Educational Action Research Action Research in ...

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Action Research in Education, in the Era of Liquid Modernity Joan Rué

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Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona , Spain Published online: 19 Dec 2006.

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To cite this article: Joan Rué (2003) Action Research in Education, in the Era of Liquid Modernity Research, 11:2, 197-212, DOI: 10.1080/09650790300200217

, Educational Action

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Educational Action Research, Volume 11, Number 2, 2003

Action Research in Education, in the Era of Liquid Modernity[1] JOAN RUÉ Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT In the post-Franco context of the 1960s in Spain, we asked ourselves what type of changes were necessary for the teaching profession to respond to the demands of a democratic society. This article reflects the discourse developed over many years within the personal experience of one of those young people who received John Elliott’s seminal work back at that time

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and their intellectual influence in the years since. It is concerned to see to what extent action research makes sense in education, within the context of the cultural change we are immersed in today. The debate about who rules the change can be reformulated today again within the socio-political and cultural context of the present moment of modernity. But the paradox of the change dilemmas cannot be resolved, but constitute the essence of action research; they are its justification. It is argued that a central feature of this new state of modernity is the recognition of uncertainty and deliberation is seen as a basic means to face it. While the structure of the systems tends to reproduce through different means the conventional model of dual systems and professional models based on technical rationality, educational discourse very often emphasises the discourse which emerged in the new age of liquid modernity. This contradiction leads to three possible scenarios, each with important practical consequences on curricular development, on teaching professionalism and on the type of research required. Each of these is considered.

Action Research as Biographical Intellectual Paradox The first time I encountered John Elliott was about 25 years ago in Barcelona, at the end of the 1970s, at a university seminar. On this occasion John explained the characteristics of a new paradigm for approaching development of professional knowledge in education – action research – to a group of young teachers. We tried to see to what extent

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Joan Rué action research could make sense in education, within the context of the socio-political change we were immersed in at the time. One of the topics discussed at the seminar has stayed with me ever since. We discussed how an enquiry or research process could be put to an end; what sort of new action resulted; and how one might ensure that the resulting action adopted by teachers was the most correct, that is to say, ‘historically correct’, to use terminology which instantly reveals the way some of those present thought at that time. I remember that in his reply John said something to the effect that he did not hold a Marxist point of view, a reply which surprised some of us, as, without knowing him, we saw Elliott as the bearer of a ‘liberating’ point of view on research in the field of knowledge and the teaching profession. What point of view did Elliott hold, then? This stance led to new questions. How could you combine a point of view of ‘radical modernity’ with the negativity contained in a scientific and historic paradigm? What was the problem? In order to provide some context for readers, I must explain that the personal and collective experience of those young people was that they belonged to a generation formed in a climate of political and academic dictatorship, which had only had tangential access to modernity, within an intellectual climate in which the principle of authority guided thought, and was legitimated by the contemporary ‘social science’ research paradigm. But it was also a generation which aspired to embrace modernity and participate in the passionate – and unsettling – debate on the democratisation of its country, at the end of a cruel dictatorship.[2] How could the aspiration to modernity in education be open to the decision of different agents? Which? With what consequences? What was the meaning of the direction John indicated within the context of the experience of our political action and the intense debate those young people had been participating in since the end of the 1960s? What was the most valuable ethical criterion for directing action? This intellectual unease is what I remember of that seminar. Later, I understood that within it lay one of the crucial intellectual and scientific debates of modernity. In fact, the basic problem of the debate indicated issues such as the meaning and intentionality of a complex action. It also pointed to the creation of an agenda of priorities, the recognition of agents, the adoption of decisions, participation and deliberation and their ethical orientation. In effect, in all these questions, as in fact in all questions of a sociocultural nature, problems of the power of and among agents, the problem of ethics and practical knowledge, problems of human communication, of deliberation as context and text of action are strongly related and constitute an axis of reflection which is returned to time after time. This debate can be reformulated today again within the socio-political and cultural context of the present moment of modernity. In truth, the

