ABSTRACT
In most applied fields, whether education, nursing, social work or business, knowledge is generated not by practitioners in those fields, but rather by university researchers. The education of practitioners does not often include much in the way of preparation of them as producers of research; if research coursework is included, it is commonly approached with the idea of practitioners being critical consumers of research that someone else, often an academic, produces. When practitioner action research is taught, it is taught with the goal of producing local knowledge to be fed back into one’s own practice, rather than producing public knowledge to be consumed by other practitioners and/or researchers. Beyond the lack of useful preparation to produce research, the organisations in which practitioners work do not often provide incentives for the production of original research. And, although many dissertations in applied fields are done by part-time doctoral students who are working as teachers, social workers, managers, and nurses, they are often dissuaded from conducting research in the settings in which they work for a variety of epistemological, political or ethical reasons. The dearth of practitioner knowledge produced and disseminated by practitioners
trained in research methodology leaves universities and research institutes with a monopoly on producing knowledge about practice. This has traditionally led to a single model of research generation, dissemination and implementation in which practitioners are often pathologised for not faithfully implementing ‘evidence-based’ practices developed by researchers located at universities and research institutes. For example, teachers are expected to faithfully implement curricula step-by-step with little or no deviation, as the curriculum has been ‘debugged’ though experimental research designs. Faithful implementation of these research vetted teaching practices is ensured through high stakes testing, instructional ‘coaches’ and administrative ‘walk throughs’. Research done in universities can reinforce these disciplinary practices. As Schon
(1995) noted, schools of education have agreed to view professional practice as though it consisted of the application of science or systematic knowledge to the instrumental problems of practice. Under girded by the adoption of technical rationality, this view of professional knowledge frames practice as ‘instrumental, consisting in adjusting technical means to ends that are clear, fixed, and internally consistent, and that instrumental practice becomes professional when it is based on the science or systematic knowledge
produced by the schools of higher learning’ (Schon 1995: 29). A subsequent body of research succeeded in legitimating knowledge generated via critical and feminist researchers, often utilising qualitative methods of enquiry. Unfortunately, a more recent and sustained call to return to ‘scientifically based’ and ‘evidence-based’ practices, has undermined even these now well-established modes of enquiry. If qualitative research has been rendered suspect, practitioner action research is located somewhere out beyond the pale. Although practitioners are encouraged to do action research studies in their organisa-
tions that produce local knowledge to be recycled back into their daily practice, such knowledge is not viewed as formal knowledge, nor is it viewed as making a contribution to a professional knowledge base to be widely shared. This chapter will discuss implications for practitioners doing dissertation research aimed at contributing to both practitioner as well as the wider knowledge base. We will focus on the use of practitioner action research as a methodology well suited to making such a contribution. As an exemplar, we will locate the conversation within the field of Education, but we believe that these tensions between practitioner and formal knowledge, as well as the possibilities of practitioner action research, become apparent in many applied fields.
