Spanish Schools in the Post-Franco Era
Contributors: Susan E. Noffke & Bridget Somekh
Print Pub. Date: 2009
Online Pub. Date: July 19, 2009
Print ISBN: 9781412947084
Online ISBN: 9780857021021
DOI: 10.4135/9780857021021
Print pages: 481-495
This PDF has been generated from SAGE knowledge. Please note that the pagination
of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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10.4135/9780857021021.n44
[p. 481 ↓ ]
Chapter 39: The Impact of Action Research
in Spanish Schools in the Post-Franco Era
Àngel I. Pérez Gómez, Miguel Sola Fernández, Encarnación Soto Gómez and José Francisco Murillo Mas
Overview
In this chapter we describe how and to what extent ideas on Action Research (AR)
have helped shape current schools in Spain. To this end we first provide some historical
background, essential in order to understand the evolution of schools as institutions,
particularly since the end of the Franco dictatorship. Next we examine the impact of AR
on the ideas and discourses assimilated and disseminated to schools mainly by agents
of the universities. This is followed by a brief analysis of how AR really impregnates
educational policy and practice in the Spanish State. Finally, we briefly describe the
current state of penetration of AR in school practice and some initiatives which promise
greater development in the near future.
Historical Milestones: The Emergence of
Action Research in Spain
Experiences of participatory research in education have been developed in Spain
since the 19th century, promoted by socialist and anarchist currents, although popular
movements were aborted during the Civil War and quelled throughout the [p. 482 ↓ ]
Franco dictatorship. The Spanish Civil War began on 18th July 1936 with an uprising
by troops loyal to Franco, ending with the military victory of the rebels on 1st April 1939.
The Franco dictatorship lasted up to the death of the dictator in 1975, when the process
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of transition to the current parliamentary monarchy began. It should not be forgotten
that amongst the interesting events which took place during the Second Republic
(1931–1939), we find the creation of Collaboration Centres and the first Summer
Schools. These were meetings organized by and for teachers, through pedagogical
innovation groups, held during the summer break in order to share experiences and
learn about new methodologies, ideas and experiences. The Summer Schools, which
were very well attended by members of the teaching profession, would become the
ideal instrument for the dissemination of a new pedagogical culture, different from the
official line, and often in direct opposition to it. From the mid-1960s we could say that
the Pedagogic Renovation Movements (MRPs) offered the only true possibility for
teacher training until the Teacher Centres (‘CEPs’) appeared in the mid-1980s.
The MRPs in fact comprise diverse collective groups, each of which is autonomous
and independent, brought together in a confederation. They are characterized by being
social movements, which defend a high level of commitment to quality education in
state schools, in order to achieve a democratic society, with the goal of influencing
the educational sphere from outside the officialdom of the Administration. The first
common declaration in defence of quality state schools was made at an MRP meeting
held in Seville in 1981. ‘An MRP is a social movement of teachers which, from a
historical perspective, tries to converge with other social movements in the liberating
transformation of schools and society’ (Martínez Bonafé, 1993: 104).
The activities of the MRPs passed through different stages over time, in keeping
with political events which would ultimately lead to the change of regime and the
consolidation of democracy. The different authors who have studied the period concur
to a large extent in identifying the first era (up to the mid-1980s) as the most dynamic,
not only in terms of activity but also with regards to political significance.
With the advent of democracy, and in particular during the first term of government
of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), many leaders of these educational renovation
movements, who had opposed the Franco regime and built up significant recognition,
were promoted to posts in the educational administration or in Teacher Centres
(‘CEPs’), or took up positions in universities. There were two significant consequences:
first, they brought about substantial changes in educational policy, incorporating the
ideas of renovation into future laws, whilst impregnating the principles and strategies of
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school reform and in-service teacher education. Moreover, many schools and teacher
groups were left bereft of innovative staff and, in particular, of people with leadership
skills and ideas to transform day-to-day practice.
Towards the mid-1990s, having suffered several crises as a result of the co-optation
of part of the discourse of the MRP by the educational administration, we can see
[p. 483 ↓ ] a revival, which goes hand in hand with evolution ‘towards theoretical and
practical reflection on the function of critical pedagogy and implementation strategies
in schools’ (Martínez Bonafé, 1993). At this point we can say that the MRP had been
transformed into base-level collective teacher groups which received the ideas of Action
Research, introduced in Spain at that time.
