Integrating Chat and Action Research

The question as to how Action Research (AR) is related to Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is not answerable in categorical terms. Both CHAT and AR have been variously interpreted and much depends on the individual biographies of those who pronounce on their relationship. In this paper, therefore, I offer no more than my own answer to this question, based on my own research trajectory. In fact, neither of the above perspectives was influential in my initial research; nevertheless each has become central to the ways in which I now conceptualize and carry out my research. As I shall explain in more detail below, following Vygotsky, CHAT treats theory and practice as dialectically related, with each informing and being informed by the other. This holds across the disciplines for, as Ursula Franklin, an eminent Canadian scientist, put it in introducing a multidisciplinary conference on “The Ecology of Knowledge” (Franklin, 1996), “Knowledge is created in the discourse between people doing things together." Action research clearly fits this account, since one of its goals is to create and refine knowledge through processes that involve people in deliberately acting and reflecting discursively on their actions together. Thus, when educators carry out action research that aims to improve opportunities for learning in schools, their research can contribute to CHAT theory about the relationship between learning and development, as this is enacted in contemporary educational institutions.