Las TIC y los Nuevos Movimientos Globales

It is recognised ignorance not programmed knowledge that is the key to action learning: men [sic] start to learn with and from each other only when they discover that no-one knows the answer but all are obliged to find it. (Revans 1983, p.3)

As I have already outlined, the concept of action research is central to this research. Action research addresses two inadequacies perceived in scientific approaches to social science research: firstly, the difficulties of making people who are not part of research accept the relevancy of research and act on the findings and secondly, the inaccuracy of claims of researcher disengagement (Bunning 1997). In reflecting on

the history of action research in education Kemmis and McTaggart (1988a, p.27) noted:

Researchers hope to overcome the biases and susceptibilities of participatory ways of understanding – so that they can develop a platform from which the world of schooling may be seen as a limited world which may be

comprehended ‘objectively.’ It is a natural consequence of this analytical fragmentation . . . that researchers no longer speak the language of teachers and their students; their concerns are no longer the concerns of teachers.

Action research rests on three central tenets: the natural function of a system is most evident under intentional change; ‘research effect’ is not only inevitable it can be advantageous from the point of view of both action and learning; and, finally, ethical concerns demand that research subjects are not only not exploited but are empowered in the research process (Bunning 1997).

The intellectual roots of action research are commonly traced to Dewey’s (1910; 1926) contestation about the nature of educational enquiry and Lewin’s (1946; 1952) approach to uniting theory and practice (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988a)57. For Dewey, educational enquiry was an example of a general method of intelligence or ‘Complete Act of Thought’ – a method everyone, including students and school committees, could undertake when confronted by problems which could be

addressed through a collective effort of enquiry and reform. For Lewin, the emphasis was on challenging social science research that had previously

conceptualised the relation between theory and practice as a problem of applying the results of research (McTaggart 1991). Action research was argued to enable advances in theory and social change to be made simultaneously; it provided procedures that enabled the pursuit of a critical social science (Kemmis and

McTaggart 1988a). On this claim it has been challenged by poststructuralist writers (Sanguinetti 1999). These critiques have centred on the critical framework of action research as a reflection of the modernist project with its analysing subject, knowable structures and ‘truth’ that can be unproblematically known. The

poststructuralist critique has contributed to the development of a more sophisticated understanding of action research (Kemmis 1996), one that recognises the play of power relationships and the role of language in ‘creating’ experience

(Cherryholmes 1988, 1993). 57

It has been suggested that the idea of action research first appeared within the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs between 1933 and 1945 however Lewin’s work in social psychology shortly thereafter provides its theoretical basis (McTaggart 1991, p.5-6).

Lewin described the action research ‘spiral’ of planning, acting, observing and evaluating that has been elaborated to a cyclical process in which a community identifies a problem, experiments with a solution, monitors results, reflects on the process and uses the resultant information to reformulate the problem and

recommence the cycle. Learning involves using the action research spiral to

address the gap that is the difference between espoused theories and theories-in-use, that is, what we think we do and what we actually do (Argyris 1992/1994). Schon’s (1983) work on reflective practice provided further advocacy for the idea of

practice-based enquiry. Learning from experience involves drawing inferences from the words and actions of others onto which we impose meaning and through which we formulate our future actions; errors occur if high level inferences are made before the appropriateness of our initial inferences are tested. Such ‘single-loop learning’ can be effective in the achievement of goals and targets but does not enable the questioning of assumptions and values as a basis for change.

However, action research is more than a series of steps around a spiral of circles: it is ‘a series of commitments’ (McTaggart 1993, p.21). As its ‘central feature’ action research is concerned with the use of changes in practice as a way of inducing improvement in practice (Brown, Henry, Henry and McTaggart 1982, p.2), however large or small the practice might be. Action research occurs when a community decides

to work together on a ‘thematic concern’ . . . not simply to do action research or to undergo ‘staff development’, and especially not at the behest of

‘management’. . . a group identifies an area where members perceive a cluster of problems of mutual concern and consequence. The individuals and the group they comprise need to recognise that in changing things they will confront the culture of the institution . . . and society they work in. (Brown et al. 1982, p. 22, original emphasis)

McTaggart argues that the ideas of group decision and commitment to improvement were crucial to Lewin’s work. That a community was involved was central: Lewin argued action research was difficult to accomplish alone given the politics of change. As such, participants would need support and training: ‘We should consider action, research and training as a triangle that should be kept together for the sake of any of its corners’ (Lewin 1946, p.42). In the commitment to socially just improvement there is an implied undertaking for participants to ‘create the material and political conditions necessary to sustain the common

(McTaggart 1993, p.22). It fundamentally involves a commitment to action (Jarvis et al. 1998, p.119).

Thus the political nature of action research can be glimpsed. Three different kinds of action research have been proposed that use Habermas’(1972) theory of

knowledge-constitutive interests: technical, practical and emancipatory. Firstly, technical action research is ‘other-directed,’ involving the co-option of practitioners to work on research devised by others and generally aimed at improving existing practices within existing constraints (Tripp 1984). Practical action research is analogous to craft; while it is practitioner-directed and conducted it may be assisted by a facilitator. Practical action research aims to develop new practices as well as improving existing practices but remains within an unproblematised view of constraints (Carr and Kemmis 1986; Tripp 1984). Finally, emancipatory action research is undertaken by a ‘self-leading group’ and aims to develop new practices and/or change constraints (McTaggart 1991; Tripp 1984). Action research in general, and emancipatory action research in particular, appears as the ‘obvious’ framework for research that enables ‘radical discontinuities and transformations’ (Hooley 2005, p.69).

