Action Research

In section 2.4.2, I explained that Heron and Reason’s (1997) theoretical framework is underpinned by a ‘participative worldview’ (p.275), where by engaging in dialogue and being open with others, we might find ways forward when confronted with uncertainty. The uncertainty in this case is in the interface between theory and practice. I explained that their theoretical framework is positioned within an emergent context. Through participating in critical reflection and action we might gradually come to acknowledge different ways of knowing. This focus on a participant worldview, emergent realities and reflection and action influenced me toward adopting an action research strategy. Action research:

…seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people (Reason and Bradbury, 2001:1).

Wellington (2000) locates action research within the broad field of practitioner research and notes that it involves a teacher/practitioner ‘studying,

researching into or intervening in his or her own practice, setting or system’ (p.21). McNiff (1988) defines action research as a ‘form of self-reflective enquiry…that actively involves teachers as participants in their own educational process’ (p.1) and suggests it performs three roles. It can be used to question pre-existing practice through encouraging critical reflection,

enable dialogue between practice and research or generate new knowledge through the process of reflection and dialogue amongst practitioners (McNiff, 1988). Action research is by nature interventionist, in that new ideas are introduced for the purpose of engaging practitioners in discussion, critical reflection and consideration of ‘what might be’. It is:

…about finding ways to open ourselves to different sorts of realities. The Western mind is hugely individualistic, and that individualism drives the frenzied consumerism that is Western capitalism, with terrible consequence for the majority human world and the more than-human world. Maybe action research could explore how the Western mind can open itself to a more relational participatory experience (Reason, 2006:199).

Action research is an appropriate research strategy for my study because it supports me in considering whether it is possible to integrate innovative environmental pedagogies into practice. In particular I consider action research appropriate on two counts. Firstly, action research recognises that there is a disjuncture between academic research and practice (Reason, 2006). More-so, it seeks to unveil and address the gaps between rhetoric and reality and:

…is concerned with how we make sense of experience and accounts, and how we link these with a wider field of scholarship. It is concerned with the congruence of our theories and our practice (Reason, 2006:189).

It is this congruence between the ‘rhetoric’ of innovative environmental pedagogies and the ‘reality’ of practitioners’ views and beliefs that I wish to explore. Secondly, action research strives to redress the balance between rhetoric and reality by encouraging practitioners to influence the development of knowledge. It seeks to generate knowledge through reflective practice and in so doing draws attention to the significance of practitioners’ voices

(Gayford, 2003). It is concerned with the ‘primacy of the practical’ (Heron, 1996b:41) and starts ‘from the idea that creating knowledge is a practical affair’ (Reason, 2006:188). Adopting an action research strategy enables me

to give voice to those practitioners within adult community education who have traditionally been marginalised within EE literature. It has encouraged me to consider:

…how we can help articulate voices that are not being heard. How we can draw people together in a conversation that is not taking place (Reason, 2006:198).

Importantly, within action research part of the process of giving voice involves creating communicative spaces (Kemmis, 2001) where practitioners can come together to critically reflect on how they make meaning of phenomena. It is this drawing together of people that is a central element of action

research, the focus being as much on collective as individual inquiry (Reason, 2006). This privileging of collaborative investigation influenced me towards including cooperative inquiry meetings (Reason, 1994). I discuss cooperative inquiry meetings, as well as other methods of data collection, next.

3.1.4 Methods

Reason (2006) suggests that action research is:

…a participative and democratic process that seeks to do research with, for, and by people; to redress the balance of power in

knowledge creation; and to do this in an educative manner that increases participants’ capacity to engage in inquiring lives (p.189).

My research investigates whether innovative environmental pedagogies can be integrated into practice and so engages with and explores the beliefs and experiences of eleven practitioners. To support my research aim and

methodology I have used interviews and cooperative inquiry meetings for the purpose of data collection as both methods allow for practitioners’ beliefs and experiences to be heard and contribute to redressing the ‘balance of power in knowledge creation’ (Reason, 2006). In this section I justify why I focus on these two methods before providing a detailed explication of the research process.

