Latency in Action Research: changing perspectives on occupational and researcher identities
Titel:
Latency in Action Research: changing perspectives on occupational and researcher identities
Auteur:
Biott, Colin
Verschenen in:
Educational action research
Paginering:
Jaargang 4 (1996) nr. 2 pagina's 169-183
Jaar:
1996
Inhoud:
This article explores relationships between the occupational, social and researcher identities of people who carry out action research projects in their own workplaces. Do practitioner researchers 'cross lines in the self when they do research? Do they continue to hold their separate and changing identities in intertwined, but fruitful tension, or do they gradually merge them? Does action research offer a way to validate occupational or social identities, or is it used to create new preferred self images? The author, who has 15 years experience of doing and supporting action research, is currently working in a European Union funded project, Management for Organisational and Human Development. As part of this project, he is working with practitioners who are at various hierarchical positions in different kinds of organisations in education and health services. He bases his argument on two key characteristics of action research: first, that it can be inclusive and self-referential, and, secondly, that it combines the familiarity of 'dailiness' with the expectancy of 'latency'. He uses the concept of 'latency' to catch a sense of change in the identity of the practitioner researchers themselves. His illustrative cases show more than the uncovering of tacit knowledge or the confirming of professional dedication, and the article offers an alternative clue as to how momentum might be achieved and maintained by some practitioner researchers.
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