Educational Action Research

ISSN: 0965-0792 (Print) 1747-5074 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reac20

Action research at the school level: possibilities

and problems

Shirley Grundy

To cite this article: Shirley Grundy (1994) Action research at the school level: possibilities and
problems, Educational Action Research, 2:1, 23-37

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09650799400200007

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Educational Action Research, Volume 2, No. 1, 1994
ACTION RESEARCH AT SCHOOL LEVEL

Action Research at the School Level:

possibilities and problems

SHIRLEY GRUNDY
Murdoch University, Australia

ABSTRACT In this paper it is argued that it is necessary to understand the

improvement of the quality of education as a responsibility for school
communities as a whole. It is not sufficient to regard such improvement as
simply the aggregate improvement of the work of individual teachers. It is
further argued that action research offers a set of principles upon which the
work of improving the learning environment of a school can proceed. Some
examples of whole school action research initiatives are examined and some
possibilities and problems associated with school level action research are
explored, particularly those associated with state initiated action research
projects.

While classroom teachers often engage in action research as a means of

improving their individual pedagogical practice it is the practice of education
at the whole school level which is the focus of this paper. It will be argued
that action research offers those working in the professional community of a
school a set of principles upon which the work of improving the learning
environment of a school can proceed. Some examples of whole school action
research initiatives in Australia will be examined. In arguing for action
research as an appropriate approach to whole school improvement, I will
explore the following:
the the importance of recognising the school as a professional community
with responsibility for quality education;
the obligation that schools have to improve the education that they offer;
some examples of action research as a whole school improvement process;
some of the possibilities and problems associated with school level action
research, particularly those associated with state initiated action research
projects.

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SHIRLEY GRUNDY

The Buck Stops Where?

When considering action research as a process of school improvement, we
need to focus upon schools as social and educational institutions as well as
upon teachers’ pedagogical practices. That is, it is not sufficient for
education systems to ‘pass the buck‘ for educational improvement to
teachers and construe the school as simply the location of teachers’ work. It
is important to understand the nature of the school as an organisation
which structures, enables and/or constrains educational work. The
responsibilities of ‘the school’ for improving the educational opportunities
afforded to its students must also be understood as being greater than the
aggregated responsibilities of the individual teachers who are part of the
unit.
A large proportion of the current debates about education focus upon
the competence of the teacher. An OECD report, The Teacher Today (1990,
p. 9), for instance, points to teachers as having the key responsibility for
educational improvement. It is argued in the report:

… the success of educational reforms, no matter how well they are

conceived in principle, will be only fortuitous if the teachers who
are actually responsible are not made an explicit and pivotal plank
of those reforms. An uncommitted and poorly motivated teaching
body will have disastrous results for even the best intentions for
improvement. Teachers lie at the heart of the educational process.
The greater the importance attached to education as a whole …
the higher is the priority that must be accorded to the teachers
responsible for that education.
The ideology underpining statements such as this, which firmly place the
responsibility for educational improvement upon teachers, is clear. It is an
ideology of individualism which regards the whole as simply the sum of the
parts. It follows that to improve the whole, improvement in each individual
element must be assured. This is what Kemmis et al (1983, p. 9) called the
‘liberal/progressive’ orientation to education. They claim that this ideological
orientation
… sees society as open to (and needing) reconstruction. This
reconstruction can be achieved only through the development of
society’s future citizens – and by preparing each and every one to
participate in its improvement. … It takes an individualist
perspective on social philosophy, and sees the development of
autonomous persons as the aim of education.
There are two terms that are important within this ideology of individual
improvement; responsibility and autonomy. In current debates much is
being made of teacher responsibility, but there are significant silences
around the issue of autonomy. The OECD (1990, p. 10) report, for instance

