Chapter 17: Classroom Research: Impact and Long Term Effect versus Justice, Liberation and Empowerment?

This paper considers the coherence between the research goals of making an impact and having a long-term effect with the researcher’s concern to contribute towards justice, liberation and empowerment. The fundamental issue of how the researcher can be sure that her or his research will not result in injustice and oppression, and maybe worse, is considered and some criteria are suggested that might be used to guard against harmful effects. These criteria are then used to examine some key issues in classroom research, with illustrations from an example of the author’s own classroom research into students goals.