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paradox of these dilemmas cannot be resolved, but constitutes the essence of action research; it is its justification. In this context, Bauman’s (2001, p. 37) statement acquires meaning, transferred to educational thought. He says that sociological thought ‘does not nor can have more meaning or use than that of a perpetual commentary on “lived human experience”’ ... because ‘nothing which has not yet happened can be inferred correctly from what has already been frozen in action. ... Only the formal universals of praxis, its ‘generative rules’, constitute the hard, unchanging nucleus of human history (2001, p. 299).


The New Era of Modernity in Education Just as in the context of the 1960s we asked ourselves what type of changes were necessary for the teaching profession in Spain to respond to the demands of a democratic society, today the question again becomes relevant if we consider that the social models which generated ‘school’ as an institution are in the process of deep change. But a change to what? What form of professionalism does the present moment require, or rather, the transformation from the present situation to another which is shaping up as something very different? What is the meaning of action research as a critical methodology in this process? Bauman (2001, p. 57) points out that on the threshold of modernity a dual education process is defined: for the learned and cultured elites and for the instruction of the masses. The aim of the former type of education is to legitimate those elites as social agents. The aim of the second model is to ‘formulate a social order, formulate some principles of rationality which justify it and to build a pragmatics for the construction of order, which implies a technology of behavioural and educational control, a technique for shaping the mind and the will’.[3] Both aims had a deep impact on the configuration of school and teachers throughout the last century. However, it is also true that modernity brought with it another characteristic. In the same way as occurred with the liberating concept of law, Enlightenment thought which inspires modern education is characterised by gearing practice towards conscious goals, with the object of liberating subjects from their cultural, historic and economic conditioning, while at the same time transforming social reality according to political values which inspire democratic praxis. The modern conception of education tries to liberate people from the bonds of nature. Education, understood in this way, accentuates the supremacy of human intervention over biological and natural conditioning factors in the same way that means of production are applied to this end in other fields. Now, as it has also occurred with other fields of production, in this context the liberating power ended up by being held by the ‘expert’; that is to say, by the educated elites, who consider themselves as having the necessary knowledge to establish ‘what is necessary’, ‘what must be done’ and ‘what has to be applied in a

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Joan Rué given moment or situation’. Once the logic of production became prevalent in education, the ‘technical rationality’ model of thought (Habermas, Schön) became ‘logical’ as well. From this perspective, the experts know the rules for acting and these rules are only evaluated in relation to the aims and objectives that have been previously established. Tyler’s (1949) thought regarding this question is rather illustrating and was (it still is) very functional for academic experts and for school management staff. Nevertheless, this actual moment of modernity is very different to the one we knew during most of the twentieth century. There are several ways of defining it: Castells (2002) refers us to the information society; Beck (1998a) introduces the concept of risk society; Giddens (1997) prefers to refer to ‘manufactured uncertainty’; Cohen (2001) defines a productive structure which Beck (1998b) and Carnoy (2000), among others, conceptualise as the new work culture – and refer us to the notion of flexibility, of biographies, of work and life projects in the information age. I will not attempt to catalogue the present moment – I am no specialist. However, with Bauman (2001), the reference to the past, contained in the metaphor post makes me uneasy – because, in critiquing modernity in its present dimension (Touraine, 1993), we are in fact carrying out an intellectual and political exercise of radical modernity. The project of modernity is not only ‘unfinished’ but unfinishable, if we understand modernity as a historic process of the search and recovery by mankind of its autonomy as social, political and cultural agent. It is in this ‘unfinishable’ quality that the essence of modern times lies (Bauman & Tester, 2002, p. 106). This is the reason why I prefer Bauman’s metaphor: the change we register is of a state, but not of an intrinsic property, which is my reason for adopting, with him, the concept of liquid modernity. A central feature of this new state of modernity is the recognition of uncertainty. In the first period, human beings learnt that they could intervene. In the second period of modernity they realise that they are faced with the terrible problem of deciding and that decisions are uncertain in their diagnosis, in their processes and even in their results. Altogether these thoughts point to the very beginning of a series of crucial changes regarding school and ways of practising as teachers – changes which are going to strongly affect curricula, their development and the role of school and educators, because they indicate basic transformations in the formative needs of citizens. Observe the great distance which exists between features of the present social and productive model and that which gave birth to the school as institution: • the progressive increase in the importance of cultural capital with respect to the property of capital in production means; • the new complexity in production and the reshaping of classic sectors: in Western societies a new third sector emerges which displaces the other sectors in importance: industrial production becomes automated

