Action/participatory research report

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Workshop on action/participatory research report

Jim Brown, Leeds

Nod Miller has made the point that there was little consensus about the outcome of the workshop we ran at this year’s conference. After some discussion we felt it might be helpful if I was to write an adjoinder to her report, providing an ‘outsider’s’ view of the experience. I count myself as an outsider on the basis that I neither work in a University nor am I concerned with teaching and research into adult education practice.

The workshop set out to explore the politics of action research using a modelling device of researching the political views of the workshop participants. It became very clear to me on the first day of the conference that there was a predominant political culture attached to SCUTREA, as expressed by Professor Nisbet in his keynote address. Furthermore, I was very aware that my own political beliefs were in opposition to these views. I have tried to summarise this contrast in Table One.

Table One: Contrasting Political Cultures at Conference

Predominant SCUTREA culture / vs. / Oppositional culture
Belief in academic liberalism and a tolerance for differences between academics / vs. / Belief in competing academic models where consensus is neither achievable nor desirable
Autonomy of the researcher from subject paramount importance / vs. / Researchers aligned to particular sets of values and interest groups
Research should be free from political influencing / vs. / Research is a political influencing tool
Research is objective, scientific and rational / vs. / Research is subjective, critical and biased

Given this contrast, I think that the workshop we ran can be better understood by testing the following hypothesis. The hypothesis is that the workshop elicited behaviour expressing how an established institutional culture, in this case SCUTREA, protects itself from attack by an oppositional culture. To this end I would like to suggest seven defensive strategies that I feel were observable during the workshop. Table Two lists these strategies, the first column providing an abstract description of the strategy and the second column pointing to supporting evidence that this strategy was being used during the workshop. I believe it would also be possible to analyse the behaviour of the workshop organisers (ourselves) based on the same set of strategies, but used in an offensive as well as defensive manner.

One issue must stand out from this analysis. Is it valid for a workshop to be used as a setting to influence political views, values and beliefs of its participants? This question might point to a major and significant difference between ourselves and the workshop participants. It is my contention that all education involves aspects of influencing the values and beliefs of those being educated. Making this process overt and confrontational allows participants greater opportunity to challenge the orthodoxy which they are being presented, leading towards a more genuine opportunity for learning. The alternative, to deny that any influencing is taking place, merely suggests in my view that covert processes of influencing are taking place.

Table Two: Defensive Strategies adopted in the workshop

Strategy Description / Observable Evidence
Mensuration
The institution develops its own measures of excellence which are biased in favour of its own practices and critical of counter cultural practices. / A number of participants were severely critical of the opening exercises in the workshop where participants were asked to make an either/or choice based on a series of statements about research. Criticism focused on the ambiguous nature of these statements which made either/or choices impossible. This was seen as poor quality work by some participants. However from our point of view these questions were high quality, generating as they did a high degree of uncertainty and controversy in the minds of participants. Measured on this different scale they were a success.
Agenda management
Protectors of the institution attempt to place issues critical of the institution outside the agenda of discussion. / Throughout the workshop there was a continuous struggle to focus the discussion on issues ‘within SCUTREA’. This was regularly blocked by some participants who kept shifting the focus onto the ‘outside world’. Consequently much of the debate shifted from issues that were critical of SCUTREA onto safer issues of politics in the wider world.
Subjectification
The institution maintains the loyalty of its members by generating a ‘false consciousness’ of subjective interests, obscuring the objective interests of these usually weaker members. / A view was expressed during the workshop that SCUTREA relied on recreating the atmosphere of a gentleman’s club, a gathering of peers, who could swap drinks in the bar and stories over dinner. Such behaviour tended to obscure some of the real differences in status between participants concerning pay, security of tenure end access to decision-making.
Incorporation
The institution incorporates oppositional views by giving them a platform, without any real access to decision-making, influence or power. / Throughout the workshop support was expressed for oppositional views, but attempts to operationalise these views were met with doubts about how this could be achieved. Consequently whilst it was felt possible to express criticism of SCUTREA it was felt impossible to take action on these criticisms.
Backgrounding
The institution places any internal contradictions in the background, especially if the contradictions are functional to the maintenance of the institution. / Many participants seemed to accept the inevitable contradictions between their own personal beliefs and the institutional behaviour of SCUTREA. Thus whilst many participants were able to identify and support the significance of some of the political issues raised by the workshop, there was also a feeling that these issues were not relevant within the setting of SCUTREA.
Dilution
The institution ‘dilutes’ any opposition it faces by raising other issues of concern which it can then go on to solve, or attaching larger issues to it making action impossible. / When the issue of racism and sexism within SCUTREA was raised, the issue was diluted by also raising concerns about the situation in South Africa where clearly there was little that SCUTREA could do as an institution.
Mystification
The institution mystifies certain of its cultural processes to protect them from analysis and scrutiny. / During the workshop attempts to define what was meant by action research were clouded by participants importing private definitions which were then validated by referring to an external source or theorist. Such coded definitions and reliance on status allowed institutional behaviour to go unexamined.

Reproduced from 1986 Conference Proceedings, pp. 163-166  SCUTREA 1997