The concepts of Action Research have gradually influenced both progressive teaching
practice and theory in spain over time since 1982, the date on which the first Congress
on Curriculum and Teaching was held in La Manga del Mar Menor, counting on the
participation of John Elliott in place of the late Professor Laurence Stenhouse, as was
his express wish. Not without difficulty and from a minority position, Action Research
has slowly aroused growing interest from those teachers, professional groups and
politicians involved in education who are concerned with and involved in the complex
processes of pedagogical renovation in post-Franco schools.
In 1986, with Spain now a fully fledged democracy, the first Action Research training
and work seminar was held in Malaga, developed by J. Elliott and Bridget Somekh.
Subsequently, throughout the rest of the 1980s, seminars and workgroups proliferated
and extended the ideas and practices of Action Research through other Spanish
universities and regions. In 1986, the Wilfred Carr and Stephen Kemmis book Becoming
Critical was published in Spanish, with great repercussions in the university sphere, and
soon after Kemmis was invited to the University of Oviedo to attend a seminar.
In March 1992, the 2nd International Symposium on Critical Theory and Action
Research was held in Valladolid, bringing together consolidated research groups
from the universities of Barcelona, Málaga, Oviedo, Basque Country, Valencia and
Valladolid, along with researchers and teachers from other regions. The Symposium
saw the presentation of Action Research projects in diverse fields, such as children's
education, primary education, teacher training (both initial and ongoing), adult
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education, classroom pedagogy for different subjects, social education, educational
innovation, school curriculum and so on.
For the purposes of this work, the following conclusions of this Symposium are worth
highlighting:
We shall now indicate how Action Research has brought about improvements in
discourse, policies, rules and practices throughout the educational sphere in Spain.
The Influence of Action Research on
Discourse and the Discussion of Ideas
The idea of the teacher as a researcher who reflects upon his/her practice, the
deliberation processes and the action/research programmes as instruments for the
professional development of the teacher, the creation of educational communities,
the epistemological critique of the different models of educational research and the
proposed principles which should govern educational research are, amongst others,
topical issues which, given their critical and suggestive nature, have provided suitable
positions for educational practice and theory in Spain over the past 25 years (Mena,
2007). Over time, two main issues have been the centre of attention of AR work and
studies carried out in our sphere:
Teachers as Autonomous Professionals
Who Carry Out Research by Reflecting
upon Their Own Practice
The predominant academic formula at the start of the 1980s extended the image of the
teacher as a technician, applying pre-established routines to standardized problems.
The image of teachers as researchers into their own practice came to re-affirm itself and
take on special relevance in pedagogical theory and educational practice. The idea that
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the rational intervention of the teacher, as occurs in any other social practice, is always,
to a certain extent, a true research process, began to be more widespread, at that time
from the perspective of the practitioner.
For these social practices, impregnated with values, which do not have any strictly
predictable consequences and whose results cannot be established clearly as they
are open to individual and collective creation, the Action Research approach proposes
deliberation as the most rational intervention method (Elliott, 1985). [p. 485 ↓ ] Thus
conceived, practical deliberation could be a similar process to that which Schön (1983,
1987) offers in his concept of practical knowledge, with an interesting accompanying
nuance: the emphasis which Elliott places on the cooperative character of practical
deliberation. The professional knowledge of teachers should form a complex and
prolonged process of knowledge in action, ‘savoir-faire’ and of reflection in and about
action ‘action research’. Thus, relevant knowledge to orientate the practice of the
teacher in the changing and uncertain world of the classroom appears when we
propose facilitating the development of students' understanding, and is generated
through reflection on the characteristics and processes of one's own practice, in all
its aspects and dimensions: design, development and assessment. This conviction
does not imply any devaluation of theory or accumulated knowledge, but rather allows
positioning within a permanent process of confrontation and recreation from practice.
As stated by Elliott (1985, 2004), teachers who develop their theories based solely on
reflection on their own experiences, leaving aside the past and present reflections of
others, end up reinventing the wheel.
