Action Research and Postmodernism

"Make something new, Derrida says, that is how deconstruction happens. This book exemplifies such a move in the way it addresses the stuck places of practitioner oriented research with its rational, intentional agents seeking to empower both teacher self and students. An example of putting postmodernism to work in educational research, the book asks hard questions about necessary complicities...rounded in nursery teaching and math education, it attempts to develop a better language toward a more complicated understanding of what knowledge means...without reverting to the quick and narrow scientism of the past." - Patti Lather, Ohio State University. How can we move forward from or develop traditional approaches to Action Research, which have dominated teacher research for many years now? How can teachers work at improving their teaching when there are so many different understandings of what education is trying to achieve? In which ways can post-structuralism, which has had such a major impact in other disciplines, offer practical support to teachers developing their own professional practices?
A premise of much teacher research is that reflection on practice can lead to a development of that practice. Such reflection, it is purported, enables the practitioner in organising the complexity of the teaching situation, with a particular emphasis on how 'monitoring of change' can be converted to 'control of change'. This book questions the notion of construing developing practice as 'aiming for an ideal' and suggests that such a pursuit has a questionable track record. The very desire for control, and the difficulties encountered in trying to document it can cloud our vision from the very complexities we seek to capture. The book offers detailed discussion of teacher research enquiries carried out in the context of masters and doctoral degrees. It focuses in particular on how the reflective writing generated by the teacher might build towards an assertion of professional identity through which professional demands are mediated.