Welcome to the first issue of 2022 and our 30th year of publication. As our print readers may have noticed, the journal has now gone plastic-free and is mailed out without a plastic wrap. This is part of our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint, and we will be picking up this theme later in the year with the publication of a special issue on action research, climate change and sustainability.
However, to return to the papers in this issue, the opening four articles all provide accounts of the use of action research to develop educational practice. The first of these is an article authored by Weber and Harris entitled ‘[N]ow I can be a poetic writer’: using action research as a way of reclaiming and implementing professional values in the primary school. It provides an account of an action research study aimed at improving children’s confidence in writing English. It also gives an account of the impact that action research had on the author’s own practice.
The next two articles both involve teachers of science and, in one case, also mathematics. The first of these, authored by Bulterman-Bos, is titled Barriers to creating a science of the art of teaching via Participative Action Research; learning from the tribulations of Lesson Study in different epistemic cultures. This refers to the use of lesson study, an approach closely allied to action research, which has become popular in education, and was, in fact, the topic of an extremely popular special issue of this journal (see volume 27, issue 4). In this article, Bulterman-Bos draws on a study undertaken with science teachers to show how lesson study could constitute a form of participative action research to lead to both practical change and enhanced teacher professionalism. The third article in this issue, authored by Miedijensky and Sasson, is titled Participatory action research as a way to innovate mathematics and science teaching, teachers’ professional development perceptions and performances. It reports on a study which examined teachers’ experiences of participating in a year-long action research programme, and the authors reflect on what they have learnt about how such programmes can be organised.
The fourth article in this issue, authored by Gkloumpou and Germanos is titled The importance of classroom cooperative learning space as an immediate environment for educational success. An action research study in Greek kindergartens. This article provides an account of how the authors developed learning spaces in a primary classroom, through action research, and how these related to the groups which children formed.
This first collection of articles shows the benefits to professionals, specifically teachers, of engaging with action research or related approaches, such as lesson study. The children these teacher work with are also benefitting from their teachers’ involvement in this approach, but, in these articles, they are not necessarily active participants in their own right. This is not, however, always the case, and there has long been an interest in the participation of students, pupils, or service users in other professional settings. The next two articles in this issue both report on the use of Youth Participatory Action Research, or YPAR. This is one form of an approach which is sometimes related to the concept of ‘voice’ and which has been of enduring interest in this journal.
The first of these YPAR articles is authored by Call-Cummings, Sheanáin and Buttimer and is entitled School-based YPAR: Negotiating productive tensions of participation and possibility. This paper examines the meaning of ‘participation’ in this kind of work. Drawing on three studies undertaken by the authors, they examine the possibilities of this approach, but also the limitations and tensions. In keeping with the title and topic of this journal, they conclude with a call for action, not only in the form of adopting participatory processes with young people, but also ensuring that action results from any such engagement. The second of the two articles, Examining Youth Participatory Action Research as a context to disrupt implicit bias in African American adolescent girls, is authored by Duke and Fripp and reports on a project undertaken with African American girls. In this paper the authors show how the participatory process they adopted challenged implicit bias and the negative views they had of each other. As the young people worked together through YPAR, their negative perceptions and suspicions were eroded, ultimately allowing them to forge productive and positive relationships.
The seventh article in this issue is authored by Lak and Aghamolaei. Entitled Evidence-based urban design studio: An action research approach, it provides an account of how the authors used an action research with their students to develop consultative approaches to design. This allowed students to better understand the contexts for their design work, and to appreciate the benefits of consultation with local people as a part of the design process.
The final two articles in this issue are based on their authors’ reflections on the conduct of action research over a period of time. The first adopts the concept of ‘mess’, a commonly used idea in action research which rarely follows a neat, predetermined, linear plan. In Our lives, the messy PAR projects, Huntingford and Lewis provide an account of their history with PAR, and, in reflecting on their experiences, explain the skills and dispositions which they feel participatory action research requires. This is followed by the final article, Too rich to learn – when action researchers work against senior management and their use of performance management, authored by Antonsen, Thunberg and Tiller. Here, the authors reflect on an action research project undertaken twelve years ago in a financial institution, and comment on how the internal power dynamics prevented this action research from actually allowing employees to have some influence over change.
This issue concludes with Columbia Embury’s review of From exclusion to excellence: building restorative relationships to create inclusive schools by Michal Razer and Victor J. Friedman. In this book, Razer and Friedman draw on their extensive experience as educators and action researchers to create a guide ‘for novice and experienced educators who want to work towards an inclusive, equitable education for their students’. In this complimentary review, Columbia Embury provides an account of how this text could prove useful to any educators who wish to create inclusive schools.