
credible speakers; the gap between meta-theory and practical
theory is too large. Third, action research writers should
make a sustained effort to publish and disseminate their
work abroad in order to overcome the transcontinental
curriculum ideological divide.