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and the ever-diminishing primary sector becomes more technologised and intensive; • the de-localisation of power centres and production itself regarding their previous localisation; • new needs emerge in peoples’ primary socialising processes and in the sociocultural exchanges in urban and suburban environments [4] stemming from new forms of ‘family life’; • the growing complexity of the sociocultural composition of classrooms as a consequence of growing globalisation of personal experiences and exchanges, for economic, social and cultural reasons; • the growing influence of audiovisual media and Internet as a source of both information and training of young people and their autonomy regarding school culture. This brief illustration of important emerging changes anticipates other important changes in implicit as well as explicit values which will affect the conception of national curricula, and the concept of formative needs itself as well, in a very different way from those experienced by present generations of teachers.


Dimensions of Rationality in the Era of Liquid Modernity As a way of referring to the transformation of reality as it is still perceived today, we use the notion of change. This term conveys the need to explore ways of acting which are different to those known. This need for transformation, in the case of education, includes the teaching profession and corresponding curricular changes. In other words, if conditions are modified, forms of accumulated experience, the habitus in Bourdieu’s terminology, will also be transformed. How do we change? Who promotes changes and how? Which way? We must not forget that both curricula and educational practices which develop them and resulting phenomena have been based on a schooling model which is progressively seen as ‘out of focus’ with respect to the present context, something like what occurred to one of the characters in Woody Allen’s metaphor.[5] Nevertheless, professional habitus (Bourdieu, 1997) have been formed in this historic process to the extent of generalising the belief that institutional educational relations and their ways of practical concretion cannot occur in a manner very different to that already known: Habitus are principles which generate different and distinctive practices (what you do and how you do it), but they are also classification systems, classification principles, principles of vision and division, different tastes. They establish differences between the good and the bad, between what is correct and incorrect, between the distinguished and the vulgar, etc., but not everyone shares the same differences. (p. 20)

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The habitus is this sort of practical sense of what needs to be done in a specific situation. (p. 40) If the first modernity enabled agents to intervene and acknowledged their power to arbitrate and justify their decisions, the second modernity still recognises that capacity, but makes reality more complex because it stresses the importance of the contexts and the factors which form them. Their power to act is still recognised, but limits are imposed upon their power because the voice of others is also acknowledged. This in turn leads to dialogue, and all this makes matters a lot more complex. This is the approach from which John exchanged his experience with us. Later on, we discovered it as fully embedded in the new modernity. Indeed, one can track all the following arguments in John’s extended narrative on action research and on professional development, to give just a couple of examples. The second modernity includes other achievements. Starting with Max Weber, it assumes the social nature of action: the visibility of ‘the other’, the significance of all action in a situation of reciprocity. There is also progress in the recognition of the components of action: beliefs, knowledge and intentions, closely interrelated. Intentions are projects for the achievement of needs and interests ‘according to conditions imposed by beliefs’ (Giner, 1997). Furthermore, all action is strategic (Sainsbury, 1988) because it is social; that is, because others exist and it takes place within a context of action involving other agents. It is also specified that human action is rational in that it pursues objectives desired by subjects according to their intentions, their needs, their resources and beliefs. Elster (1979) offers the notion of ‘strategic medium’ according to which individual action depends closely on that of other agents. Arendt (1993) also states that human actions always provoke chain reactions in other humans. Thus, social sciences have assumed the Aristotelian idea of considering all humans to have a minimum of rationality: ‘A rationality which leads them to attempt to achieve, with their actions, the objectives they set themselves through available means’ (Giner, 1997, p. 38). The acceptance of this point of view refocuses on Aristotelian postulates, but in the sense of perceiving rationality as more descriptive than normative. ‘High modernity’ (Whitty, 2001) has also emphasised the power of individuals for self-regulation regarding their behaviour in situations of uncertainty. It has been accepted that the frames for or the guiding points of action can be multiple and even contradictory, which gives more power – and fragility – to the individual or collective action of agents. This new perspective has contributed, in its turn, to another notion: that of progress, in a different interpretation of the one that was given in the first modernity: to progress is to gain independence with respect to the uncertainty of the environment. In the first modernity the human being knew what to do. During the second phase, he/she knows that he/she is facing the terrible problem of deciding, and decisions are uncertain and ephemeral.

