Kemmis & Mctaggert’s (1990) definition of action research is that it is about improving the lives of people through transformation. It is an emancipatory approach to the research process that does as much for the participants as for the researchers. I’m busy reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, so the idea of a research process in the educational context as being a form of emancipation for students stands out. The idea that, through trying to learn more about learning and teaching, we can improve both, sits well with me.
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)
Comments
One response to “Action research as liberation”
Thanks Michael, think I”m going to borrow that Freire quote you clipped! Reading the word, reading the world…. literacy for emancipation.