This has been a topical dilemma in Spain over recent decades: the need to understand
the accumulative character of the knowledge generated in reflection on practice,
respecting the singularity of the processes and the hypothetical character of
applications (Zeichner, 2007). Should the quality of the academic research and the
quality of the Action Research be valued with different criteria? Should we maintain, as
has happened in the international sphere and in particularly in the Spanish context, the
classic separation between practitioner research, orientated mainly towards improving
the practice of teaching, by those who participate in each specific teaching/learning
situation, from traditional academic research, orientated mainly towards increasing
theoretical knowledge of an area or field of study?
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Maintaining this perverse dualism, which is deep-rooted in the Spanish academic
sphere, only leads to stagnation in two extreme points of view, both of them inoperative.
On the one hand is a positivist conception of the development of knowledge in social
sciences, now clearly obsolete and questioned since Kuhn (1975), which, in education,
has only achieved complex sets of sophisticated artificial plays, never replicable but
always abstract and irrelevant (Nuthall, 2005) and which have distanced practitioners
from the enrichment which the theories may offer. On the other hand are intuitive and
anti-theoretical positions which renounce any procedure involving systematization
and internal and external checking of the value and consistency of the propositions
affirmed, legitimized only by the obscure affirmation of ‘everything goes’? The scientific
and cultural knowledge accumulated in the history of humanity in general and of the
teaching profession in particular is an essential tool to support the reflection of teachers,
not to replace it.
Moreover, it is evident that social practices show a clear trend towards a repetition
of routine processes, and that the institutional character of educational practice
restricts the possibilities of critical comparison and enriching dialogue. It is thus
easy to understand that isolated reflection and practice by teachers can [p. 486
↓ ] generate and reproduce a deformed self-understanding of reality, and that
these deformations can be easily maintained and fed by the inertia of professional,
institutional, cultural and environmental pressures. Much research on the evolution of
the pedagogical knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of teachers coincides with highlighting
the inexorable trend by the majority towards impaired thought, developing ever less
flexible stereotypes which are ever more resistant to change, feeding off the tacitly or
explicitly dominant ideology, the undiscriminating reproduction of professional tradition
(Halkes and Olson, 1983; Pérez Gómez and Gimeno, 1988, 1992; Sola, 1999, 2000),
the ritualized myths and routines of school culture (Nuthall, 2005; Russell, 2006;
Loughrand, 2007) and the codes of classification and rigid structuring of the traditional
teaching curriculum (Berstein, 1975).
Teaching is a ritual that we all assimilate through at least 10 years of
participation as students. Despite changing teacher education programs
and many attempts to reform teaching methods, the core of the ritual
remains largely unchanged, sustained by a ‘stable web of beliefs and
assumptions that are a part of the [wider] culture’ (Stigler and Hiebert,
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1999: 87) […] Culture becomes so much a part of ourselves that we
lose awareness of how it shapes our perceptions and organizes our
lives […] The problem is to find ways to stand outside the ritualized
routines and myths to identify how they control what we perceive,
believe, and do about reforming teaching and learning. (Nuthall, 2005)
Collaborative Action Research, which stimulates a process of contrasting one's views
with others'and with the results of the action, is a powerful tool to understand the hidden
influences which are present in school culture and which subtly permeate the thinking,
feeling and practice of all those immersed in this culture, provided suitable procedures
are established to break free from them and allow the appearance of new perspectives
and different interpretations. The processes and cycles of AR provide a privileged
tool to stimulate the complex integration of the two poles of the dilemmas which all
innovative teachers, dedicated to their profession, face: commitment and distancing,
emotions and rationality, oneself and others.
Perhaps this is the richest and most promising scenario in which teachers in the context
of Spain currently find themselves. AR has opened up a promising horizon which is
becoming ever more firmly established in the minds of the people concerned with
improving teaching and learning practice, since it deals with specific problems, in real
scenarios, whilst at the same time achieving a certain status of legitimacy amongst
education politicians and even in the difficult sphere of the Spanish pedagogical
academic environment (Mena, 2007). It is promising since it induces teacher
researchers and teacher educators to deal with educational reality, carrying out
research into our own practice, questioning the significance, utility and quality of our
teaching, along with the effects which the educational contexts and strategies we lay
out have on the learning processes and products of the students. As stated by Berry
(2004: 1308), ‘How can I be credible to those learning to teach if I do not practice what I
advocate for them?’