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 ACTION RESEARCH AT SCHOOL LEVEL

identifies a ‘fundamental chain of causation’ which directly holds teachers

responsible for the well-being of society:
… a healthy society and economy means a well-functioning
education system, means an active, motivated, and highly
competent teaching force … (emphasis in the original)
There is not, however, a corresponding recognition of teacher autonomy. For
instance, the report discusses the participation of teachers in educational
decision making, not as an exercise of autonomy but as ‘decentralisation’,
describing this enhancement of the professional role of teachers as an
increase in ‘responsibility’, not ‘autonomy’ (p.106).
Yet the notion of teacher autonomy has a strong history within the
liberal tradition. Stenhouse (1976, pp. 181-182) cites the 1905 edition of A
Handbook for Teachers in Public Elementary Schools which
… told schools that the only uniformity of practice that the Board of
Education wished to see was that every teacher should think for
himself [sic] and should work out for himself such methods of
teaching as would use his powers to the best advantage.
Stenhouse goes on to argue, however, that “there are a number of factors
which make this highly individualistic conception of teacher autonomy
difficult to maintain in present circumstances” (1976, p. 182). It is arguable
that these factors are still present, if not accentuated, almost two decades
later, and that these and other factors continue to make the autonomy
associated with individualism problematic. Having discussed various factors
such as contestation over teaching methods and the restructuring of
pedagogical practices, Stenhouse (1976, p. 183) claimed:

The conclusion seems inescapable. I value highly the tradition of

professional autonomy as the basis of educational quality but it
seems that this must now be negotiated at school level. … [T]he
school staff can no longer be seen as a federal association of
teachers and departments: it must be a professional community.
And it is with that community that professional autonomy must lie.
I would argue that just as professional autonomy needs to be
reconceptualised in terms of the professional community of the school, so
also we need to understand that responsibility for the quality of education is
also a matter for the school, not just for the individual teacher.

Improvement: the work of schools

In a paper exploring the policy context of current Australian curriculum
reforms, Kennedy (1988) illustrates the tendency to neglect the school as a
significant site in its own right for educational improvement. While quite
rightly identifying the importance of teachers’ work in curriculum change,
Kennedy glosses over the importance of ‘the school’ as playing a pro-active
role in that change:

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SHIRLEY GRUNDY

The kinds of reforms being canvassed will only be successful if

teachers become committed to their implementation … Unless
policy makers can convince teachers that the reforms being
proposed are in the best interests of students, there will be little
action … The shift in thinking about the curriculum has been quite
massive at the policy level … It now remains for teachers to be
convinced that schools can provide a balanced and coherent
curriculum for all students… (pp. 272-273)
Notice here that schools are portrayed as the vehicle for educational
provision, the site in which curriculum reform is implemented, but not a key
player in that provision.
In an important ethnographic study of a number of New South Wales’
schools, Baker & Proudford (1989) noted the importance of focussing upon
schools as total entities, not simply as aggregates of educational
professionals, when considering issues to do with educational improvement.
Addressing the question: ‘Can we have effective schools?’ Baker and
Proudford (1989, p. 29) cite Goodlad’s (1984, p. xvi) contention that:

Significant educational improvement of schooling, not mere

tinkering, requires that we focus on entire schools, not just
teachers or principals or curricula or organization or
school-community relations but all of these and more.
Baker & Proudford (1989, p. 40) acknowledge that it is important for a
school “to become self-directing and self-renewing”. It is also important, they
claim, to recognise “that educational settings are unique and common
elements of schooling take on different characteristics in different contexts”.
The authors (pp. 41-42) take this insight about the uniqueness of each
school setting as a fundamental tenet for school improvement. Building
upon this often overlooked or minimised fact, they identify a set of themes
and principles which are fundamental to understanding educational
improvement and the role of schools in that improvement process. I cite
these principles in some detail for they not only strengthen the argument for
the importance of focusing upon the school when we are considering issues
of educational improvement, they also provide a set of principles with which
action research is entirely consistent.
The culture of the school is manifest through the overt or explicit
curriculum and the hidden or implicit curriculum

The culture of the school is a key factor influencing student

outcomes, and altering the culture of the school is a critical aspect
of the improvement process.

