Action research, stories and practical philosophy
Professor Morwenna Griffiths and Dr Tony Cotton
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the use of practical philosophy in action research. It describes what ‘practical philosophy’ is and how it makes a connection between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ – while never losing hold of either. It begins from the understanding that philosophy is rooted in social practices with philosophy in educational practices rooted in educational practice. The paper goes on to explore the use of stories as a way into the diversity of significant particularities. Finally the links are made between practical philosophy, stories and the notion of action research. The theme of social justice permeates. It is an example of a theory-practice connection, and also it provides the underlying rationale for the approach.
INTRODUCTION
I had discovered that different things made me happy when I looked at my experience from when I did not. The active looking was somehow a force in itself which changed my whole being. (Milner, 1934, 1952, p. 198)
For us, everything lies in our concept of the world; changing our concept of the world means changing our world, that is, the world itself, since it will never be anything other than how we perceive it. The inner sense of justice that allows us to write one beautifully fluent page, the true reformation by which we bring to life our dead sensibilities – these are the truth, our truth, the only truth. (Pessoa, 1991, p. 199)
The paper takes the form of a conversation between the two authors. Morwenna begins the dialogue by introducing the notion of practical philosophy, from a philosophical standpoint. Tony then introduces this notion to school based stories describing ‘what it is like to be here’. The theoretical discussion moves into practicalities, with both authors telling stories from schools. The conversation then turns back on itself to ask in turn, why we argue this process is philosophy, and why we claim it is action research.
Morwenna: What is practical philosophy?
In one respect the relationship between action research and philosophy is easy to find. Many influential theories of action research are rooted in philosophy. 'Reflective practice' is one. Action research is much indebted to Dewey and, through the influential work of Carr and Kemmis, to Habermas and critical theories of social action. More fundamentally, action research assumes the possibility of practical knowledge. Therefore, more or less explicitly, it draws on philosophies of practice with their concepts of practical knowledge (knowledge how to) as well as propositional knowledge (knowledge that) or explicit rules (knowledge how).
A continuing question for any instance of practice is: how can (or should) that practice be informed by theorising? I am interested in philosophy so a particular question for me has been: how can that practice be informed by philosophy? In answering that question, I have come to see that the process is two-way. I first came to see this, not through action research, but through feminist philosophy. My involvement with feminist philosophy as it was beginning to be developed in England helped me to make connections between the practical issues of feminism and philosophical theories. Our small group of philosophers were quite clear we were not doing 'applied philosophy'. Applied philosophy takes already worked out philosophical theories and applies them to the real world. We intended to reconceptualise the world – as was once explained to a somewhat startled publisher who was thinking our book would apply philosophy to ‘women’s issues’. We argued that philosophy-as-usual was rooted in the practices and experiences of the men who had formulated it. Therefore, if philosophy has its roots in practical experiences, then it needs to be reflexive about those experiences. Thus doing feminist philosophy meant using feminist practices and politics in critical conversation with philosophy as an equal partner not as the grateful recipient of advice. And reconceptualise the world is what we tried to do (Griffiths and Whitford, 1986). As have many other feminist philosophers, drawing on a range of practices and experiences as well as on a range of philosophical positions. Ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and rationality have all been reconceptualised by feminists.
I remain interested in feminism, but I am also interested in practices and politics in education and in social justice more generally. Equally, I continue to be engaged by philosophy. These interests have affected my understanding of how to ‘do philosophy’. I have come to call what I do 'practical philosophy', as distinct from 'philosophy of practice'.[1]
Practical philosophy aims at being a philosophy that engages with the conditions of all people, women and men, poor and rich, Others and us. It is a kind of philosophy that is interested in the empirical world as a way of grounding its conclusions in interaction between thinking and acting. (Griffiths, 2003, p. 21)
Thus, practical philosophy is ‘philosophy as, with and for…’ rather than ‘philosophy about or applied to…’; a kind of philosophy that acknowledges its own roots in the communities from which it sprang, and which then speaks with (at least) that community. Thus it is part of a movement from the “conversation of mankind” (in Oakeshott’s famous phrase) to something more universal: to something inclusive of, for instance, classroom teachers as well as academics, and young people as well as teachers.
The practical question then arises: how can this conversation be conducted? How can the experiences and practices of all these people be communicated? How can all their voices be heard? How can their stories be told so that they enter into conversation with the abstract questions raised in philosophy?
Tony: ‘Voice’ – a theoretical view
My starting point would be that the only way we can understand our worlds, and our educational worlds, is through articulating our own stories and through hearing the stories of the multiplicity of others who act and work with us in educational settings. However forming the stories that we want to be heard is not a simple task. Elliot Eisner suggests that the question, "What is it like to be here?" (Eisner, 1991, p. 72) is nontrivial and that such a question can only be answered by researchers taking a careful and rigorous approach to qualitative research. The purpose of such work is not to tell truths about the world but to open up spaces that allow us all to think about how our worlds may be changed. As Doris Lessing reminds us, truth is elusive
How little I have managed to say of the truth, how little I have caught of all that complexity; how can this small neat thing be true when what I experienced was so rough and apparently formless and unshaped (Lessing 2002, p. 13)
But the search for ‘truths’ supports us in finding arenas in which to work for social justice and the search for personal ‘truths’ through stories can empower individuals. It can offer a way of finding ‘voice’ and discovering that others want to hear our story, to share it and to act with us in writing our futures. However we need to take care that the stories we produce are those which resonate with others, it is these stories which can support us in reconceptualising our worlds. It is also important that we are rigorous in this process. This feels to me like doing ‘practical philosophy’.