Fortunately, AR in Spain, in a similar manner to the movement developed over the
past decade in the United States known as Self-Study (Zeichner, 2007), [p. 487 ↓ ] is
beginning to take shape as a relevant teaching strategy in teacher education university
programmes, requiring the integration of action and reflection both in the development
of students and the professional development of teachers and of teacher educators.
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Likewise, it is promoting the coming together of three spheres, which have traditionally
been isolated in the history of education in Spain: practice, teacher education and
academic research (Pérez Gómez et al., 1995).
Action Research for Teacher Training: An
Illustrative Example from a Project
To illustrate this kind of learning partnership we draw on a project which combines
training and teaching proficiency, both in initial and in ongoing training: The Collective
Creations for Change Project. The primary school Nuestra Señora de Gracia is the key
agency facilitating praxis and reflection for current and future primary school teachers
and university teachers who are looking to give a common sense to their teaching and
research practice.
A research and reflection group was established by the project to explore the
pedagogical qualities of a kind of educational activity created by them and called
Collective Creations. A group of eight primary school teachers was set up, plus two
teachers and two students from the University of Malaga as external facilitators with
support from Pedagogy, School Teaching and Social Education undergraduates at this
university.
With the activity Think in colours with Picasso there was a before
and after in the life of the school. The motivation it brought about, the
reflection processes it caused, the creativity it aroused in pupils, the
frenetic level of activity in which the entire school was immersed … all
led to significant changes in relations at the school […] We discovered
that these practices led to internal transformation processes in our
children when it came to dealing with conflicts, along with a personal
bond with the educational practice. (extract from the teachers' group
research report)
However, not all the activities designed and developed have had the same impact
on the lives and interests of the pupils. Which variables have had an influence? The
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focus of our reflections has been on analyzing and delimiting the characteristics of
the Collective Creations, along with the possibility of introducing qualitative changes.
Our concern has been to change the conditions and the relations and the learning of a
group of pupils and parents who, given their highly disadvantaged social background,
have remained on the edges of education with high levels of truancy and educational
failure. We are submerged in an action research process in which we analyze different
variables: communication and expression strategies, construction of personal identity,
interpersonal relations, relations with knowledge, relations with surrounding spaces and
the integration of families in the school education process.
The result is that university students not only observe educational practices in schools,
but also collaborate with the teachers and students in order to understand, design
and develop action plans for developing these educational practices. [p. 488 ↓ ] Their
diaries are useful not only for their university training, but also as a tool for analysis
and comparison by this group of teachers. University teachers have a dual role in
the reflection group: first, as external facilitators and second, as tutors in the practical
training of university students; in other words, as with the primary school teachers and
the pupils, they have the dual function of researching and practising.
Some conclusions from this work have allowed us to draw up new kinds of action: the
Collective Creations have an overall purpose, but require each teacher to customize
them and give them local meaning; they are flexible processes, involving opening the
mind to the new, to the unexpected; they are processes which aim to enhance relations,
produce knowledge and engender reflection; they are thus activities which generate
change, but above all they are creative spaces and processes shared by different
groups and levels. This work gradually leads to results which stimulate the process:
our children actively take part in school dynamics; they go to school
happy and feel they have a role as part of it; behaviour crises are less
and less frequent and of lesser intensity; children's levels of reflection
and acceptance of the rules, which they themselves have helped to
draw up, are on the up. (2nd report of the teachers group of the school)
From the point of view of university students, the experiences and processes witnessed
at Nuestra Señora de Gracia school have had a profound impact not only on a cognitive
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level, but also, more significantly, on an emotional level. This has led to the students
relating to, stimulating and giving sense to their training and to their future, whilst
the possibility of reflecting on and participating in an innovative experience and real
research along with teachers from different educational sectors has led to a climate of
partnership and a learning environment very different from those commonly found in
university environments. The reflective process has enabled analysis of preconceptions,
discovery of gaps and errors, and the construction of reflexive thought from practice,
using theory as a tool for analysis, reflection and creation.