Schools … need to develop a climate receptive to change, an ability

to identify their own problems and a capacity to develop and

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 ACTION RESEARCH AT SCHOOL LEVEL

implement improvement plans. School improvement efforts must

focus on the whole school.

The dynamics of school improvement involve a process of change

at the individual level and the organizational level. … At the
organizational level, structures which support interactive social
relationships such as participatory decision making and
collaborative planning, can create a sense of commitment and
ownership, and promote feelings of collegiality.

Leading and managing change is a developmental, reflexive

process involving knowledge of alternative models of schooling,
technical skills and expertise, intuition and experience.
It will be my contention for the remainder of this paper, that action research
provides a most appropriate structure and process for school improvement
grounded in the above principles.

Action Research for School Improvement

Many of the principles enunciated by Baker & Proudford are principles
which are fundamental to the theory and practice of action research. Three
terms in particular are of significance. These are ‘participatory decision
making’, ‘collaborative planning’ and ‘reflexive processes’. All of these are key
terms for action research.
Kemmis & McTaggart (1988, p. 5) provide the following definition of
action research which emphasises its participatory, collaborative and
self-reflective nature and firmly locates it as a form of social action oriented
towards improvement.
Action research is a form of collective self-reflective enquiry
undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve
the rationality and justice of their own social or educational
practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and
the situations in which these practices are carried out.
The importance placed upon the improvement of understanding as well as
practice and upon the improvement of the situation in which the practice
takes place as well as the practice itself, points to the appropriateness of
action research as a school improvement strategy. In the improvement
principles enunciated above the importance of schools “identifying their own
problems” and having “knowledge of alternative models” suggests that
changes in knowledge and understanding are as important to school
improvement as are changes in practices. Furthermore, the recognition that
“altering the culture of the school is a critical aspect of the improvement
process” highlights the link between educational improvement and
improvement in “the situations in which [educational] practices are carried
out”.

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SHIRLEY GRUNDY

This is not to say, of course, that either school improvement or action

research ignore the important role of the individual practitioner in bringing
about educational change. “Participatory action research is concerned
simultaneously with changing individuals, on the one hand, and, on the
other, the culture of the groups, institutions and societies to which they
belong” (McTaggart, 1989, p. 4). What is distinctive is that, unlike much
current improvement rhetoric, this approach to educational change
recognises the importance of institutional as well as individual improvement.

The Action Research Process

Action research is a cyclical rather than a linear improvement process. That
is, it does not proceed from idea to action, but incorporates four interrelated
‘moments’ which are reciprocally related to one another. Two of these
moments are concerned with developing understanding and carrying out
action. These are the strategic moments of action and reflection. These
moments are both retrospectively and prospectively related to each other
through two organisational moments: planning and observation (Grundy,
1987, p. 146).
The action research process can be entered at any moment.
Sometimes, for instance, change happens in schools in a relatively
unplanned manner, but if it is to be justified as educationally worthwhile
and/or incorporated into the ongoing life of the school, such changes need to
be evaluated (through reflection) on the basis of evidence (observation).
Planning for sustaining or modifying the change might then need to occur.
On other occasions changes might need to be planned on the basis of
reflection upon rationally generated evidence of what is already happening
(sometimes called reconnaissance (e.g. Elliott, 1991, pp. 73-75)).
As a change process action research challenges certain traditional
assumptions about the process by which educational improvement should
take place.
(i) Action research challenges the separation of research from action.
Traditional curriculum development approaches follow a sequence whereby
policy or curriculum directives are ‘developed’ in one site by experts of one
sort or another and ‘implemented’ at the level of practice. Such a model of
educational change privileges the researcher, developer or policy maker and
relegates the practitioner to the technical role of carrying out plans
developed elsewhere. Action research challenges this separation.
(ii) Action research challenges the separation of the researcher and the
researched. Again, traditional approaches to educational change place
teachers and even more so students on the receiving end of research which
is supposedly based upon some generalisations made about them in the first
place. The researcher (or policy maker, or curriculum developer) is separated
from the subjects (or more appropriately the objects) of the research. Action
research challenges this separation.
(iii) By bringing together ‘research’ and ‘action’, the ‘researcher’ and the
‘actor’ (or practitioner) action research challenges assumptions about the

