SYNTHESIS OF THE ISSUES AND DILEMMAS
Darvesh Karim
Assistant Instructor
Professional Development Center, North
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While going through three different articles presented in a symposium about the discussion on issues and dilemmas faced during planning and conducting impact studies at AKU-IED[1], I found that there are different issues and dilemmas in impact studies specifically there are implications on a particular meaning or interpretation on how study ‘impact’. The articles I am referring are ‘Planning impact research: Issues and dilemmas’ (Halai, n.d), ‘Action research and impact studies: Possibilities and Dilemmas’ (Retallick, n.d), ‘The Impact of studying impact, A discussion paper’ (Shamim, n.d). Before synthesizing these dilemmas and issues from all the sources, I would extract the beginning of Shamim’s (n.d) article, which says “Impact names the new hegemony: its presumptions and pretensions need to be more closely examined than seems to have been the case thus far (Fielding, 2003, p. 294).
While identifying the issues Retallick (n.d) articulates that action research is a cyclic process that is concerned with researching interventions whereby both actions (change) and research (understanding) are concurrently achieved. the first paper (Halai, n.d) discusses the recent efforts by AKU-IED to develop a plan for studying the impact of its programs. This paper mainly discusses the issues and questions particularly focusing on the various meanings of impact, and the implication of a particular meaning/interpretation on how to study impact. Retallick articulates that there are both possibilities and dilemmas as action research and impact are abstractly both about change and improvement there would seem to be considerable possibilities. Since action research is an ongoing process, which doesn’t rely on a single visit to a school. Therefore, it would seem that it would be possible to observe the way that a program impact works it away through a school over a period of time. He refers to evidence from one of his studies that this was the case with the reflective journals where he saw the development of that practice over a couple of months.
Retallick discusses some issues arising in a course using an action research method in two schools in Karachi. Two strategies from the course were identified and each was further developed through action research to seek understanding of how the program graduates shaped and worked with those strategies in their schools. In this regard he identifies that the central dilemma was over the extent to which the impact of course or the influences of action research was being studied. While Shamim (n.d) is still in progress who has addressed the socio-cultural and political dimensions of studying impact of educational reform.
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