The Construction of Educational
Communities Through Participatory Action
Research: Cooperation in Teaching and in
Research on Teaching
Since the period of transition to democracy, it has also been possible to recognize
in Spain several research developments with a participatory approach, Participatory
Action Research (PAR), related to social action programmes, community development
and institutional analyses promoted by different social movements, non-governmental
organizations, neighbours associations and so on, associated in almost all cases
with deprived sectors or close to workers movements. Thanks to his theory, practice
and dissemination in Spain, the leading academic exponent has been Jesús Ibáñez
(1979, 1985). The development of PAR has been associated fundamentally to social
intervention and community development, and is only now beginning marginally to
become incorporated into the sphere of education, especially in the practical training of
social educators. [p. 489 ↓ ] This, for example, has been the case at the University of
Malaga, where the Curriculum and Teaching Department has participated actively in a
community development project in an underprivileged district (‘La Palmilla’), coordinated
by Tomas Villasante, with the participation of students and teachers.
The emphasis on promoting and ensuring the participation of all the agents involved
in a specific social context is the basic characteristic that determines the pedagogical
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value of Participatory Action Research. The action and reflexion cycles are diversified
and take shape in the form of ever more elaborate techniques and procedures in
order to encourage participation and try to overcome the inevitable (and apparently
irresolvable) resistance and opposition. From the start of the analysis of needs,
diagnosis of situations and definition of problems, attention is concentrated primarily
on methodology for widen participation of everybody involved in that context in order to
take on board the most diverse voices and interpretations, in particular those which are
most unheard, marginal and out of sight. The relationship maps, the workgroups and
the assemblies are decisive in the methodological basis of the PAR, as an outstanding
tool to understand the complex network of human and social relations in each specific
scenario.
Participatory social research as a form of collective knowledge construction, which
promotes creativity in the networks of each context, can be applied in school scenarios.
It is an outstanding tool to understand the complexity of the educational function in the
information society, and also to uncover the routines, myths and rituals which make
up the culture of schools as institutions. Furthermore, and more importantly, it allows
us to understand and overcome any obstacles and possibilities we come across in
the process towards change, discovery and construction of new teaching and learning
relations, and to perceive the construction and application of knowledge in a new way.
The ultimate goal of PAR is the production of knowledge for transformation through
the participation of all those involved. For this reason, the focus of the research is not
only the problem to be resolved, but also the processes of change, the resistances
and obstacles, and the procedures for the shared diagnosis and assessment of
contexts, processes and products. As Villasante states (2000, 2002), PAR must lead
to understanding, the application of the generated knowledge and the involvement or
social mobilization of the agents involved in each scenario.
PAR thus has significant potential in the educational institutions change process,
through building learning communities. We must not forget that for over 70 years
Spanish schools have recruited teachers by way of a very bureaucratic procedure
for the training, selection and appointment of public employees, who assume, as a
result of a long historic tradition, that passing public entrance exams places them in
unchangeable, lifelong work posts, which are beyond any control procedure or social
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assessment. In this manner, as the appointments in each school are made by way of
seniority, it is very difficult to find conditions which are conducive to the development
of work teams or professional life communities orientated towards shared projects and
goals. PAR in education may contribute to the construction of learning communities,
since universal participation promotes community integration [p. 490 ↓ ] and social
cohesion by favouring open communication and constructive criticism of opinions and
interests, as well as understanding of similar or differing interpretations.
Another project in which the authors of this chapter are involved and in which we
bring together research and teaching in Social Education is the Home Project. This
is a Participatory Action Research project for community development in an underprivileged
district, dependent on the involvement of political leaders, social workers,
university staff, university students and citizens.1 An interesting line of development of
this methodology is the recent initiative by researchers at the Sociology Department
of La Laguna University (Canary Islands), in which Participatory Action Research
methodology has been transferred to schools as a way of developing these supposedly
educational environments into learning communities.
