Insiders and outsiders – the place of second-order action research in Educational Action Research

This issue of Educational Action Research includes a ‘mini-special issue’ on participatory action research (PAR) edited by Mary Brydon-Miller and Michael Kral. They have written an editorial to introduce the four papers that make up that portion of this issue. My goal here is to do the same for the other six articles, as well as examining them through the lens of second-order action research (Elliott, 1985; Elliott 1988; Losito, Pozzo, and Somekh 1998).

The articles in the main portion of this issue can be put into two groups. In the first, ‘Using collaborative action research to achieve school-led change within a centralised education system: perspectives from the inside’, the authors study the role of action research in schools with challenging situations. Elena Constantinou and Mel Ainscow examined the challenges involved when teachers engaged in action research in the highly centralized educational system in Cyprus. They argue a school-driven approach to educational change that builds on collaboration and inquiry can lead to democratic development even in a highly centralized system with frequent staff changes and an influx of migrants. For this to happen, they argue, requires ‘radical collegiality’, which is characterized by ‘reciprocity, care and respect for each other’s learning’.

Macarena Lamas, Sònia Sànchez-Busqués and José Luis Lalueza report on a long-term project to improve the educational participation of marginalized pupils in Barcelona, Spain. Their account, ‘Changes in school through a long term project of action research. Building Bridges between school practice and Roma Communities’, describes how an initial emancipatory project developed for out-of-school settings was implemented across a range of schools. The authors use cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) as an organizing tool to analyze their interventions, which were designed to provide individual support to pupils who were operating between competing family and school cultures. This provisional account provides insights into the challenges of how teachers can bridge majority and marginalized cultures, and how this process enabled positive developments in participants’ self-efficacy and sense of identity.

Teachers’ professional development and management of change is also the theme of Charlotta Hilli’s article, ‘Distance Teaching in Small, Rural Primary Schools in Finland: A Participatory Action Research Project’. Hilli situated her research as participatory action research (PAR). Her study is of teachers attempting to use distance teaching practices to sustain primary schools with falling enrollments in rural Finland. She used a ‘practice architecture’ model to analyze teachers’ discomfort with teaching at a distance through technology. The teachers found it difficult to adjust to teaching ‘strangers at a distance’, and Hilli discusses how traditional ecologies of practice became disrupted by the technological interface.

The articles in the second group examine aspects of the nature of action research, rather than specific examples of action research as in the first group. Susan Dawson in her article ‘Aristotle’s gnoseology and understanding “understanding” in practitioner research’ examines ‘exploratory research’ (EP), which is a form of practitioner research used in language teaching, through the lens of Aristotelian philosophy. Her paper focuses on one student engaged in EP in an English for Academic Purposes class and how his learning reflects an interrelated and relational view of Aristotle’s categories of knowledge (gnoseology).

Barbara Hanfstingl, Gunther Abuja, Gabriele Isak, Christine Lechner and Eleonore Steigberger report on how they used lesson study to evaluate and improve the design of the course of study, students’ progress through the course, team members’ roles, and the learning objectives for a program for English and Second Language teachers. In ‘Continuing professional development designed as second-order action research: work-in-progress’ they focus on their own practice of facilitating the teachers’ inquiry into their practice. This is what John Elliott referred to as second-order action research (Elliott, 1985; Elliott 1988). Second-order action research, according to Elliott ‘focusses not on the educational actions which participating teachers are deliberating about in classrooms, but on the actions of those responsible for facilitating teacher deliberation’ (1985, 239). Elliott began to conceive of this notion as he reflected on the dilemmas he and the other members of the central team faced as they worked with teachers and schools as part of the TIQL project. I return to the idea of second order action research in the concluding remarks of this editorial.

The final article, ‘Encounters in the third space: constructing the researcher’s role in collaborative action research’, is by Ingibjorg Sigurdardottir and Anna-Maija Puroila. In it they explore the role of the ‘researcher’ in collaborative action research (CAR). In this study the CAR was between an outside researcher (Elliott 1988) and pre-school teachers who were engaged in inquiry on their practice. As such it is also an example of second-order action research. In this case the researcher, Sigurdardottir, along with Puroila, collected and analyzed data about the former’s role and work with the teachers. In doing so they conceptualized the interactions between Sigurdardottir and the teachers as occurring in a ‘third space’ situated between the outsider researcher and the insider teachers, thereby uncovering and delving into the tensions that arise between these roles.

In his 1988 paper, Elliott provided a set of categories of outsider-insider relations. They range from “The outsider as an expert and detached researcher into educational practices. The insider as the practitioner of the activities the outsider researches (p. 156) to ‘The outsider as reflective teacher-educator. The insider as reflective teacher’ (p. 163). The first category could be seen as a variation of a traditional research model in which outside researchers study what happens in a system of which they are not integral. For the most part I see the first set of articles as being similar to studies in which the object of the study consists of practitioners engaged in some form of inquiry into their practice. In these cases the authors are not themselves doing action research, however, their findings provide us with important insights into problems, dilemmas, dissonances, and successes inherent to practitioner research. In the second group of articles we see both practitioners engaged in action research, and the authors making problematic their roles in relation to the practitioners’ inquiry. It this action research on facilitating action research – second order action research – that Elliott argues for in the chapter and article I cited, as well as in his more recent publications.

The relationship between outsiders and insiders in action research can be seen as more complex than Elliott proposes. For example, Losito, Pozzo, and Somekh (1998) suggested that both the outside researcher who is the facilitator of the action research and the practitioner can develop first and second order research. That is, both can see themselves as practitioners and engage in first order action research, and both can examine the nature of the practice of action research to inform their and others doing of action research (second order action research). Whether one sticks with Elliott’s formulation or uses the expanded conceptualization of Losito et al., the important point is that in both the outside researchers are engaging in reflective practice on their studying of others engaged in action research and/or their roles as facilitators of action research. As a practitioner and facilitator of action research, as well as one of the co-editors of this journal, I urge all of our authors to take either or both of these reflective turns, which is in line with the journal’s Aims and Scope statement: ‘Educational Action Research is concerned with exploring the dialogue between research and practice in educational settings … Proponents of [the various forms of practitioner research] share the common aim of ending the dislocation of research from practice, an aim which links them with those involved in participatory research and action inquiry’ (Educational Action Research 2019).

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