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In this context of new modernity, we agree with Popper when he refers to the non-existence of a criterion of absolute justice, and of absolute truth in the appraisal of actions. Consequently, both in the area of opinion and of action, one of the principles of critical rationalism prevails: we can only learn from our errors. In other words, we can only learn on the basis of a profoundly modern attitude, starting from reason. For Popper, as for Gadamer and Habermas, the enlightened ideals of autonomy and emancipation mean, to a large extent, making public and critical use of reason. Nevertheless, getting the route right does not free us of the difficulties of the journey. So we should ask: which direction in action research is the most appropriate to meet the challenges of the present educational situation? The common denominator of this terminology expresses an essentially limited conception of the power of agents in their actions. Popper would say that they should act appropriately in a given situation, that the available information should be completely appropriate, that there should be perfect access to it or that the rationality of an actor should not be cancelled by the rationality of other actors (according to the Sainsbury’s dilemma). In this sense the Aristotelian thesis is strengthened: that rationality – in the context of a theory for action – is more of a method than an attribute; that is, a being on the road, on the way, or placed in time, which is the meaning of methodos in classic Greek. Rationality is understood not so much as the capacity to think and be rational, but, rather, as the method by which it is possible to obtain a maximum of real rational beliefs, reducing to a minimum the number of erroneous beliefs. Now, the use of the method consists not only in doing, but in combining doing with ethics, in acting responsibly in relation to others. Once more we find Aristotle useful. Good deliberation depends completely on the possession of what the Greek philosopher calls phronesis or ‘practical wisdom’, that is, the capacity to know what general ethical principle to apply in a given situation. Phronesis is what converts someone who acts into someone who is morally responsible, because it is about a general capacity which combines practical knowledge of what is good with judgement of what constitutes an appropriate expression of that good in a concrete situation. Nevertheless, within the context of an educational performance, of a public nature, with strong emotional roots and social transcendence, we must not lose sight of the need for an external evaluation reference of the actions themselves and of the solutions developed in those situations; a reference which cannot rest only on self-perception, in self-justification of intentions, or in the individual or group ‘well-being’. Educational actions are instrumental for a transcendent social activity – that is why self-complacency is completely unsatisfactory as a criterion for evaluating an action. On the contrary, subjecting democratic dialogue to the frames of justice, ethics and new learning perspectives based on the reality

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Joan Rué of those who learn facilitates and gives depth and professional and social meaning to the search for the most judicious options and actions, if we want to express this in Aristotelian terms. In synthesis, let us see some of the contributions from the social sciences which could be useful to our deliberation: • conceive reality as intelligible actions, as a socially – and perseveringly – constructed reality and not as things (Habermas, 1988); • action is subjective, strategic and in context; • in the face of the concept that everything is established, adopt the scientific attitude that everything can change; • in the face of changing reality, the problem is not one of knowing the answers, but of pointing to the questions which justify it; • thought and dialogue are a way of organising uncertainty; • conceive dialogue as a search for the best evidence. Dialogue as a form of knowledge, and progress in knowledge, and moral; • the need to redefine the meaning of justice (Rawls, 2002); • the need to reinforce human development and to explore the models of development based on ethics (Sen, 1999).