Let me try an exemplar. The extract from a monologue below was delivered by a young woman, ‘Marie’, directly to a video camera towards the end of a research project. She had found it hard to articulate her feelings in many of the earlier sessions but on this particular morning asked me to take a video camera out of the room and set it up to record herself. ‘Can I just say something?’ she asked me, ‘but I just want to tell the camera’. The full monologue will be told in the session. Here is just the beginning:
I’m just fed up – you know
I’m always getting bad grades – you know
I’m always getting stressed
All the time
I always work hard
People put me under pressure – you know
If I don’t get good marks and all that
People just laugh at me
They say – you’re crap, you can’t get good marks anyway
I would claim this monologue offers a powerful articulation of ‘what it is like to be here’. It both critiques the policy which positions the actors in schools and stirs us into action. This action will vary dependant on our positions within our educational systems but the action aims to support those teachers who strive to engage with the complex educational problems involved in working and teaching young people at risk of exclusion from education. Secondly such a ‘narrative’ challenges commonly held beliefs about the efficacy and effectiveness of ‘one cure fits all’ policy developments.
A notion of ‘crucial descriptions’ has been developed by Renuka Vithal (Vithal, 2002). For her a ‘crucial description’ must satisfy four conditions. These are conditions of; transparency – this enables the reader to see through the language of description into the particular context which enables critique; transformacy – this offers the potential for such a description to effect transformative change in the reader, both in thought and action; generativity – this is the potential the description has for generating theory and informing new practices; and finally exemplarity – this is the extent to which the description connects the complexity of content with the complexity of theory. I would argue that Marie’s monologue above meets these requirements. My evidence for this is the response to the monologue by audiences to which I have told the story. I am therefore in the hands of the audience in terms of the validity of the story.
This conception brings me back to the idea of social justice. If we feel in control of our future, if we can understand how our previous work moves us forward and if we feel in as much control as we can expect of our future(s) we are moving towards social justice. I would suggest that Renuka Vithal gives us powerful tools with which to analyse the narratives we produce. I would also argue that the exploration of narrative using these tools is both pedagogical and a model of research as praxis. I want to offer the term ‘critical stories’ to describe the work produced through this process. The knowledge produced can be seen as a form of critical and emancipatory knowledge described by Morrow as ‘our individual and collective consciousness of reality in order to maximise the human potential for freedom and equality.’ (Morrow 1994: 146).
It is now time to turn to some stories and voices from teachers and pupils.
Morwenna: stories from the margins
Stories take time to tell, and have their own rhythm. In what follows there is only a brief foretaste of what will be told at the session. The first story comes from a conversation between me and Sharon Baillon, a cleaner at the university, when she was asked about the pleasures and pains of her education. The second two stories will come from action research projects. They were part of a wider project[2] exploring schools’ partnerships with artists (painters, dancers, sculptors, storytellers etc). One was led by Philippa Weekes, the deputy head at Seagrave Primary School in Nottingham. She named it ‘Children on the Edge’. The study focused on those children who found it difficult to join in ordinary classroom activities, whatever the reason. Another was led by Judy Berry (the head teacher) and Anne Holt (a classroom teacher) at Rufford Infants and Nursery. They called it ‘Children's Voices and Choices’. This research study investigated the inclusive ethos of the school, focusing on how it was enhanced by working with artists.
Here is a small part of Sharon talking to me about her schooling. Her story is of a capable, lively person hating school and refusing to participate – determinedly staying on the margins. As a result she was sure she must be boring me, because she thought she had nothing to say. How wrong she was. She spoke volumes.
I just hated being there all together.
What? From when you were really little? Can you remember going to school to begin with?
Yes. I can remember crying.
Really? How old were you?
Five, six but I had to go because my Mum had to go to work and I hadn’t got a Dad, so I had to. And how did you feel? Can you remember? Or do you just remember crying?
I just wanted to get home. I just did. I hated it.
Why?
I don’t know. I just found it boring when I got older. I just wanted to leave and get a job to get some money and I went to three schools and I hated all of them.
…
What can you remember about it, then?
Boring.
But being bored by what?
All of it. Teachers, talking. I had to go in, head for the back of the class and think, “Oh, don’t pick on me, I don’t know, don’t pick on me”. I would sit there writing my name on the table.
Both of the action research projects investigated how a school might bring children in from the margins, or, better, prevent them from being positioned there in the first place. The teacher researchers told moving stories. Here is a short example from Rufford:
We have thirteen children in there with exceptional special needs. There were only two that people identified, and that was because one was in a wheelchair and one was on a frame. But even the lad on the frame had us crying from day one, didn’t he? Because his frame was removed. He walked! Yes it was absolutely stomach churning stuff. Because we wondered what was going to happen. Because he came in on his frame and when he started to go down on the floor – My word! What’s happening? He insisted on doing all the dance routines but on the floor. Then he was just lifted up, and walked.