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Educational Action Research

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Voice, young people and action research

Mark Hadfield & Kaye Haw
a a a

University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

Available online: 24 Feb 2007

To cite this article: Mark Hadfield & Kaye Haw (2001): Voice, young people and action research, Educational Action Research, 9:3, 485-502 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09650790100200165

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Educational Action Research, Volume 9, Number 3, 2001

THEORETICAL RESOURCE

Voice, Young People and Action Research

MARK HADFIELD & KAYE HAW University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

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ABSTRACT This article moves from an overview of what is meant by the term voice to discussing the significance of its links with action research. It does this through using a simple typology of three types of voice: Authoritative, Critical and Therapeutic. Each type of voice represents a different process of articulation and intended outcome. It then moves on to consider voice and the collaboration of young people in educational action research by unpicking a series of four assumptions which delineate major theoretical and practical possibilities and limitations. These assumptions provide a critique of the underpinning ideologies held by professionals when supporting and listening to young people.

The links between the rights of young people, their treatment by society and voice has been of interest to those who work with and represent young people for some time. More recently, it has become increasingly fashionable to link the idea of voice with terms such as working from the bottom-up, partnership, and participation, in order to describe different forms of collaboration between young people and professionals. As voice has been re-interpreted in these different collaborative relationships, and applied to an increasing range of issues, there is a danger of it becoming a buzz term that loses much of its original meaning. Voice is now used in a wide variety of projects and policies from advocacy to consumer rights and citizenship education. The voice of young people is being increasingly sought as part of the general move towards social inclusion. It has become an established element of central and local government rhetoric, but as it gains in popular usage it becomes increasingly open to question and criticism. This is particularly so, over the issue of whether the focus of this work should be on supporting young

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Mark Hadfield & Kaye Haw people articulate their voice or directed at getting professionals to listen and respond. Inevitably, at the heart of this debate are the ones relating to issues of power and how power intersects with, and emerges through, positions of, for example, age, social class, ethnicity and gender. While recognising that the term voice and its associated term, silence, as used widely in feminist literature, and in Black and cultural studies (see, for example, the work of bel hooks, Patti Lather, Meaghan Morris, Linda Nicholson and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) are pivotal to any debate around voice it is impossible to draw out their theoretical roots in such a short piece. Rather, what we have done is to focus on the application of the term to current practices in schools, youth services and social work. This Theoretical Resource article arises out of one of our recent action research projects that aimed to support a group of young men excluded from one school. They wanted to express their views back to this school on how they came to be excluded and the way they hoped the school would deal with similar pupils in the future. Working with these young people and getting this kind of voice heard drew us into both the theoretical discussions and practical difficulties of maintaining our relationships with these young men, their school and the youth workers as we supported them in attempting to change the schools approach to at risk youngsters. It is important to emphasise here that this is a theoretical discussion about the worth placed upon the voice of young people. It is not therefore an account of the work that we did with them and, as such, it contains little in the way of direct voicing from the young people themselves. Rather this paper is an attempt to unravel some of the issues around voice. As such, it deliberately does not include quotes from young people because its aim is to problematise the use of young peoples voice. What follows then is an exploration of three key themes concerning how the voice of young people is used, the way it is used and the medium through which it is possible to articulate their voice. These are issues that we believe need to be grappled with before beginning any piece of research with young people. As we have already stated in such a short article it is difficult to adequately tackle all aspects of the concept of voice. Rather we want to move fairly quickly on from an overview of what is meant by the term voice, through its relevance to action research. Then, and more importantly, discuss how the arguments around the worth of young peoples voice illuminate why when we talk of collaborative action research in the classroom we still seem to mean research that goes on between teachers, rather than between teachers and their pupils.