Under What Conditions Does New Modernity Reach School? Although important changes in paradigm have taken place in the area of thought and social transformation, we should not neglect the power of cultural continuity in the role of the school which provides two classic pillars of modern society: social reproduction and control. We should recall that, once created, educational systems evolved and developed to meet new social demands, but also continued to function as a privileged instrument in the construction and legitimation of social and cultural order, as has been manifested by Bourdieu, Bernstein, Apple or Giroux, among many others. We could say that the culture of school reproduction tries to assimilate social, productive or cultural changes while at the same time carrying out those two great functions, which provokes never-ending contradictions. States have conceded sovereignty, for instance, in Europe in many fields, but practically none in education. Many sectors have become deregulated, many values have been transformed in our societies, but the examples of the National Curriculum in the United Kingdom (Whitty, 2001) or the new education law (LOCE) [6] in Spain, although different, are an eloquent demonstration of how important features of modernity of the first age still prevail in the minds and political agenda of those groups with greatest power of social control. The application of neo-liberal agendas based on the rhetoric of ‘less State’, on the generation of ‘quasi markets’ (Whitty, 2001) in education, on passive intervention in schooling processes, that is, not correcting through proactive policies the effects of unequal distribution of instrumental freedoms, end up having an important effect on the consequences of schooling. Furthermore, administrative norms on human

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and economic resources; on salary and professional promotion policies; on different forms of evaluation which school is subjected to; the different manifestations of the intensification of the workload of teachers, among others, constitute normative ways which exert a powerful controlling effect on the workload of teachers and its representations.[7] Political power exerts an important influence on the conception and development of education and on the conception of teaching roles. We can still find a high degree of autonomy regarding accumulated knowledge in decisions on education, much more so than in other fields of political action, not only regarding the regulation of education, its specification, and the definition of curricula and how to develop them, but in the exercising of an autonomy of decision which ignores the results of accumulated research, the opinion of different social sectors and, even, that of teachers themselves. In effect, educational policies tend to be shaped as responses to an electoral market rather than address the development of a varied offer of opportunities relevant to individuals, independently of the social group they belong to. In this context, why should school and professional culture remain on the margins of the practical effects of tax reduction? How can the degree of autonomy of the school and its agents not be affected? How will this not affect employment and salary policies of teachers? How will it not influence models of evaluation and control? On the contrary, we must accept that this power, when exerted on each of the different infrastructural and structural elements of the curriculum, has a decisive influence on educational conceptions and on the model of rationality which guides professional practice. Thus, in the field of education there is a great contradiction. While the structure of the systems tends to reproduce through different means the conventional model of dual systems and professional models based on technical rationality (Habermas, Schön), educational discourse very often emphasises the discourse which emerged in the new age of liquid modernity.

The Scene of Dialogue in Action Research This contradiction leads to three possible scenarios, each with important practical consequences on curricular development, on teaching professionality and on the type of research required. The first scenario would be institutional reification, that is, considering educational institutions and their effects to be things rather than actions, as a permanent reality with its own laws, dispensing with Habermasian distinction. A reality conceived in this way can be regulated by expert knowledge and developed by technicians who are regularly provided with instructions of what has to be done and how, as well as controlling them,

