Jean McNiff’s research while affiliated with York St John University and other places

This article presents ideas about curriculum as a process in which people come together on an equal footing to explore ideas about how they might live and draw up plans about how they might do so. This is a negotiated process that recognizes the need of all to speak and be listened to, recognizing the historically constituted nature of social situations in different traditions, each with its own sets of culturally specific norms. Curriculum may then be seen as a process of everyday enquiry that may be conducted anywhere and by anyone, grounded in and informed by everyday practices.

This paper argues that participants and locals should be seen as at the centre of all development, including international and health development work. Consequently, in contexts of health and wellbeing, patients should be seen as active participants, which also implies the need for the independence and freedom of all and the development of dialogical spaces in which all may negotiate what counts as a life worth living. ‘Impact’, on this view, should be seen from a lifeworld perspective of evaluating the effects of dynamic evolving practices where all are seen potentially as donors and beneficiaries within contexts of mutually negotiated reciprocal relationships. Data drawn from extensive fieldwork with local trauma surgeons, midwives and healthcare personnel in rural Cambodia provide the basis of new perceptions about processes of ‘passing on’ knowledge and expertise. The ideas presented have potential implications for normative understandings of the social organisation of healthcare in domestic and international settings.

Who we are and become is influenced by our relationships in different times and spaces. In this paper, I tell stories about my professional education work with others in the Middle East and elsewhere that shows this process in action. However, this view of the evolutionary nature of identity requires a different epistemology from the dominant either-or epistemology of conventional higher education. Through stories about interactions with others in higher education, I explain how such a divisive epistemological form encourages divisive social practices. Further, given current misappropriations of action research by a traditionalist academy, this form now infiltrates action research discourses. Finding ways to create pluralist identities therefore becomes the responsibility of academics who thereby legitimize a dynamic epistemological form through their own action enquiries.

Many practice-based researchers have expert knowledge of doing research but often experience difficulties when writing it up and communicating the significance of what they have done. This book aims to help bridge the gap. Packed with practical advice and strong theoretical resources it takes you through the basics of designing and producing your text so that it will meet established standards and high quality assurance expectations. Divided into 3 distinctive parts, key points include: Understanding writing practices Engaging with the literatures How to write up a project report or dissertation How writing is judged in terms of professional and academic writing practices Developing ideas for further study and publication Writing up Your Action Research Project is an essential text for practitioners on professional education and undergraduate courses across disciplines who want their writing to reflect the excellence of their research. It is the ideal companion to the author's You and Your Action Research Project,now in its fourth edition.

Drawing on the concept of cosmopolitans and locals within competing discourses regarding the aims of higher education and international marketization, this paper suggests that cultural cosmopolitanism may be developed through intercultural dialogue. It reflects on the findings of an action research-based teacher professional education programme in Qatar, with further delivery in other Gulf States, and suggests that potential negative outcomes of uncritical ‘othering’ forms of marketization, potentially resulting in epistemological mnemocide through the exercise of cultural imperialism, may be avoided through developing dialogical communities of inquiry, where issues of values pluralism may be negotiated according to participants’ needs and capacities for knowledge creation. These ideas may be significant for negotiating appropriate criteria for judging the quality of delivery and methodological ethics of the increasing numbers of international programmes using practice-based forms of enquiry. They are essential if international development work is to encourage sustainability through independent knowledge creation.

Since its first publication, Action Research: Principles and Practice has become a key text in its field. This new updated edition clearly describes and explains the practices of action research and its underlying values, and introduces important new ideas, including: • all professionals should be reflective practitioners; • they should produce their personal theories of practice to show how they are holding themselves accountable for their educational influences in learning; •the stories they produce become a new people's history of action research, with potential for influencing new futures. This new edition has expanded in scope, to contribute to diverse fields including professional development across the sectors and the disciplines. It considers the current field, including its problems as well as its considerable hopes and prospects for new thinking and practices. Now fully updated, this book contains: • A wealth of case-study material • New chapters on the educational significance of action research • An overview of methodological and ethical discussion The book is a valuable addition to the literature on research methods in education and nursing and healthcare, and professional education, and contributes to contemporary debates about the generation and dissemination of knowledge and its potential influence for wider social and environmental contexts. Practitioners across the professions who are planning action research in their own work settings will find this book a helpful introduction to the subject while those studying on higher degree courses will find it an indispensable resource.

This paper is about: developing critical understandings about the nature and origins of one’s personal and professional identity; learning how to transform uncritically internalised and potentially damaging conceptualisations of identity and identity formation; saying why it is important to do so; and considering what kinds of texts can show the processes involved. Becoming critical means not simply accepting that ‘I’ am the person I see in the mirror or the ‘me’ my mother/partner/boss wishes me to be, but actively engaging with the experience of my own living ‘I’. This is especially important for action researchers involved in processes of social transformation, and trying to find ways of living their understandings in practice, which begins with developing capacity in critical self-reflection. Here I tell a story of how this capacity might be achieved, and some of the problematics involved. The story is about how two groups of teachers – one in Ireland and one in South Africa, studying for their higher degrees – and I as their supervisor, managed to find ways of reconceptualising what we thought were our stable identities, how we came to appreciate that those identities were culturally and historically constituted, and how we made our collaborative enquiries public. Thus we found ways of writing new stories about identity and identity formation, which, we hope, will influence new thinking about critical self-reflection in educational practices and research.

We speak about the need for critical reflection on practice, but what do we do when we do it; and how do we explain how and why we should do it? This paper explores these issues, and itself acts as the site for an exploration and explanation of what it means to be critically reflective. Drawing on recent research in Qatar, I give an account of how practitioners’ capacity for critical reflection is contributing to a new knowledge base for the country (and possibly beyond), grounded in inter-relational epistemologies, that has potentially far-reaching consequences for improving the quality of learning and teaching in schools and colleges; and how my involvement in the research has improved the quality of my own practice. A main theme throughout is the need to engage with questions – ‘How do I understand my practice? How do I make judgements about its justifiability? How do I demonstrate moral accountability through interrogating the values that inspire what I do?’ – and with the need to make public the emergent understandings that engagement with these questions demands.

This book gives practical guidance on doing an action research project. Written for practitioners across professions who are studying on work-based learning programmes and award-bearing courses, this book is packed full of useful advice and takes the reader through the various stages of a project, including: Starting your action research project. Monitoring and documenting the action. Techniques for dealing with the data. Making claims to knowledge and validating them. Legitimating your research. Making your research public. Creating your living educational theory. The book's practical approach will appeal to practitioners and will encourage them to try out new strategies for improving their work. It will also be essential reading for those resource managers in schools, colleges and higher education institutions who are responsible for providing courses and support. This third edition of the best-selling book has been thoroughly updated and improved by a number of features, with new case studies from a wide range of disciplines, extracts from validated dissertations and theses (with information on how to access more examples via the Internet), points for reflection, checklists of reflective questions, and up-to the-minute information on current debates and ideas.