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 ACTION RESEARCH AT SCHOOL LEVEL

control of knowledge. It is not some outside expert who is seen to be the all
knowing one. Knowledge and action are brought together in the participants.
(iv) By recognising the importance of social and contextual change as well as
change in individual practice, action research challenges assumptions about
the nature of educational reform. As was noted at the beginning of this paper,
traditional assumptions about improvement privilege the role of teachers in
educational improvement, but are either silent on the role of the school as
an entity in its own right or regard the school as the benign organisational
structure for the work of teachers. Action research challenges these
assumptions.

School-level Action Research in Australia

Within the Australian educational action research tradition there has been a
strong emphasis upon improvement in individual practice. The collaborative
principles of action research have been used to validate reflection and for
collaborative planning, but often it has been individual practice and
improvement which have been the focus (see, for example, instances cited by
Carr & Kemmis, 1986, pp. 167-174). Individual teachers have been
supported in their endeavours to improve individual practice by tertiary
institutions which ‘teach’ action research, and by in-service and professional
development activities.
There have been, however, some action research oriented improvement
programmes, aimed at generating school level improvement. Through the
seventies and into the eighties, the idea of participatory decision making and
educational change began to develop in Australia, as elsewhere. The now
abolished Commonwealth Schools Commission and Curriculum
Development Centre (CDC) were active in promoting and supporting the
work of School Based Curriculum Development (SBCD) and School-level
Evaluation. A 1975 paper by Malcolm Skilbeck, the first Chair of the CDC,
stressed the importance of participation by teachers in curriculum
development and the collaborative development of programmes to meet the
local needs of students:

The case for school-based curriculum development is not merely an

abstract one, based on contentious notions of freedom, democracy
and the dismantling of some of our treasured hierarchies. It is in
part also a reaction against what is widely felt to be a failure in
practice of the descending models of control and dissemination
which are still prevalent in many different kinds of countries to
produce a satisfactory educational system (Skilbeck, 1975, p. 92).
While not always naming itself as action research, the participatory and
collaborative character of the SBCD movement gave it strong links into the
developing action research movement. It is interesting to note that
curriculum development was understood as encompassing more than
curriculum content. In an example from Mount Barker High School in South

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SHIRLEY GRUNDY

Australia the implications for the curriculum of the organisation of schooling

are clearly acknowledged:

The appointment of a new principal gave the staff … the

opportunity to become involved for the first time in major moves
towards staff participation in decision making. … During an
examination of the philosophy and objectives of the school, the
idea of sub-schools arose. … Staff investigated organisational
alternatives … [from which] the staff selected the four types now in
existence. By the beginning of Term 2 in the following year it had
become evident that there were several aspects of the functioning
of the sub-school system which required examination. … A
formative evaluation exercise was undertaken by the staff.
(Newson, 1981)
Note here the action research features of participation, collaboration, the
action research ‘moments’ (planning, action, observation and reflection), and
the cyclical character to the development. This change also incorporates
many of the features of school-level change identified by Baker & Proudford
and cited earlier in this paper.
Closely allied to the SBCD movement was a school-level evaluation
movement. In 1981 the Schools Commission published ‘Guidelines for
School Level Evaluation Projects’. In these guidelines school-level evaluation
is described as an action research process, although the term is not used:

School level evaluation is seen by the commission as a school

initiated change process. The concept embraces all the means by
which schools examine what they are doing, set targets for
improvement, plan action to achieve those targets and review and
adjust action in the light of experience. (p.1)
With the dismantling of first the Curriculum Development Centre and then
the Commonwealth Schools Commission, the public documentation of
school improvement grounded in action research becomes much harder to
locate. It has continued to exist, however. One example is the long running
Project for the Enhancement of Effective Learning (PEEL) at Laverton High
School in Victoria (Baird & Northfield, 1992). Commenting upon this project
as a school improvement process White (1988) claims:

In order to improve … schools, we need trials in scores of schools,

in which teachers, students, parents and administrators learn how
to work in a new system and find out what is effective and what is
not. They will have to devise new methods … [As has been done]
at Laverton High School, in the Project for the Enhancement of
Effective Learning (PEEL) … [where they have] invented or adapted
over a score of innovative teaching procedures.
Again we note here the participatory and experimental (or research based)
nature of the improvement process which is being advocated. In this project

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the school-level change was directed principally at pedagogical practices.

Improving the quality of the educational experiences for students is not,
however, only a matter of improving pedagogical practices. Account also
needs to be taken of the organisation in which those practices occur. This
has been the focus for a recent national action research project in Australia;
the National Schools Project (NSP). This project was undertaken under the
auspices of the National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning
(NPQTL).

The NSP: action research on school organisation and learning

The National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning commenced in
February 1991. It was a three year project the purpose of which was to
provide research and development support for award restructuring in the
teaching profession, leading to improvements in the quality of teaching and
learning (NPQTL, 1992, p. 2). One part of the broad agenda for the project
was to investigate the relationship between the organisation of teachers’
work, teaching practices and student learning. The principal strategy for
pursuing this agenda was through the National Schools Project (NSP). The
second NPQTL Annual Report (NPQTL, 1992, pp. 2-3) described the NSP as
follows:

The National Schools Project is an action research project which

will initially involve approximately seventy schools [actually 90]
across all systems and sectors in an investigation of how changes
to work organisation can lead to improved student learning
outcomes. … The key principles [for the pilot programme] include:

commitment, on the part of the school, to improved student

learning outcomes through greater student participation in the
learning process; and

participative decision making and co-operative workplace

procedures in identifying good practice in current work
organisation and developing means of removing impediments to
effective teaching and management of the teaching–learning
process.
This project, then, incorporated a number of the key features of action
research. Its aim was educational improvement, it was grounded in
participative processes of action and reflection, and it was aimed toward
improvement. Importantly, the improvement aim was not directed only
towards the individual pedagogical practices of teachers, but also, crucially,
towards the situation in which those practices occur; specifically, the
organisational practices of the school.
The emphasis upon the organisational practices of schooling take this
action research project beyond the other examples of systems facilitated
action research discussed above. In this project it was accepted that effective

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SHIRLEY GRUNDY

educational practices are not dependent solely upon the good practices of
individual teachers. The situation in which the work of teachers takes place,
the organisation of the school, was also recognised as having a crucial
impact upon both the work of teachers and the learning of students.
Interestingly, this project also fulfilled the desire expressed by
Stenhouse and discussed above for professional autonomy to be located
within the community of the school. The NSP was grounded in an agreement
between the Education Systems and the Teachers’ Unions that schools
would have the opportunity to suspend established practices and
procedures and experiment with innovative forms of work organisation and
pedagogical practices. In this way the autonomy of schools was not only
being recognised, but actively encouraged as a means of facilitating
educational change.
It is, however, important to understand that this autonomy was
divested to schools, not to individual teachers, and was dependent upon the
participating schools agreeing to use “participative decision making and
co-operative workplace procedures” to investigate alternative forms of work
organisation. In essence, the suspension of established practice and policy
required the conditions upon which action research is grounded:
participation and collaboration.