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Joan Rué according to production rules. This scenario also influences how research in education should be conceived. The second scenario considers educational reality as actions to which our representations are powerful and autonomous. For this reason, the conditioning factors indicated in the first scenario can be rendered invisible. Of course, it is known that they exist, but their effect is so manifest that it is possible to act as if this assumption was omitted. Because there are sufficient gaps in the system and there are numerous agencies, such as universities which have different constraints, or because there are sufficient enterprising subjects, it is possible to detect discourses on the autonomy of agents and changes which, although still relevant, in the end have little penetration into the globality of the system. The third scenario is that which is defined as the contradiction between the two previous poles. We are dealing with actions subjected to strong constraints whose effects and demonstrations are relevant. And there are agents and agencies whose professional dignity leads them to develop a reflexive and critical activity in what they do and what happens to their professional spaces. This scenario points to the fact that in the field of social knowledge, regulated by the laws of the historicity of human action, by its political, civic, ethical character, rather than by natural laws, knowledge should be successively reworked in order to adapt it to the new realities through the use of public reason, without which ‘reflexive equilibrium’ (Rawls, 2002) is not possible. But this must be done according to certain concerns which we consider crucial. Any pedagogy which really wants to be such can only be constructed from an analysis of existing pedagogy. And how can this be done without critiquing what already exists? Remember that criticism comes from the Greek krino, to separate, with the same root as crisis, which expresses the idea of change or difficulty. We should not forget that if we participate in the strategic meaning of actions we should also take on the strategic responses of the system. This space for reflexive dialogue, in which action research reaches its maximum meaning, consists of four main elements: • teaching cultures are directed but not predetermined; • the actions of individual or collective agents, working on their own or in a network, allow for the re-creation of multiple forms of education; • this re-creation requires both its own creative impulse and an ethical principle of action, fundamental for interpreting action (Dewey, 1904); • this ethical principal will be more educationally and socially relevant in the same measure as the justification of the sense of justice and freedom which it furthers. This room for contradiction best justifies reflexive action. Within it, possibilities for dialogue are generated in which different arguments encounter each other and demand the best grounds for the justification of belief. Gadamer (1993, p. 140) is right when he maintains that research is

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the continuation of dialogue by other means. In this scenario action research would have as an end the search for ‘reflexive equilibrium’ enunciated by Rawls in which the different educational agents would find their meaning of professional dignity; a dignity which depends on the autonomy of the agents starting from, influencing and modifying the existing institutional conditions.


Promote a Freer Education, Generate a Sense of Professional Dignity In defining dialogue as the process for producing the best evidence, we have postponed a reply to the questions: why is this the case, and what is the process which makes it such? In this last section I will try to outline my point of view. We will assume, with Rorty (2000, p. 18), that the relevant question to ask is not ‘whether there are truths out there which we will never discover’ but ‘whether each of the different versions of truth which we use in our different cultural activities is the best imaginable one, the best way towards the ends served by these activities’. In effect, ‘knowing’ is not a product which is pre-existent or independent of reality; on the contrary, it is an indirect process, inferential, supported by reasons which require a type of agreement (knowledge) constructed according to the requirements of a public language and debate: a process which Habermas (1990) established as ideal and which he has called ‘communicative rationality’. Knowing also requires some agreements based on epistemological demands and conceptual rigour which cannot be constructed on the margins or in advance of action, but within it or starting from it. In its turn, as that author has shown, rationality of discourse cannot be constructed without referring to the social dimensions of the debate. Consequently, this type of pedagogical enquiry cannot have another meaning than being situational and should be carried out in the eyes of society and not by experts for experts. Elster has proposed some criteria by which to discern the rationality of an action: ‘An action is rational when (i) it can be justified as the best way of carrying out the wishes of the agent, given his/her beliefs, (ii) these beliefs can be justified by available proof, and (iii) the amount of evidence collected by the agent can be justified in terms of his/her wishes and the limitations of available information’ (Elster, 1989, p. 134). A feature of praxis is the need to choose, to discuss and make decisions on the basis of diverse, ethical, functional, technical criteria, according to a certain strategy to achieve certain ends. Nevertheless, what gives full human meaning to educational narratives is their ethical foundation and the meaning which they give to social justice, as well as a degree of coherence between these values and practice in which these educational processes are resolved.

