Collaborative Action Research Network

As an inclusive network rather than a formally constituted organization, Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) potentially supports action research in as many ways as action researchers care to imagine. Mostly its activities cover an annual international conference, study days, an annual bulletin and special initiatives. Its base is in the UK, with an institutional secretariat at Manchester Metropolitan University, but the network’s reach is global, with representatives from six continents regularly taking part in its annual conference. Whilst supporting a membership and a journal (Educational Action Research [EAR]), CARN’s aspiration to inclusivity and its commitment to being a network are reflected in its practice of welcoming non-members with an interest in action research into all its processes and activities, including its decision-making.

CARN’s origins lie in the research and practice of teaching and learning in schools through inquiry and discovery, but this approach has been sustained in the network’s extension to encompass practice settings beyond the school classroom. Initially envisaged as a network of teacher-researchers, it was based on the view that knowledge is provisional, that self-scrutiny and dialogue about practice provide the means to create new knowledge and that authority relationships [Page 120]in relation to academic knowledge are legitimate and important subjects of study.

It is perhaps the emphasis on inquiry and learning and the focus on practice and development, particularly among professionals, that is most distinctive about CARN within the wider family of action research. CARN’s stated values derive from its inclusive position and its non-hierarchical approach. Doing research with people rather than on people and the attempt to make a difference in people’s lives bring ethical and social issues to the fore and make it necessary to challenge ourselves as well as others. Much of the effort required for such endeavours to succeed turns on our ability to create contexts that are both supportive and critical. The sharing in public of reflexive accounts of what happens in such contexts is regarded as the basis for making substantive contributions to methodological and theoretical understandings of research.

However, it is also recognized that critical processes are social as well as methodological, that the quality of actions counts as evidence and that the reporting of action research benefits from using different forms. This position poses considerable challenges for the assessment of action research submitted for academic awards, and the network has supported significant achievements in moving the boundaries within postgraduate studies towards better recognition of evidence and reporting that departs from conventional academic practice. Marion Dadds, Richard Winter and colleagues are among those who have explored how to innovate in judging the quality of action research in higher education award-bearing programmes.