Action Research at the School Level:

problems and possibilities
The NSP raises some pressing issues regarding action research as an
educational reform process. It was funded as part of the Australian Labor
Government’s micro-economic reform agenda, designed to enable Australia
to adjust to a changing, competitive, global economic environment. An
important part of this micro-economic reform programme has been the
concept of industrial award restructuring which tied improvements in salary
and conditions within an industry to productivity gains. The linking of
‘productivity’ and ‘restructuring’ was central to the new awards, as
Ashendon (1992, p. 65) notes:

Underlying all this re-thinking was an absolutely fundamental

assumption: workplaces would produce more for all concerned not
because people were working harder or investing more but
because they were working differently, smarter. That is,
workplaces and workers could become more productive.
Within this agenda, education is overtly recognised as an ‘industry’ of
significant economic value [education was to be one of five industries to have
priority in the restructuring reforms (Ashendon, 1992, p. 66)]. There is here
a clear tying of the aims and purposes of education to those of the capitalist
state. Not only is education understood as an apparatus involved in the
maintenance and reproduction of capitalist modes of production and
relationships (Apple, 1979; Sharp, 1980) but the educational ‘enterprise’ is
being co-opted in the reform program of Australian capitalism – that of

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making the nation more ‘competitive’. And action research has clearly been
co-opted as a process along the way.
For the educational worker interested in the critical (Carr & Kemmis,
1986) and emancipatory (Grundy, 1987) potential of action research, the
appropriation of the process in a national, ideologically linked project is
problematical. Yet it is also clear from the foregoing description of the
principles within which the NSP was grounded, that the Project was
underpinned by democratic and participative ideals and practices that have
the potential to challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions about the
economic purposes of education. This reflects the spaces that are opened up
within any socio-political agenda for action grounded in alternative values.
Quoting Raymond Williams, Giroux (1981, p. 99) reminds us of this
non-totalising aspect of ideology:

The reality of any hegemony is that while by definition it is always

dominant, it is never total or exclusive … it does not just passively
exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed,
recreated, defended and modified. It is also continually resisted,
limited, altered, and challenged by pressures not all its own.
These limits to the control of education by the capitalist state provide
opportunities, not only for resistance to the totalising discourses of
competition and economic productivity, but for members of a school
community actively to engage in a struggle to improve the quality of
education. Kemmis & McTaggart (1988, p. 35) outline three important sites
of struggle for educational improvement:

A rational struggle for the improvement of education would include

a systematic and interlinked set of struggles for education: a
struggle over language … a struggle over educational activities…
and a struggle to create new forms of social relationships in
education.
An analysis of a selection of the reports of the action research projects
conducted as part of the NSP (Grundy, 1993) indicates that the project did
provide schools with the opportunities to engage in these struggles and they
did so to varying extents. Many of the schools began their action research
with systematic reflection upon the purposes of education and the meaning
of ‘a good school’ and ‘good teaching practice’. The establishment of a shared
set of values and meanings was facilitated by the requirement to ground
proposed action plans in processes of reflection which were, in turn,
supported by ‘research’.
This emphasis upon the establishment of shared meanings sets this
Project apart from many other action research initiatives which, as has been
argued above, often tend to focus upon improvements in teaching and
learning practices per se, more than upon improvements in understanding
the meanings of those practices. Another feature that suggests that the NSP
has taken action research practice further than is common is the emphasis
upon social relationships and organisational structures in schools.