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Joan Rué In a situation like education, we are not only facing the subjective rational action of the agents. These actions take place within a public space, defined by a transcendent social function: to encourage learning, the development of values for social cohesion, autonomy and individual responsibility or the development of ‘instrumental liberties’ (Sen, 1999). In this sense, we need external ethical opinions to direct, regulate and discern uncertainties, to develop a pertinent reflection on our actions. Bauman comments (2001, pp. 146-147) that were it not for our freedom of choice, the concept of dignity would be meaningless. Furthermore, the concept of dignity would not have originated; liberty and dignity go hand in hand. Otherwise, there is a risk of establishing amodern forms of dialogue, that is, constructions which avoid the critical dimension and human emancipation, especially of those who learn, as permanent strategies of knowledge; reflections which elude the historicity of the social and cultural constructions themselves and ultimately limit their intervention. Without those considerations a truly creative re-creation of culture in educational spaces is impossible. Nor is it possible without them to effectively expand the meaning of professional dignity. The challenge posed by the two bases of modern epistemology – i.e. the defence of a social construction of reality and the avoidance of notions of truth and objectivity – can be approached through the introduction of an ethical element which allows us to evaluate the way in which we are guided in the uncertainty of action. In this way, it is relevant to introduce, as proposed by Amartya Sen, a principle of justice based on the equity of the development of instrumental freedoms, as an evaluating element of the usefulness of consensus or to elucidate the best means for the purpose served by these activities. The strengthening of educational agents, the development of an idea of justice different to the logic of the configuration of the educational systems, and the overcoming of the constraints which condition practice are very complex tasks. Thus, it is important that the elements of enquiring thought should be solid and based on the nature of action. In this sense, one of the basic elements is the active commitment to the task of promoting equality of opportunity in democracy; that is, confidence in the process of dialogue as a means of promoting situations of bigger and better opportunities to develop instrumental freedoms in a given social context. From the above premises we could derive the following basic principles in action research [8]: • to insist on its character of public reasoning, centred on answers, which try to discern between the principles of justice of the system and those of successive proposals of agents; • to enable knowledge to increase the opportunities of the most limited social groups, according to the principles of justice and instrumental liberties (Rorty, Sen).

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Precisely because we understand the construction of a certain reality – including the links connecting agents to this reality – as an expression of the Aristotelian poiesis, we must ask ourselves about the sense of justice underlying on different actions. As it has been shown by the former authors, all institutional systems are based upon a certain sense of justice which tends to create a certain array of opportunities for the subjects within them. The actors that interact and (re)elaborate a reality within a given context cannot subtract their action from an evaluation. However, this evaluation must take place in accordance to the general principles of justice and of opportunities to fully develop the instrumental freedoms of the ‘agents’ that are, for instance, involved in a certain educational intervention. In consequence, we can ask ourselves whether the justice principles regulating public education systems (both at macro- and micro-level) are firmly based on democratic grounds or whether, on the contrary, the development of those principles may lead to a situation where these same principles become spaces in which unequal social reproduction processes are legitimised. We cannot forget that this is a key aspect in the neo-liberal education agenda. This is a fundamental dimension to be unveiled by means of action research: to evaluate to what extent those different systems are grounded on ‘modernity’: • To strengthen the sense of agency (teachers and students), in their development as political agents, that is, with a sense of public initiative (linked to the notion of free spontaneity of action, according to Arendt, or Gramsci’s notion of the intellectual). • To strengthen the criteria of Aristotelian poiesis in the face of attempted legitimisation of the techné. • These principles give ground to the need to triangulate data among – and with – the agents involved in any action, without considering the power status they may be able to show in a certain social context. This triangulation will not only be based on facts, opinions and perceptions about a given situation or action. The systems of belief, the values and interests of those agents, will also have to be taken into account, as they are the guiding force of their own actions. • On the other hand, all this shows that agents are also the recipients of the investigation rapports, which must give evidence of the links between current practices and the factors that constrain or limit their development, in the sense that has already been explained. • To conceive reflection from the perspective of a ‘project’ – i.e. as a structure of formulated and explicit intention whose aim is to affect the transformation of a given situation. A project, as a concept, implies a dimension oriented to produce strategic changes. In spite of being implicit in education as well, this dimension often needs to be more explicitly shown. Thus, there is a need to articulate a system of quality indicators to evaluate an action that can be taken to constitute a ‘project’. However, these indicators will only make