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So What is Voice?
The construct voice has become such a broadly used term that it is in danger of losing much of its specific meaning as it becomes disconnected from the different theoretical sources and critical praxis from which it

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originated. There are though a number of common themes that run through much of the literature. It privileges experience, over theory or training, as the basis of an individuals understanding of an issue or activity, and the meaning they give to it. It fundamentally relies on an interior authenticity, which is hard to demonstrate: Voice is meaning that resides in the individual and enables that individual to participate in a community ... The struggle for voice begins when a person attempts to communicate meaning to someone else. Finding the word, speaking for oneself and feeling heard by others is all a part of this process ... Voice suggests relationships: the individuals relationship to the meaning of her/his experience and hence, to language, and the individuals relationship to the other, since understanding is a social process. (Britzman, 1990, quoted in Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) It favours excluded, silenced or sub-ordinated voices over dominant voices in terms of initiating and guiding change. This raises concern over the appropriateness of existing mechanisms to facilitate the voice of those already marginalised and ignored: Youth councils and youth forums are used in many areas to provide a voice for local young people but often suffer by appearing tokenistic or attracting only the more active and more able members of the community. In addition, many youth consultation schemes flounder due to the fact that young people, already insecure and suspicious of authority, are forced into adult decision-making mechanisms. They are effectively being set up to fail. (Hurley & Duxbury, 1999, p. 7) It is an inclusive idea that recognises the proliferation of voice and the increasingly fragmented nature of peoples experiences and, hence, their understanding. It is culturally specific with its validity arising from who is speaking, rather than being sanctioned by who is listening: One clear message, articulated especially when respondents were asked about improvements to leaving care, was that the council should listen to children and young people. ... The heterogeneity of young people is an important factor in any service, and the local authority can only respond properly through an up to date knowledge of young peoples ideas which does not assume that some are representative of the whole, and particularly takes account of gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability and sexuality. (West, 1998, p. 29) The converse of having a voice is being silenced. A group can be silenced in many ways, from being ignored to being stereotyped in such a way as to

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Mark Hadfield & Kaye Haw invalidate what they say. A key part of the discussions around voice is to examine and challenge the processes that silence groups: Research on (school) dropouts has been predominately concerned since the 1960s with examining samples of dropouts in order to identify common personal and social characteristics ... This agenda places the blame on the victim rather than the institution from which they have been excluded ... The few studies that have examined the experiences and perspectives of dropouts themselves have challenged the notion that schools do not contribute to the decision. The tendency to label dropouts as incompetent in schools because they possess characteristics identified as the products of deficient homes and cultural backgrounds means that their critiques are not recognised. Thus the criticism of schools as sites of unequal opportunities are silenced. (Stevenson & Ellsworth, 1993, pp. 261-263) Voice is linked to issues of participation and empowerment and is often drawn into the debates as to the level of participation of young people and how and if they are rally empowered by the process of giving voice: Participation is involvement and responsible power sharing by all those with a key interest in the service offered. Participation in the youth service is sharing responsibility with as many young members or users as possible at all levels. The aim should be to encourage them to initiate and carry through activities and to give them an effective voice in decisions about aims, expenditures and programmes. (NCVYS, 1988, p. 55)

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The Links Between Voice and Action Research

Just as there are numerous forms of action research, so there are different types of voice. For some, it is synonymous with people simply expressing their point of view on a subject; for others it is a much more involved act of participation where people engage with the organisations, structures and communities that shape their lives. To understand the links, both possible and actual, between the construct of voice and the practice of action meant having to set the construct within the processes and purposes that give it more specific meanings. To do this, we created a crude typology of voice based on three broad types, which we called Authoritative, Critical and Therapeutic. Each type reflects a different process of articulation and intended outcome. Figure 1 shows this typology, with examples from a range of youth research.

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Fig. 1A. YOUNG PEOPLES VOICE IN ACTION RESEARCH

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Fig. 1B.

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Fig. 1C.

We created this typology as a framework for our use when working with young people because it helps us to formulate with them what kind, or kinds, of their voice they want to work on articulating, gives them an understanding of the sorts of activities they could be drawn into and most

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Mark Hadfield & Kaye Haw importantly the types of voice that may help them achieve the changes they desire. It also draws attention to the criticisms they will expose themselves to as they set out to influence others.

