the group as well as critical examination. This is why action research can be so
powerful.
This exploration of the research on teacher learning shows that it must be rooted
in practice and in the community of school, as well as creating the conditions for
disequilibrium and support. Cordingley ( 2015 ) has also shown us that these ele-
ments align with research on effective continued professional learning and devel-
opment. Her and others’systematic reviews of the evidence have identified the need
for external support to help teachers see the familiar differently, give access to
specialist knowledge, for teachers to collaborate effectively, for there to be a rooting
of the learning or enquiry in close observation of practice and in knowledge and
evidence. Recent new reviews of research have shown‘an increasing emphasis on
learning from looking at practice, from and through assessing pupil progress for-
matively and infine-grained and contextualised ways and the development of
theory or an underpinning rationale side by side with practice’(Cordingley 2015 :
65). Just as others, including Cordingley, (BERA 2014 ) have shown that
enquiry-based approaches including research lesson study, are particularly attuned
to these processes, I argue that action research is very suited to engage with all of
these elements and expand on this further.
39.5 Using Action Research as a Reform Strategy
Action research has been used as a reform strategy in education. In Namibia there
was a concerted move from 1990 to transform teacher education (Zeichner 2001 ).
A similar approach was taken in South Africa to the implementation of a revised
post-apartheid national curriculum (Robinson and Soudien 2009 ). A further recent
example has been my own involvement in a reform of the curriculum, assessment
and pedagogy in Kazakhstan. Action research was used as part of the evaluation of
the introduction of the new curriculum, although it diverted away from this. I will
use these two examples—the South African one as described by Robinson and
Soudien (ibid) and the one in Kazakhstan (McLaughlin and Ayubayeva 2015 ),
which I describe in some detail, to examine the critical issues emerging and how we
can refine this as a research and development method to facilitate and support
educational reform.
39.5.1 The Kazakh Example—The Context and the Reform
Kazakhstan is, like many Central Asian countries, engaged in a rapid reform of its
education system and has very high ambitions for its educational achievements. The
government strategy for the reform of schooling has been to build a network of 20
‘autonomous schools of innovation’, 14 in the regional capitals and two additional
schools in three cities with a population of more than one million. The schools were
39 Researching Practice as Education and Reform 587