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Joan Rué sense if they concentrate on the communication, on the personal or on the sociocultural dimensions of specific subjects involved in any educational intervention, instead of focusing on the achievement of institutional standards. • To put forward network dialogue as a form of socialisation to strengthen the construction of agreements and the quality of the shared framing, in the cooperative sense proposed by Elliott (1990). Action research has its own limits. It cannot substitute agents or their representations. However, such a limit is also its main strength. Evidence, contradiction, relevant examples and opinions are core elements in the exposition and the (re)constructing dialogue(s) about the evaluated reality. This entails the need to publicise rapports, so that agents can debate them, as part of the same process of critical analysis of what has been formerly dubbed as ‘constructed reality’. The aim of that process ought to be to lead us to the new cycle of action, from a deeper and comprehensive perspective on the notion of quality. In the face of the challenge of new times, once more it becomes necessary to remake the discourses and practices in order to develop professionally and socially relevant proposals, in a context of greater social equity, within the frame of liquid modernity. Nevertheless, in the face of demands made by change, two discourses of opposing logic emerge: the logic of liquid modernity and that of responses to power (centralisation, intensification, control and technification). The resolution of this deep contradiction can only be possible within the space of the struggle for professional dignity, in the sense that John Elliott was announcing to those young people some time ago and in the same way as he has continued to develop throughout his relevant intellectual trajectory (1988, 1993a, 1993b, 1994, 1997, 2001). It is a struggle that requires the acceptance of the complexity of action and of the contexts as a starting point; which demands a dialogic methodology, such as action research, contained if possible within a network; whose necessary requirement for relevant reflection is to be equipped with a sense of social transcendence in formative action. The coda of that reflection reveals the paradox of that far-off statement of John’s. The deepest cultural changes are participated actions; they are, as well, critically and socially constructed, problem-based and embedded in their context, and they can cause some uneasiness and discomfort. However, they are not rooted in naive assumptions. Deep cultural changes may be hazardous but surely they can neither be brought about from the belief that there are no social power constraints nor from the confidence in the power of external coercion, even though this coercive action is assumed to be ‘well grounded’. In fact, the process of professional development implies impregnating reflexive work with a sense of ethics while at the same time connecting it to a critical reformulation of the current meaning of institutional justice.

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Correspondence Professor Joan Rue, Department de Pedagogia Aplicada, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Edifici G, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain ([email protected])

Notes [1] Translation from Spanish into English by Lucila Recart. [2] From 1968 until 1975 the dictatorship (1939-75) of General Franco became tougher with any sign of political opposition, whether it came from the left wing or from the centre. [3] Retranslated from Spanish [4] I could mention some excellent narratives from British cinema; Ken Loach and his Sweet Sixteen is a good example of what I am saying. [5] In Deconstructing Harry.


[6] Approved by the Spanish parliament with majority support of the Popular Party (conservative) in December 2002. [7] At present, for instance, independent agencies rarely take part in professional teacher training processes in Catalunya. The present educational administration of Catalunya can say, like Humpty Dumpty, that it defines the meaning of the word ‘training’. [8] In one way or another, all these principles have been dealt with in John’s work.

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