Kurt Lewin, Action Research and Changing Culture.

Resolving Social Conflicts* was a collection of papers published together in 1948. The long tradition of action research dates from this time. Lewin was interested in social relations and conflict between national and racial groups. A German Jewish refugee in America, these cultures interested him most. And what interested him most was the possibility o and mechanisms for change. He conducted what he called experiments in social space, including a comparison between a democratic and autocratic ethos in a class, finding that much more hostility and negative reactions could be found in the autocratic class. He cites Lippitt, in whose experiments people reacting against authoritarianism did not react against the leader but against some scapegoat who they could bully with impunity. He concluded that authoritarian produces a hostile society without fellow feeling or altruism. Lewin comments, "The social climate in which a child lives is for the child as important as the air he breathes" (p.66). People are shaped by the cultures they grow up in.

His paper 'Action Research and Minority Problems' (1946) describes an experiment he made to encourage change. People were organised in groups and came to a workshop in which they discussed desired changes, planned to implement the changes, and met regularly to evaluate progress. He collected data from the three groups to plot out the processes involved. The spirit was democratic. In order to evaluate progress, the group has to know what progress might look like, or " lack of standards by which to measure progress" (p.143). He argued that new approaches were needed to study processes - interviews and surveys just could not catch the subtleties. An experiment was needed. For the research process, he gave the example of a bombing raid of a German factory. The information had to be collected through reconnaissance; a detailed plan put in place, considering all aspects and intricasies; when the mission was accomplieshed, feedback was needed, to give teeth to the evaluation. This structure was given to an experiment in inter-cultural relations.

This and similar experiences have convinced me that we should consider action, research, and training as a triangle that should be kept together for the sake of any of its corners (149)

The delegates moved from being isolated individuals to becoming cooperative teams

on the basis of readiness to face difficulties realistically, to apply honest fact-finding, and to work together to overcome them (149)

The end result was a detailed training programme owned by everyone. Lewin recognized that global solutions to problems of cultural harmonious inter-relationships are complex and require local, national and internation action over a long period.

Action Research has been used widely since then, and this workshop model is no longer a common one; but there is great value for action research to return to its roots, and seek solutions by getting practitioners to work together with stakeholders to find solutions to difficulties and differences of vision, mission and practice. Such an an action research group consisting of a teacher and the pupils could have a great impact on behaviour, achievement and ethos. Open-minded groups of politicians, practitioners and stakeholders might have made better education policy than the failed efforts of the past 22 years.

Note * published together with Field Theory in Social Science in 1951, and reprinted from 1997 onwards by the American Psychological Association.