Part of my unease about action research is that it doesn't seem very scientific and when it comes to understanding I'm tempted to think that science is a Good Thing. This is only a problem if (a) I'm right, and (b) the difference matters because science is somehow better.
How different?
Am I right? Are science and action research poles apart?
Science as product
By scentific understanding I mean the type of thing created by natural scientists, notably physical scientists. Theirs are the most precise theoretical constructs we have, possessing pre-eminent powers of description and prediction. This follows because physical phenomena are repeatable making the body of evidence incomparably large. Mathematical expression coupled with the ability to control the experimental situation admits unparalleled precision and the generation of predictions which are testable by experiment. On the basis of such experiments scientific theories are falsifiable.
Since these qualities are lacking or deficient in other forms of understanding it seems right to mark a clear boundary between science and pseudoscience, the second category to encompass all social sciences, including action research (and doubtless much more).
Science as process
The legitimacy of scientific insights is sometimes deemed to reside in the application of 'the scientific method', which is held to be a process of induction, i.e. proceeding from observations to a general proposition in which the individual observations are subsumed.
Medawar gives this view of the scientific endeavour short shrift. As a professional scientist he has an insider's view and sees science as an untidy activity. He describes a 'hypothetico-deductive' approach which, he maintains, is the one typically adopted by scientists at work. This could be characterised as a guess-and-check method (if that didn't suggest too careless a way of working). Simplistically put, research proceeds on the basis of a hunch which is assumed to be true. On this basis the researcher draws logical consequences and these are tested experimentally. Observation of the predicted consequences doesn't verify the original theory (nothing can do that) but observing events at odds with the predicted consequences certainly rules it 'out'.
This guess-and-check technique is not distinctively scientific: it is a general method for gaining feedback about any opinion, employed in everyday life by people who would never dream of calling themselves scientists. (It is strikingly in tune with Heidegger's assertion that to tackle any question whatsoever it is necessary to have an inkling of what the answer might look like.)
An overriding impression of Medawar's analysis is that science is a perfectly ordinary, human, undertaking quite in keeping with everyday ways of acting and thinking. He even suggests that the process of science is like telling a story. Perhaps it is incorrect to draw too stark a contrast between scientific knowledge and other ways of knowing (e.g. action research) after all.
Knowledge
Of course, Medawar cannot be said to have had the last word on how to do science. Nor, indeed, on the subject of the status of the knowledge generated by scientific activity. The problems of epistemology are far-ranging, complex and quite beyond the scope of this simple discussion. However, if there is to be a hope of distinguishing scientific insights from other ways to know it is helpful to have a clue as to what knowledge per se might be.
Plato's final suggestion in the Theaetetus, can serve as a good working definition. Offered tentatively towards the end of the dialogue Socrates' suggestion is that knowledge is true belief accompanied by a rational account (or, more succinctly, justified true belief).
The knowledge generated by scientists may be held to be exceptionally strong simply because the justifications scentists are able to offer are incomparably convincing, and this is because the evidence base on which their justifications depend is so extensive and precise. Conversely, other forms of knowing may seem less certain simply because justifications for claims to knowledge in these instances rest on flimsier evidence. The knowledge is not different in kind, just less well supported.
Does it matter?
Even if a marked difference between science and other ways of knowing is conceded this would be of no consequence if each was incontestably legitimate in its own sphere. It is only if scientific knowledge is somehow better that we should aspire to attain it in all dealings with the world and with others.
Science as deficient
Knowing isn't everything. It isn't even fundamental. Many of our dealings with the world proceed in the absence of conscious belief or thought. We interact with other people and equipment in our everyday lives on the basis of a background familiarity that is not open to reflection. So says Heidegger. In his view science is refusing to deal with the world, a holding back from involvement, a mere staring. He declares science deficient, not because it is something to be decried but because it is human understanding minus something. Not everyone holds science up as the paradigm of understanding.
Science as irrelevant
Whether Heidegger's analysis of human existence is accepted or not it is manifestly true that lives are lived, decisions made and actions taken without the benefit of science most of the time. In their personal and professional lives people do not often need the authority of a scientific understanding to guide them. Science has nothing to say to most of us most of the time - there are other forces at work influencing human action from moment to moment. Science is not always best and ought to 'know its place'.
Science as inappropriate
It is far from obvious that science is the most suitable approach to use when dealing with problems and puzzles relating to schools and other complex human institutions. In fact it is obvious that it isn't. The hallmarks of science (repeatability, mathematical expression, control, ability to predict...) can only be present to a highly limited degree in an investigation of a social setting of this sort. This, it could be argued, renders action research's non-scientific basis a positive advantage. Researchers adopting such an approach are not muddying the waters by pretending to be doing something that they are not.
Action research: a hybrid
To state the obvious, action research is a mixture of action and research. It is a combination of doing and understanding. Consequently it runs the risk of falling between two stools. It may be that this hybrid gains strength from its parentage and is ideally placed to offer valuable insights, including those that help guide actions. Alternatively it may be fatally flawed because it is neither one thing or the other. Action research may generate knowledge of questionable value that adds nothing to the practical wisdom that would have effected changes for the better anyway.
