Creating Spaces in Schools for the Critical Professional: Action Research as Principled Resistance

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores current possibilities for “creating spaces and finding voices” via action research within the landscape of market-based and new public management forms of governance. We re-visit some of the early tenets of practitioner action research and work to extend them in the current context of education. While everyday practices of institutional life impose limiting conditions, at the same time, new spaces for resistance and struggle are possible. We ask what resistance might look like in an era where authentic forms of collaborative inquiry are frequently co-opted or seen as suspect and subversive in many schools. We aim to reclaim practitioner inquiry as a form of resistance, used in questioning the fundamental goals of teaching and learning.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Action Research

Chair

• Michael Ian Cohen, University of Northern Colorado

Papers

• Toward a Critical Professional With Action Research at Its Center - Gary L. Anderson, New York University

• The Potential of Insider Action Research in Making Transparent Everyday Enactments of New Public Management - Kathryn G. Herr, Montclair State University; Michael Ian Cohen, University of Northern Colorado

• Reframing Teachers' Action in Curriculum Poststructural Research in Times of Neoliberal Policies - Elizabeth Macedo, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

• Reflexive Musings and Current Contingencies: Creating New Spaces as Critical Professional Action Researchers - Janet L. Miller, Teachers College, Columbia University