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SHIRLEY GRUNDY

In order to participate in the project, schools had to indicate that they

were committed to “participative decision making and co-operative
workplace procedures”. It is clear from the reports of the individual projects
that sometimes the commitment was more a theoretical than a practical one.
However, it is significant that as the project proceeded, an ever increasing
number of schools took the opportunities to explore the possibilities of flatter
management structures and cooperative workplace practices.
Of course, there were risks for all parties in leaving open the possibility
of setting aside established policy and practice – both educational and
industrial. Many of the employment conditions of teachers are the result of
hard fought campaigns by unions, and are not lightly to be set aside. Many
of the policy directives and administrative procedures at the systemic level
are aimed at ensuring an equitable standard of education and their efficacy
depends to a large extent upon their universal application. For those within
schools the commitment to participation and cooperation has implicit risks
for the accountability of school principals, and places added responsibility
upon teachers.
The risks, then, were considerable. Such risks are common to school
level action research projects. However, the potential rewards were also
attractive. Such an approach to work place reform counters the problem
identified by Skilbeck and referred to above of “descending models of control
and dissemination”. The NSP reiterated the principle that schools can be
important sites of educational reform.
How, then, can the NSP be judged as an action research project? It
clearly was not a ‘grass roots’ initiative. While its aims were educational (the
improvement of learning outcomes for all students), its history and
ideological base were industrial and economic. The process was fairly
‘technical’ (Grundy, 1981) in that comprehensive guidelines were developed
both for the conduct and for the evaluation of the schools’ projects.
Moreover, it was expected that those who participated in the project should
be able to demonstrate clear outcomes.
However, within the limits of a state initiated and controlled project,
windows of possibility were opened for participating schools. The project
quite clearly affirmed that the quality of education is not solely dependent
upon the improved or intensified work of individual teachers. The
organisational structures of schooling were acknowledged as being
implicated in the determination of the quality of schooling. Importantly,
these organisational structures have been opened up to scrutiny so that they
can no longer be considered immutable, but open to change and
experimentation. Moreover, while participative decision making may have
been promoted in line with the latest managerial theory in support of
corporate efficiency, the adoption of the principle as a foundation for the
project provided the staff of schools with the opportunity legitimately to
challenge the hierarchical managerial traditions of school organisation. Most
of all, the NSP foregrounded ‘the school’ as being an active participant in the
provision of education, not simply a convenient, but benign facilitative
structure.

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Conclusion
In this paper I have argued that it is important to recognise the school as a
site of educational reform rather than assuming that the school is simply the
place where teachers carry out their educational work. Much of the current
training and re-training rhetoric, for instance, implies that as long as the
work of each individual teacher can be improved then the quality of
educational provision as a whole can also be improved. Such assumptions
are grounded in outmoded forms of liberalism which no longer provide an
adequate basis for quality education in a postmodern society.
However, a swing of the pendulum to a position which portrays
educational reform as simply a matter of organisational or administrative
restructuring, will also fail. Organisational reform alone will not guarantee
improvement in educational provision any more than will improvement in
the individual pedagogical practices of teachers in isolation from the
organisational structures within which they operate. The provision of quality
education needs to be recognised as a complex interaction between and
among individual, organisational, social and political factors. And action
research provides a process by which school communities can explore those
complex relationships.
I am not particularly concerned, however, that educators in schools
name themselves as doing action research. Quality educational reform is not
dependent upon a particular methodology. Rather, what action research
provides is a set of principles for procedure. One of these principles is clearly
the principle of participation. It is not only experience in schools which has
shown that real change is dependent upon ‘ownership’ of the change, which
is in turn dependent upon participation in the decisions leading to the
change by those most affected by that change. That message comes also
from an abundance of management literature.
Participation brings with it, however, not merely autonomy but also
responsibility. Action research is grounded in principles which allow for both
autonomy and responsibility. These are the commitments to action and
reflection. Action research does not simply mandate the taking of action by
participants to bring about change, it also calls those participants to
account by including the obligation for action to be grounded in and
evaluated through research. Thus change processes which simply say to
schools ‘you choose how you will now organise your school’ are not rational
or justifiable change opportunities unless there is a corresponding obligation
to engage in research related to that change. It is this obligation to link
action to research which was a feature of the National Schools Project.
Such approaches to school improvement are consistent with the
arguments advanced by Stenhouse (1976, pp. 222-3, 143):
I believe that long-term improvement of education through the
utilization of research and development hinges on the creation of
different expectations in the system … The different expectations

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SHIRLEY GRUNDY

will be generated only as schools come to see themselves as

research and development institutions rather than clients of
research and development. … Research in curriculum and
teaching, which involves the close study of schools and
classrooms, is the basis of sound development, and the growth of
a research tradition in the schools is its foundation. … It is not
enough that teachers’ work should be studied: they need to study
it themselves.

Correspondence
Shirley Grundy, School of Education, Murdoch University, Murdoch, New
South Wales 6150, Australia.

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