The Influence of Action Research on
Policies, Rules and Practice
The ideas from AR developed above have impregnated theory and practice, curricular
and educational policy discourse and orientation, and the daily intervention of teachers,
but have penetrated thinking more deeply about theory than about practice.
In 1984, the Socialist government started the transformation of schools by promulgating
different laws on education. As of 1985 the regional government of Andalusia, perhaps
influenced by a more intense participation of the MRPs and of academics close to AR,
takes a different course. The most elaborate expression of the proposals upon which
the experimental reform of primary education for ages 12–14 in Andalusia is based can
be found in what has become known as the ‘Carboneras Document’, proposed in 1987
as the main pillar of the official reform. (Spain has a central government for the whole
of the State, but is also divided into autonomous regions, of which Andalusia is one,
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which have responsibility for education. The result is that there is an education ministry,
in addition to each autonomous region having its own regional ministry or department.
This situation allows the autonomous regions certain levels of freedom when carrying
out central directives.)
The Carboneras Document ‘reflects the conclusions of the collective debate carried
out around the experimental process by teachers, coordinators and advisers through
different meetings and contacts’ (p. 17) and constitutes an open curricular proposal
for experimentation. In our opinion, the document should be considered a curricular
proposal of unprecedented political, social and educational value in Spain, and shows
the influence at the time of the penetration of the ideas of AR into the thinking of those
who designed and implemented the reform in Andalusia. The influences can be found
most clearly in the following aspects:
Research, understood as a ‘method to design and assess the curricular
project’ and a ‘teacher's tool’. By converting research into this new
meaning, we have been frontally attacking some of the most strongly
held beliefs amongst professional teachers, who, up to this point, had
unquestionably accepted the role of individual technical application
which had been entrusted to them.
[p. 491 ↓ ] Assessment, understood as ‘the research process in which
explanations are obtained with regards to the working of the learning
and teaching process, in order to subsequently introduce appropriate
changes for improvement’ (p. 92).
The teacher, understood as an independent and cooperative
professional, who grows and develops by carrying out research into his/
her own practice, facilitates, stimulates and orientates the autonomous
learning of students.
In 1990 the LOGSE (Education Act) was promulgated, definitively abandoning the
experimental line implemented around the Carboneras Document and bringing a return
to ‘precision’ in curricular design and centralization of policy. Nevertheless, practically
all the watchwords introduced in the beginnings can be found in the new law: autonomy,
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collaboration, research, reflection by teachers on their practice and so on. Action
Research is no longer a model proposed for the majority, whilst its philosophy and
methodology remain in the heart of minority groups with extensive discourse but a
merely testimonial level of practice.
The panorama of in-service teacher education is quite different. Along with the MRPs,
the Teacher Centres are the most important event in the recent history of ongoing
teacher training in Spain. They are described as ‘preferential instruments for teacher
proficiency and the promotion of professionalism’. Ever since they were first set up,
they have been entrusted with the ongoing education of teachers. Without renouncing
models of a transmissive nature, it is worth highlighting the predominance of an
autonomous model which places emphasis on self-education by teachers. With
regards to Andalusia in particular, following a period of dependency, the 2nd Formative
Plan (Several Authors, 2002) once again opened up perspectives and recovered
with its declarations of interest in education focused on the problems, dilemmas and
contradictions of daily practice, to which end annual meetings for research projects
were created.
… research will be carried out to extend knowledge of the educational
situation, based preferably on in-depth studies (case studies,
biographies, observations, interviews and research). (Order of 2006)
The Current Situation
Although the practice of Action Research, both in teaching in general and in the teacher
education system in particular, is not a generalized or predominant orientation, there
are indeed many indicators which allow us to affirm its influence on the current Spanish
educational system:
Since the start of the 1980s, when Spain began to awake from a long period of lethargy,
a very long road has been followed in terms of Action Research. This road which has
not been exempt from difficulties, changing direction in line with the orientations of
the National and Regional Governments and having to overcome the obstacles of
professional thinking, which is plagued with ideological beliefs that are not subject to
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any form of reflexive scrutiny, and to the influence of the dominant social ideology,
imbued with the need for immediate efficiency. AR, no longer unknown, neither an
anecdotal nor marginal practice, has become an important theoretical and practical
reference.