Voice and Collaboration of Young People in Educational Action Research

What struck us as we reviewed the literature, both theoretical and practical, was the relative lack of discussion, in education, as compared with youth work, of collaborative action research projects involving young people that set out to get their voices heard. Although there are numerous accounts of education-based projects aimed at supporting young peoples voice, these were often participation projects, which were bounded by the agendas and structures of professionals, rather than truly collaborative. A good example of this is the move towards creating Schools Councils, where it is often unclear how much they are based on pupil needs and issues, rather than the needs and issues of the staff of the school. Recent research on School Councils (ACE, 1995) has criticised their limited remit, the relatively small numbers of young people directly involved in them, and the prevailing agenda of the school, rather than pupils. In education, when voice is mentioned, it still tends to be the voice of teachers that is dominant with pupils cast as the sub-alterns within a sub-altern profession trying to get its voice heard. It is outside the scope of this article to look in-depth at who educators prefer to collaborate with in their action research and why such patterns have come about. It is, however, illuminating to review the contributions to this particular journal, as we have done, and analyse these patterns of collaboration. You may be surprised how rarely pupils are involved. Rather, we want to examine the ideological framework that surrounds the voice of young people because we believe that within it are contained some of the key objections professions encounter, and hold themselves, about the trustworthiness and persuasiveness of young peoples voice. We believe in part that this accounts for the lack of popularity of descriptions of pupils voice in collaborative research in education. Our ideological critique was part of the write up of our project (Hadfield & Haw, 2000), and was framed in the language of common sense assumptions and objections. The aim of this section is therefore to help you come to your own understanding of the main arguments and issues raised by professionals working with young people. We took four key assumptions, linked these with subsidiary assumptions, and the common objections and criticisms made of them. The key and subsidiary assumptions were as follows: Young people are in the best position to talk about being young: The views of young people are significant because of the immediacy of their experiences.

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The voice of young people has to be based on these experiences. Young people can tell professionals about their experiences in a way that is meaningful: Young people need help to articulate their views effectively. There is a young persons perspective on many issues and problems. Professionals have few opportunities to hear young people: Professionals will listen to the considered voice of young people. Young people require their own structures and specific processes to help them make an impact. Young people can get things changed by getting their concerns and issues heard: There are only certain issues on which young people need to be consulted. Young people are particularly effective at influencing other young people.

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We unpick each of these assumptions in turn, and put forward alternative arguments and perspectives that reveal how these assumptions has been challenged in the debate surrounding the worth of young peoples voice.

Assumption 1: young people are in the best position to talk about being young
This is probably the most fundamental assumption made about the voice of young people. We should listen to it because it is the voice of experience. Only young people can really know how it is to be a young person at this particular time, in a particular community, as a member of a youth club, as a pupil in a school or within the family. It is a combination of unique experiences, beliefs and opinions, and their general outlook, which makes it so worthwhile to listen to young people. The core challenge to this assumption has its roots in how society views young people. Views that have changed considerably over time and that have drawn on various theories about how children and young people develop. Professionals opinions on the relative maturity of young people are shaped by these social norms and the theories used to justify them. Those who see the voice of young people as immature, because they have not developed the cognitive skills and understandings to make real sense of the world, will treat it with a degree of suspicion; suspicions that, in some cases, have led to them being ignored when they should have been listened to. The more extreme versions of this view have become increasingly discredited, sometimes due to the tragic consequences of ignoring young

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Mark Hadfield & Kaye Haw people. Professionals are left to struggle with the tension between recognising that young people may hold certain views because of a lack of experience or maturity, as well as because they have unique insights. The second criticism of this assumption is to what extent the views of young people are their own, and to what extent are they influenced by the views and agendas of other people. It touches on debates about how independent are the opinions we get from young people and raises questions about the power of others to shape their perceptions. Like adults, young people form their opinions partly on the basis of the social norms and values that surround them, as well as from experience. They can be seen though, as particularly susceptible to certain forms of manipulation because of the power relationships in which they are caught up. The issue here is the extent to which young people have the opportunity to critically define their own perspectives in the process of articulating their views. Professionals often find themselves in the difficult position of recognising that young people know a lot about their own lives while being aware that they are often unable to see the limits of this knowledge. A balance has to be struck between getting the natural or authentic voice of young people and ensuring that it is a considered or truly held view. Professionals having to weigh the possibility of unduly influencing young peoples views with getting them to think through their views, consider alternative perspectives and deal with the counter arguments they may encounter.