3.1.4.1 Interviews

Interviews are more than a conversation (Denscombe, 2003). Interviews have a focus. They seek to provide an in-depth insight into a research area (Wolcott, 2001). Denscombe (2003) suggests interviews afford research participants the opportunity to ‘speak their minds’ (p.167) and so represent a portal through which we can generate an understanding of our fellow human beings. They give research participants a ‘voice’ (Wellington, 2000:72) through a process of dialogic exchange that invites respondents to express themselves and to share their experiences, views and beliefs (Clover et al, 2010). Interviews then accord with the intention within an interpretivist

methodology and action research approach to privilege practitioners’ voices. The degree to which research participants’ voices are privileged depends on the type of interview. Denscombe (2003) makes the distinction between structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews. Structured interviews require stringent adherence to pre-determined set questions that are asked in a specific sequence. The structured interview is ‘like a questionnaire that is administered face to face with a respondent’ (Denscombe, 2003:166) and for this reason is more appropriate for the collection of quantitative data, than for enabling participants’ voices to be heard (Bassey, 1999). Contrastingly unstructured interviews have no pre-determined questions. Emphasis is placed on the research participants informing the agenda and themes for discussion. Although they enable participants’ voices to be heard, they are potentially problematic because of the vast array of topics that might emerge during discussion and so they can lack focus. Semi-structured interviews, reside between these two contrasting positions. They use a list of themes or questions, yet semi-structured interviews also embrace flexibility by

accommodating variation in the wording, range and order of questions

(Bassey, 1999). On the one hand they recognise a focus within research and provide a structure for comparability when analysing the data (Locke et al, 2004) and on the other ‘they lend themselves to in-depth investigations, particularly those which explore personal accounts of experiences and

of new ideas not previously identified by the researcher. For this reason, I decided to use semi-structured interviews.

3.1.4.2 Cooperative Inquiry Meetings

Kemmis (2001) posits that the forming of democratic and participative

communities of inquiry is fundamental within action research, stating ‘the first step in action research turns out to be central: the formation of a

communicative space’ (p.100). Accordingly, within my research I carried out three ‘cooperative inquiry’ meetings when practitioners came together and collectively discussed the integration of innovative environmental pedagogies. Cooperative inquiry meetings strike accordance with my interpretivist

methodology because they are founded on the assumption that participants have diverse views on reality and it is through dialogic exchange within group settings that differences of opinion can be explored and understood. Gayford (2001) suggests that the process of drawing people together and of

encouraging dialogue between practitioners, aids reflection and action. It promotes peer learning and enables a forum to be developed where research participants can share their thoughts, reflect on common concerns and

through discussion, contestation and reconciliation reveal new meanings and understandings (Davis et al, 2009). Importantly, such communities of inquiry are underpinned by the premise that ‘practitioners know the context in which they are working and have a collective fund of knowledge and practical

experience’ (Gayford, 2003:132). As with other forms of action research then the primacy is on the practical (Heron, 1996) and it was this practical

knowledge and experience that I wanted to unveil within my research.

3.1.4.3 Triangulation

Involving semi-structured interviews and cooperative inquiry meetings within my research contributed towards methodological triangulation in that I was able to compare the data produced by the two methods (Wellington, 2000). This helped corroborate my findings. During the cooperative inquiry meetings for example, various practitioners problematised innovative environmental pedagogies because of concerns over neutrality. The follow-up one-to-one interviews enabled me to corroborate these concerns and further explore why

innovative environmental pedagogies challenged their beliefs on remaining neutral in education.

To substantiate triangulation, I had also intended to include documentary evidence by asking each practitioner to write a short narrative (Evelyn, 2004). The written narrative was to be completed at the end of the third cooperative inquiry meeting and would include accounts of each practitioners’ experiences of the research and their considerations on innovative environmental

pedagogies. Despite several reminders, only four practitioners provided narrative accounts and because participation in my research was voluntary I did not feel I could press others for the data. Due to the incompleteness of this data set, I did not include it within my research. I referred to this data set, though, during the semi-structured follow-up interviews with the relevant practitioners as this provided useful background data for further discussion. Additionally, I referred to the teaching resources which various practitioners provided during the course of the research. However, as with the short

written narrative, not all practitioners provided examples of teaching resources and this is why I only used them as background data. I have further engaged with the process of triangulation by member-checking my data. Wellington (2000) asserts that ‘triangulation can be achieved by checking with individuals that your interpretations match and accurately reflect their views and attitudes’ (p.25). Thus following the semi-structured interviews and cooperative inquiry meetings I member-checked transcriptions with each research participant. I will return to the subject of member-checking in the section on

trustworthiness. Next, I describe the stages in which I collected the data.