Philosophy, Methodology and Action Research

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of methodology in action research. It begins by showing how, as a form of inquiry concerned with the development of practice, action research is nothing other than a modern 20th century manifestation of the pre-modern tradition of practical philosophy. It then draws in Gadamer's powerful vindication of the contemporary relevance of practical philosophy in order to show how, by embracing the idea of 'methodology', action research functions to sustain a distorted understanding of what practice is. The paper concludes by outlining a non-methodological view of action research whose chief task is to promote the kind of historical self-consciousness that the development of practice presupposes and requires.     

Education and Democracy: confronting the postmodernist challenge1

This paper takes seriously the claim that postmodernism has seriously undermined our‘modern’ understanding of what the role of education in a democratic society should be. It therefore seeks to reinterpret this role in a way that confronts the challenge that postmodernism has posed. In order to do this the paper clarifies how postmodernism has now discredited the‘modern’ assumptions on which our view of the relationship between education and democracy has been erected. Drawing on the philosophy of John Dewey, it then reconstructs the relationship between education and democracy so as effectively to resist the challenge that postmodernism has posed.