Developments in the Philosophy/Sociology of Science and Action Research

Action research focusses on practical matters.Its aim is to help the teachers who engage in it to improve their own work.Such inquiry inevitably is rooted in concrete and proximate situations.What is the meaning and what are the effects of my actions, here and now, on my students and on me?Inevitably, explorations of this sort are particularized, context-bound, and saturated with considerations of value and worth.This kind of activity has been contrasted with more traditional research.The latter, influenced by a strong 400-year-old tradition of ways of doing science, alms less at professional action in particular settings than to add to scientific understanding: why does something work the way it does, rather than what one can do about it.It is geared toward timelessness rather than timeliness, and usually is directed toward articulation of general principles that are assumed to have great explanatory power over a large number of cases.Well-developed canons of inquiry characterize such research, with considerable agreement about procedures for validating knowledge.This contrast in the aims and methods of practical reasoning, of which action research is a part, and scientific understanding is becoming blurred, however.One reason is that conceptions of science itself are undergoing rapid change in the late twentieth century, probably more rapid change than at any time in a hundred years.Science is what scientists do.And we are coming to realize that what scientists do is shaped, as for everyone, by the values and the culture in which the activity is conducted.