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Assumption 2: young people can tell professionals about their experiences in a way that is meaningful
Young people are asked to voice their views not only because it is seen as beneficial to them personally, but also because people believe they can learn from what they are saying. The arguments here are not so much that young people will, or will not, make sense, but rather what kind of meaning they set out to create. The phenomenon of professionals being told what they want or expect to hear is widely recognised. Of course, this phenomenon is not restricted to young people and neither is it a one-way process. Those working with young people are influenced by a wide range of factors that affect what they are told, what they encourage young people to say and what they treat as important. Do young people need help in articulating their views? An important challenge to this assumption is that young people only appear to need help from adults to find their voice because these self same adults fail to recognise how they are already expressing themselves. We have to question whether we undervalue the way young people express themselves through their behaviour, clothes, music, apathy, loyalty and, just as importantly, their silence. Do adults attach too much importance to certain forms of expression? Research and policy development tends to fall back on those who are verbally articulate and self-confident. Young people who are less

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articulate or confident can be stereotyped as not having developed the capacity to express themselves in the way required of citizens with rights. The lives of young people and their experiences are at least as diverse as those of other social groups. When we set out to listen to their voice we need to recognise that being young is only part of what creates their perspective. They are also young men and women: they come from different ethnic and social class backgrounds, have a different range of abilities, live in different family structures and come from a range of communities. This brings us back to the very first assumption about the primacy of their experience and the specific insights they have.

Assumption 3: professionals have few opportunities to hear young people

The growing interest in voice is partially premised on the assumption that professionals are distanced from certain groups of young people. This may be because they have limited contact with this group, or the kind of contact they do have means there is little opportunity for them to listen to their honest views and opinions. This leads on to further assumptions about the kind of voice professionals, and in some cases politicians, prefer to listen to and the need for specific innovations to support them. Do people need more and better training about how to consult others? How well are professionals coping with a more fragmented and diverse society? Is it the case that the voice of young people often gets drowned out by other dominant voices that professionals have to listen to? Professionals are bombarded with surveys, reports and research which they often have little time to absorb or which they cannot easily relate to their own practice. Young people need to understand the audience of their voice if they want to have an impact. By becoming more knowledgeable about their audiences, young people are in a position to strike a better balance between being listened to and challenging professionals sufficiently to change their practice. To a degree, what constitutes a considered argument is determined by the audience and reflects their preferences and biases. Be it a belief in hard statistics in a glossy report or a preference to hear it straight from the horses mouth at a public meeting. Possibly the biggest criticism of this assumption is that, in practice, there is no one kind of voice most likely to get a reaction. Rather, it is a question of knowing when to put forward ones views, how best to put them forward and doing so with confidence and persistence. It is hardly surprising that with all the difficulties of getting young people involved and maintaining their motivation that practitioners tend to concentrate on these practicalities rather than on micro-politics, the moral issue of subverting young peoples views or the technicalities of consulting a representative group. Some of the assumptions already discussed have led people to argue the need for particular techniques and processes when working with young

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Mark Hadfield & Kaye Haw people. Developing approaches, which are attractive to young people and involve them is seen as particularly important because of their alienation from existing structures. There are problems though, with the extent to which the perspectives and issues of young people are framed, by what and how they are asked. This, in turn, impacts on the effect that young people can have on the policy and decision-making affecting their lives. Many projects have included distinct strategies and structures to involve young people, but as Fitzpatrick et al (1998) point out, creating separate structures for young people can have the effect of marginalising them. There is clear evidence of a tension between foregrounding young people and compartmentalising their issues.

