Some may argue that what I have called ‘action research’ is best described as ‘action
inquiry’ or ‘reflective teaching’. I have always persisted with the use of the term
‘action research’ because research places teachers under an obligation to render the
insights they have gained from an inquiry in some publicly accessible form. This is
important, because teachers need to build a stock of common knowledge about how
to realise their educational aims and values in practice, in order to enhance their
claim to be a profession. Hence, any insights that have been generated by individuals
and groups of teachers through this kind of inquiry need to be made accessible
to other teachers as hypotheses for them to test and explore in their own classroom
settings. The hypotheses cited above, with respect to both HCP and the Ford