In this interactive workshop, we six presenters, working as academics and professional educators in higher education institutions, engage with the question, ‘What does it take to develop communities of educational enquiry for social good?’ Through this engagement we address the conference theme of how educational research can contribute to social, economic and political transitions as well as issues regarding the nature of such transitions, their theoretical underpinnings and practical implementation. We argue that educational research itself and the forms of theory it generates should be understood also as in transition, from current grand narrative perspectives (Lyotard, 1984) that prioritise dominant abstract forms of theory to pluralistic perspectives that value also localised dynamic transformational forms of theory. We argue that, while abstract forms of educational theory are generated through and located within the written and spoken discourses of individual educational researchers and collectives, dynamic forms of educational theory are generated through dialogue and located in educational researchers’ everyday practices as they ask, ‘How do we understand and improve our practices, and articulate the processes involved and their potential significance for individuals, social formations and the good of society?’ These dynamic forms take the form of practical theorising, comprising the descriptions, explanations and critical re-analyses that researchers offer for their practices, which can lead to a restructuring and re-imagining of educational and social purposes. We invite workshop attendees to explore these issues with us; the workshop itself therefore becomes the site for the generation of new educational theory with potential for contributing to new forms of theoretical and practical change.

Research aims and theoretical underpinnings

We outline the practicalities and theoretical underpinnings of the Higher Education Action Research for Teaching (HEART) project, where higher education personnel study their practices for the generation of pedagogical and substantive knowledge while supporting the educational enquiries of practitioners across domains comprising disciplines, professions, sectors and geographies. We outline the projects we are engaged in that require us to do the same. We agree with Eikeland (2011) and Schön (1995) that the restructuring of the existing hierarchisation of abstract over practical forms of theory and their reconceptualisation as democratic egalitarian forms requires academics to re-imagine themselves as workplace practitioners alongside those workplace practitioners they support. Further (given that the Academy is still perceived as the highest legitimating body for what counts as educational theory and its reproduction or reconceptualisation), we argue that it is the responsibility of academics to support the enactment of the right of all to research (Appadurai, 2006), to know and be accountable for their practices as they engage with processes of personal, social and epistemological change. By doing so, all practitioners may reframe their communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), which do not require egalitarian relationships among participants, as communities of enquiry, which do (as theorised by Dewey, 1938; Garrison and Anderson, 2003; Eikeland, 2011).

We also draw on theoretical resources from Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) regarding the transition from knowledge telling to knowledge transformation, from researching on-the-spot practices with others to researching forms of communication and communicative literacy through the production of written, spoken, performed and multimedia texts (McNiff, 2014). We explain how this constitutes a transition from communicative competence to communicative action (Habermas, 1984) as the basis for sustainable social evolution. The development of forms of communication of and for educational theory is assisted through the organisation of an annual face-to-face conference and four annual videoconferences, where presenters from the international community both share and describe their research and explain its significance for critical community engagement, thereby producing original intellectual resources for the field. 

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