Assumption 4: young people can get things changed by getting their voices heard
Although there are numerous personal benefits claimed for young people involved in voicing their views and experiences this is not generally their sole motivation. Generally, young people want things to change, something to happen, somebody to take note. They want to have an impact. They assume, even if many professionals do not, that they can get things changed by getting their voices heard. For all the effort and time put into the numerous projects that have tried to get the voices of young people heard, their widespread impact has been called into question. Although professionals have employed a range of innovative methods for reaching out to and working with excluded and vulnerable young people there is little evidence to suggest that they have been able to have an effect on the wider policy concerns of local authorities and service providers. As professionals we need to ask ourselves why this should be so. Increasingly, young people are being asked to take part in a wide range of initiatives considered by adults to be of relevance to them. Partly, this is because of increasing expectations placed on professionals that they show evidence of working with a broad range of groups in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality and age. This drive towards more inclusive and bottom-up approaches, which reach out to the most excluded of young people, is responsible for the popularity of many of the new consultation techniques and structures. However, there is a danger that all this activity at the bottom does not result in better or more innovative decision making. A failure to change the culture within many organisations about who actually has the power to make decisions means that it is not devolved down the ladder of participation (Arnstein, 1969). The most researched example of this tension between participation and representation is that of school councils (ACE, 1995). Through these, pupils previously excluded from the decision making process are being encouraged to participate. They are though, rarely given representation on

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the governing bodies of schools or a presence within school management teams, the forums in which most major decisions are made. This means that their voice can be, and often is, filtered out through a series of structures leading up to this point. Having a school council is becoming an accepted part of the structure of many schools. However, they will continue to have very little impact on key decisions unless there is a corresponding cultural shift that allows students to take a more direct and active roles. As young people are in the best position to talk about being young, professionals tend to want to talk to them about youth issues. However, what do people see as youth issues? Who defines these issues? Does acknowledging their expertise in one area limit the authority of their opinion in others? The areas in which young people are given a voice are often limited by what professionals see as appropriate. So, for example, in schools in general it is seen as appropriate for students to have a voice in writing school rules, but not in the appointment of new staff. The power of their voice is diluted as it is channelled into safe spaces and managed by more powerful voices. Just as there are issues where young people are seen as having a certain expertise there are also groups that they are more effective at influencing. The most obvious group is other young people. Combining these areas of expertise and influence has led to the popularity of peer education projects dealing with issues such as sexual health and drugs where professionals have struggled to have an impact. A combination of empathy and understanding with the ability to relate to other young people in a similar situation to themselves is what makes these projects effective. Approaches such as peer mentoring come with several health warnings. There is the issue of defining groups by the problems they have experienced. There is a danger that placing people into crude categories of experience and matching them up with similar young people can in itself become a very subtle form of silencing. For example, becoming homeless is a devastating event, but one that is experienced very differently by young people. Becoming homeless after leaving care, through drug addiction or because one has broken the moral codes of ones community are all very different experiences. Bringing together young people to voice about being homeless can paradoxically fail to articulate the general issues that affect young people while failing to grasp the uniqueness of their individual experiences.

Summary
The piece of action research from which this theoretical resource arose was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which as a funding body was particularly concerned that the voice of young people was heard in areas to do with the family and care. This relates back to way in which social

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Mark Hadfield & Kaye Haw services to their cost learnt of the need to listen to the voice of young people. We set out to do a piece of action research where voice was important because we were interested in young people having an influence in the world of education. Our interest was, and is, in how young people think about the current debates around achievement, teaching and learning styles and school improvement. In going into this we recognised the difficulties young people would experience in articulating their voice in these matters because they are not used to being asked to do so. The bigger issue in practice was not the lack of expertise of the young people but the unwillingness of professionals to listen to them, particularly when they were being critical. This is a particularly crucial consideration for a research approach committed to inclusiveness and working with and not on. It raises questions about how we work with young people who are often the targets of research around pupil outcomes, achievement and performance. As educational research is asked to providing evaluative commentaries on an increasing number of innovations within schools and class rooms we need to recognise that the impact of these can only be truly accessed by working with pupils, talking with them about their perspectives and giving due consideration to the legitimacy of their voice. This is increasingly important when their voice is only one amongst many others. We need to take a step back and think about the silencing of certain voices, particularly when action research has done so much to challenge criticisms of the voice of teacher as parochial and lacking in a wider vision. The aim of this article has been to help us all as professionals to think more about the ideology behind our assumptions about listening to the voice of young people. By looking at who we collaborate with and the relative authority of certain voices we have raised questions and some answers about how we as professionals can work with young people on what kind, or kinds, of voice they want to articulate. From this point decisions can be made about the kinds of activities that young people can involve themselves in and the types of voice that may help them to influence others. It also draws attention to the criticisms they will expose themselves to as we choose to work with them in the action research process.

