Through my research I wanted to contribute to useful change, believing that, in the words of Kurt Lewin who coined the term ‘action research’, ‘research that produces nothing but books will not suffice’ (Lewin, 1946). Action research is about helping to develop practice (McNiff et al., 1996; Somekh, 2006; Thomas, 2011) and it gave an important dimension to my case study. Staff at the two settings worked with me to develop practice and knowledge for working inclusively with children with autism in this aspect of the case study. Most approaches to research have rules about not influencing the object of the research through intervention (McNiff et al., 1996) and this is one of the ways in which action research differs. Another defining feature of action research is that, as it seeks to bring about change, it has a basis in values (McNiff, 1996; Somekh, 2006). Somekh (2006) takes this idea further, saying that action research ‘starts from a vision of social transformation and aspirations for
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greater social justice for all’ (p.7); these words resonated with me as I thought about my study, both in relation to the children with autism and in relation to the participants themselves. In addition to a notion of social justice, I also had in mind the notion of empowerment as the shared collaboration and shared thinking about the problems to be solved, was also about empowerment of the participants.
Based on a social-constructivist approach to learning (Vygotsky, 1978), my work with the teachers in the two schools comes out of an understanding that individual developmental change and learning is rooted in society and culture. In other words, the development of practice had to be culturally appropriate for the particular local needs of the participants. The action research element of my case study was participatory and involved practitioners thinking and making choices (Thomas, 2009) so that it had practical immediacy and prompted reflection and new learning. The nature of action research is iterative and cyclical (Denscombe, 2010; McNiff, 1996; Somekh, 2006; Thomas, 2009), and requires a cycle of action, planning and critical reflection leading to further action. There are numerous complex diagrams to illustrate this process. I like the simplicity of Thomas’s model (2009) (Figure 11), although it may not accurately depict the multiple complexities of the action research process in this part of my study, as I will outline below.
Figure 11: Action Research Cycle. (after Thomas, 2009)
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To this process, McNiff (1996) brings the notion of action being more than a simple carrying out of a task, it is about ‘praxis rather than practice’ (p.8). In other words it is about taking informed, committed action and developing knowledge about practice. This development of understanding, so very important in the field of autism, as well as practical skills, is what the participants and I tried to achieve together and the dialogic process we went through was one of planning, doing, reflection and learning. Analysis of this forms an important part of my findings for this strand of my research (Chapter 7). I now give an overview of how the action research process worked in my study and how I involved the participants in the process of change.
The way it worked in my study was developed through negotiation and collaboration with the participants and this played out differently in each of the two cases. In both schools, at their request, the collaboration was launched with whole-school workshops about autism education and about the research. Programmes for this were negotiated beforehand with key staff. After this, self-selected groups of staff at each school opted to be members of the two focus groups to work with me and each other to develop practice and knowledge. In both centres the pupils with autism became the focal point for the action research cycle of discussion, action and reflection and this gave an immediacy and practical relevance to the research, shaping the way that it developed. A detailed explanatory diagram of this process at one of the schools comes later in Chapter 7 (Figure 39, p.223 ). For now a simple example of one cycle of the action research process is given in Figure 12.
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Figure 12. An example of one phase of the action research cycle at Friends School (adapted from Kolb 1984)
The stages of planning and reviewing with the participants were necessarily ad hoc as they took place during the working day and of course not all staff would be available at the same time. When I was in the UK we held discussions via Skype on eleven occasions although, as discussed below, the technology to do this sometimes let us down. Also, at Friends School, we held three participatory workshops over the research period, in addition to the introductory whole-staff workshop, enabling us to share and consolidate the learning that had taken place. We also built a Wiki as a resource bank for documentation that was used and developed during the research. This is described below in the methods section.
The action research dimension developed very differently in each of the two educational settings. Apart from their differences in terms of location, the social
Planning
Doing
Reviewing Learning
Discuss the pupils with autism
Identify a need for better understanding Agree to try out an assessment profile
Use the assessment profiles through pupil observations Identify learning: about pupils about autism Review outcomes Evaluate profiles Next cycle
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background of their students, their historical beginnings, curriculum and affiliations, another significant factor was that whereas the Friends School was involved from the outset, the second setting, Amira Basma Centre only became involved eighteen months later, in November 2012, so their involvement was much less. The differences in the way I worked with the two settings reflects the emergent design of my research; it was also aligned to an IPA stance whereby I sought to engage with participants in a flexible way that fitted in with their lived experience (Smith et al., 2009). For example, whereas staff at FGS wished to enhance their capability to include their four autistic pupils into mainstrean classes, at ABC the school wanted to prepare for the future inclusion of pre-schoolers in their autism unit. Further detailed examples of this approach are given in Chapter 7 where I discuss findings from the case study.