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CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Many of these characteristics are relatable to my research project and
reinforce the decision to investigate my research guestion in an action research
framework. I explore possibilities of making my research participatory by
offering partnership to participants in exploring the research guestion at
certain points. Kemmis et al. offer a list of five things that only participatory
research can do. One of these is that they claim only “participatory research
creates the conditions for practitioners to understand and develop the ways in
which practices are conducted ‘from within’ the practice traditions that inform
and orient them”. Understanding ‘from within’ is an important element
of drama not only for the participants, but also for the facilitator, as both
educational and artistic practices contain intuitive, creative and non-rational
elements which are born out of impulses from being within the process.
To develop practices, these need to be researched from within as well.
The relation to social change is a central element of differentiating between
two camps of action researchers, the reflective practitioners and the critical
theorists. “For the former, action research is an improvement to professional
practice at the local, perhaps classroom level, within the capacities of
individuals and the situations in which they are working; for the latter, action
research is part of a broader agenda of changing education, changing schooling
and changing society”.’” The sixth edition of the widely used Research in
Education lists seventeen points of criticisms levelled at emancipatory
action research collected from a host of authors ranging from it being “elitist
while purporting to serve egalitarianism” to it representing a “narrow and
particularistic view of emancipation and action research”.°°®
My research is based on a socio-political problem that manifests itself
in drama in education, namely that the dominant socio-cultural narratives
and how our perception of reality is formed remain unexplored in most
contemporary drama in education approaches. My research explores how this
social problem can be dealt with in drama education, how the combination
of two practices can create elements of a methodology that reflect on this
problem. My aim is the development of methods and possibilities that raise
students’ awareness of social structures through drama lessons that can be
used in the wider field of drama education. From this aspect my research
can be aligned more with the critical theorist line of action research, as it
has an emancipatory aspect in relation to the field and also to some extent
towards participants. The constricted scope of the research and its focus on
a small element of a huge social problem affiliate it more with the reflective
practitioner strand of action research.
554 Kemmis—McTaggart—Nixon: The Action Research Planner, 5.
55 Cohen-Manion-Morrison: Research Methods in Education, 303.
556 Tbid., 304.