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Correspondence
Mark Hadfield, Urban Programmes Research Group, School of Education, University of Nottingham, Dearing Building, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, United Kingdom (mark.hadfield@nottingham.ac.uk).

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References
ACE (1995) Survey into School Democracy: childrens voices in school matters. London: ACE. Arnstein, S. (1969) A Ladder of Citizenship Participation in the USA, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), pp. 216-224. Connelly, F.M. & Clandinin, D.J. (1990) Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry, Educational Researcher, 19(5), pp. 2-14. Fitzpatrick, S., Hastings, A. & Kintrea, K. (1998) Including Young People in Urban Regeneration: a lot to learn. Bristol: Policy Press. Hadfield, M. & Haws, K. (2000) The Voice of Young People: hearing, listening, responding, Urban Programme Research Group. Nottingham: University of Nottingham. Hurley, N. & Duxbury, G. (1999) Engaging Disaffected Young People in Environmental Regeneration. Birmingham: Groundwork UK. NCVYS (1988) Participation: Part A-Making Promises Real. London: National Council for Voluntary Youth Services. Stevenson, R.B. & Ellsworth, J. (1993) Dropouts and the Silencing of Critical Voices, in L. Weis & M. Fine (Eds) Beyond Silenced Voices: class, race and gender in United States schools. Albany: State University of New York Press. West, A. (1998) Which Way Now? Young Peoples Experiences of Leaving Care. London: Save the Children.

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REINTERPRETING EVIDENCEBASED PRACTICE:

A NARRATIVE APPROACH

A Collaborative Action Research Network Conference Sponsored by the South Thames Medical and Dental Education Centre Thursday October 5th, 2000 at Senate House, University of London CONFERENCE NARRATIVES
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Edited by Members of the Collaborative Action Research Network

This report of the conference (approx. 90 pages) contains the full text of the keynote lectures by Helen Simons and Trisha Greenhalgh on the role of narrative in professional practice, including specific studies of education and medicine, and detailed summaries of all the workshop discussion groups. Cost 8.30 (7.30 to CARN members) Obtainable from Lucila Recart, CARN Secretary, CARE, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom. Please make cheques payable to CARN

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The Collaborative Action Research Network

CARN is committed to supporting and improving the quality of professional practice, achieved through systematic, critical and creative inquiry into the goals, processes and contexts of professional work. The quality of our work in the professions depends upon our willingness to ask questions of ourselves and others, and to explore challenging ideas and practices, including the values that underpin them. CARN was founded in 1976 to follow up the development work of the Ford Teaching Project in UK primary and secondary schools. Since that time it has grown to become a national and international network drawing its members from a variety of educational, health, social care, commercial, and public services organisations.

CARN SETS OUT TO PROMOTE

RECOGNITION That professional development requires critical inquiry into, past, current and future practice; That practitioners themselves should be actively and creatively involved in defining and developing professional practice; That all relevant communities (including service-users, students, clients, etc.) need to be involved in developing the provision of services; That individual professional development needs to be seen in the context of institutional practices and structures; That action research provides a powerful means of developing worthwhile professional and institutional practice. SUPPORT For professional staff carrying out action research, individually and in collaboration with others, in their place of work; For employers/managers wishing to set up action research activities as part of development planning; For professional development through action research as a life-long focus throughout all phases of professional careers; For collaboration and dialogue between those concerned, to develop research-based professional practice, and practice-based research, i.e. Between professional practitioners and their clients, e.g. students, service-users Between professionals and peers in the same and other professions Between professionals and colleagues at all levels in their organisations Between professional workers and community members. NETWORKING Through sharing accounts of action research, in the Newsletter, on the CARN website, in the journal Educational Action Research, and through other CARN publications; Through attentive personal encouragement and critical feedback; Through engaging with CARN colleagues at steering group meetings, regional events and at the CARN annual conference. For membership details please contact the Secretary Lucila Recart, School of Education and Professional Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom (l.recart@uea.ac.uk).

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