While each of the forms of action research I have portrayed is defensible according to different criteria the important point is that the complementarity of knowledge interests cannot be assumed: the kind of action research that is undertaken will reflect a process of contestation which determines not only epistemology but also ontology: for instance the way that education itself is conceptualised and controlled by interests in the community (McTaggart 1991). In the course of this research I have observed each of these forms of action research and some action research that, while labelled as such, did not appear to me to involve any of its principles. As McTaggart notes, despite the popularity of the idea in Australia, action research is ‘extremely difficult to initiate and sustain, even when (perhaps especially when) systemic imprimatur was given and other conditions were apparently favourable’ (McTaggart 1991, p.39, original emphasis).

Mumford (1997, p.5) emphasises that action research is ‘a planned and organized process for doing and learning, not a reactive post-experience view that something could be learned from a particular activity.’ Furthermore, the most productive form of action research is that those who are involved have a responsibility for

learning communities to meet the intention of sustainability woven through the Victorian Government policy. Furthermore, the LLEN is not only a ‘learning’ network but also an ‘employment’ network. Solutions to employment issues require a particular focus for LLEN in community-building, a function identified as being of first importance (Victorian Learning and Employment Skills Commission 2002); education and employment outcomes for young people would emerge from healthy communities; they were not the precursor (Victorian Learning and

Employment Skills Commission 2002). Community-building puts a particular focus on the knowledge creation of a learning network rather than the knowledge management of a learning network.

I have come to see action research as one way in which we can think rhizomatically when we consider a problem and recognise the inadequacy of previous solutions: action research is akin to working with the Deleuzian map ‘entirely oriented toward an experiment with the real’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.12). In drawing our action research maps we don’t trace what ‘is’; we construct the unconscious, use our practical and intuitive knowledge(s), foster connection, remove blockages, reverse, constantly modify and so on. In implementing cycles of action research we remain always in the middle and move closer to Deleuze and Guattari’s injunction to always put the tracing – with its highlighted regulations, accountabilities,

structures, identities - back onto the map. It is in putting the points of structuration onto action research maps that we connect them back to the possibility, foster movement and the productive potential of deterritorialization.

Monday 18 July 2005 Reflection

I am reflecting on a gathering that happened yesterday. We enjoy a wonderful lunch at the home of our supervisor. We are all at different stages and we share our stories; our supervisor is present, but the moment is ours.

We agree to keep meeting, to nurture and support each other in a community of practice. How best to proceed? We discuss options. As a full-time student, I am now most involved in my thesis. As such, they have questions to ask about my earlier questions and how I came to question those. We discuss my

methodology, how I came to it and how I understand it now. I offer to read my methodology at our next gathering. ‘Oh, but you have finished that. It wouldn’t be the most use to you; you won’t want to talk about that now.’

And that is the very point. I respond other, ‘It isn’t finished. I construct it as I talk about it, and as I work within it. I understand it as never finished. In weaving it for you; I re-write it and, at the same time, I generate and analyse data. That is my methodology.’ They look unsure.

Today I am writing these words in the middle of transcribing a tape. I listen to words spoken over a year ago; I type a transcript; I reflect on what I am hearing and simultaneously type reflections at the base of the transcript; my gaze moves from the screen to my open notebook resting on the desk to the left of my keyboard. A shaft of sunlight lies across the page and I am struck by yesterday’s moment and this moment.

I open up a blank computer window and try to capture this experience. This seems to me to be something of what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as ‘the problem of writing’ (1987, p.20):

In order to designate something exactly, anexact expressions are utterly unavoidable. Not at all because it is a

necessary step, or because one can only advance by approximations;

anexactitude is in no way an approximation; on the contrary, it is the exact passage of that which is under way. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.20).

I am now reflecting once more on my methodology because, just at this moment, this singular idea presses upon me with obscure necessity (Rajchman 2000, p.118). I glimpse a transitory understanding of myself as rhizome. I am learning my craft and it seems that I have reached that point . . . pause, I know what I want to say. It hovers unformed in my awareness, just beyond my reach. I open another computer window and bring up a think piece I wrote in the past. I reflect on those words. I continue . . .

I am learning my craft and it seems that I have reached that point

. . . another pause. I consider that this story should become an article. As doctoral students we, wherever we are, stand as analysing subjects. We ‘remote’ ourselves from the theoretical articles we read; we declare when we are generating data and when we are ‘finished that bit.’ Does this not reinforce the perspective that we are ‘apart from’ rather than ‘a part of’ our research? Perhaps there is a way to continue Sunday’s moment? I could take these reflections of what is happening across around within me and bring them into an academic paper to trouble that stand. I continue . . . I am learning my craft. Yet here is fleeting recognition that I have deterritorialized. At some moment, a point I cannot isolate, I changed in nature and I recognised it on Sunday. It was a haecceity for me and in that moment I realised I have imbibed my theoretical perspective. Everything can be connected, and must be.

my fingers now move hesitantly across the keyboard can I capture such a moment perfectly individuated yet indefinite in the one-dimensionality of text?