Studying Your Own School by Anderson Gary;Herr Kathryn G.;Nihlen Ann S.; & Kathryn Herr & Ann Sigrid Nihlen

Author:Anderson, Gary;Herr, Kathryn G.;Nihlen, Ann S.; & Kathryn Herr & Ann Sigrid Nihlen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1051674
Publisher: Corwin Press
Published: 2007-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

BUT IS IT RESEARCH?

Some might say this has been a compelling narrative of the possibilities and risks of empowerment, but how does it speak to a larger community, whether of practitioners or academics or others? What are the “findings”? Where is the theory? Is this research? Imagine the comments a reviewer of an academic educational journal might make!

Most practitioners who work in schools like the one described will find these questions humorous. They will see them as a spoof on how academics, even qualitative ones, think about research. Practitioners bring to narratives a wealth of tacit knowledge and a set of similar preoccupations that resonate with many of the situations and insights described. Only another practitioner can know how it feels to be in the situation described. This narrative will be received by practitioners with an empathy and poignancy lacking in the hard-nosed questions about findings, theory, and method. As practitioners read narratives like this, they are actively engaged in the process of naturalistic generalization described in Chapter 2.

Drawing on our categories from Chapter 2, the internal validity of the study is established in the account. The democratic validity of the study, or the inclusion of multiple voices or perspectives, was achieved through the inclusion of the perspective of the students of color. Although not included in the above account, data from school committees and the administration were also gathered.

Outcome validity was established through the continual rethinking of the dilemmas presented, which ultimately resulted in a permanent student diversity organization. Questions of diversity were not “solved,” but a mechanism for dealing with diversity issues from the students’ perspective was a concrete result of the study.

Process validity was established as Herr discussed her ongoing decision making about methods. In practitioner action research, process validity refers to finding methodological adaptations that fit the contingencies of the setting and the flow of action. Ongoing learning was established through the continuation of the HIT, which indicates that the learning will continue. This type of validity has not been achieved at the institutional level, although real organizational learning is probably beyond the purview of a single action research project.

Catalytic validity resulted in an increased level of consciousness both in the students of color and in other students in the school, as well as, although to a lesser extent, in some teachers and administrators.

Finally, dialogic validity was achieved through the collaboration between colleagues. The two colleagues were able to check each other’s perceptions. Because the collaboration was interracial, some degree of perception check was provided for the white Anglo researcher.

However, in spite of the external validity of the naturalistic generalizations and the internal validity gauged from the above criteria, it is still fair to ask if there is any generation or testing of theory in Herr’s study. Although perhaps not generating new theory, the study does confirm and extend work that identifies the problems of change residing in disjunctions between discursive and “deep” levels of organizational functioning (Argyris et al., 1985; Robinson, 1993).

This study shows that

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