Action Researcher: Not Trying to Overcome an Unruly World

As we defined it earlier, action research is a cogenerative process through which professional researchers and interested members of a local organization, com­munity, or a specially created organization collaborate to research, understand, and resolve problems of mutual interest. AR is a social process in which pro­fessional knowledge, local knowledge, process skills, research skills, and

Action Researcher: Creating Possibilities Rather Than Reinforcing Limits

The dominant imagery in conventional social research comes, for very good historical and political economic reasons, from the language of bureaucratic organizations. These organizations constantly seek control, objectivity, classifi­cation, and replicability, all essential features of a bureaucratic and authoritar­ian mindset. But before we go too far down this line, it is worth remembering that

Linking Theory and Local Understanding: Being Scientific, Counterintuitive, and Technically Competent

In conventional social research, expert knowledge is the basis of the high sta­tus of the researcher and his or her ability to impose controls and methods on a research situation. As we said in Chapters 6 and 7, action researchers obvi­ously must have expert knowledge, but this knowledge is not treated as a source

Practices and Skills of the Action Researcher

Up till now we have portrayed the situation of the professional action researchers in fairly abstract terms. From here forward, we become more concrete. 1. KNOWING HOW, TACIT KNOWLEDGE, REFLECTION-IN-ACTION, REFLECTION-ON-ACTION Academia generally trades on a narrow notion of competence and exper­tise that limits intellectual capacities and training. AR challenges this position, building on

The Friendly Outsider

In addition to the general orientation to skills we have articulated, we wish to point briefly to certain specific skills that AR practitioners must master to be effective. A professional action researcher must know how to be “the friendly outsider.” This role is vital in AR because the external perspective is a key element

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Becoming an Action Researcher

In Part 4 of this book, we take up the education of action researchers in detail. Here, we briefly rehearse some of our central contentions. 1. SOCIAL SKILLS In conventional social science, there is relatively little attention paid to the social skills of the researcher. This is in accord with the dominant positivist notion

Constructing Arenas for Dialogue in Pragmatic Action Research

For us, the core element in pragmatic AR is the creation of arenas where discussion and collaborative research facilitate cogenerative learning. The encounter between local stakeholders and the professional researcher is the cornerstone on which mutual learning is built. Because we do not begin with a technique defined a priori, and we try to

Searching for Pragmatic Action Research

Although we argue strongly for pragmatic, multi-method techniques and work forms, and we have employed many different kinds of techniques and work forms in our practice, one broad and well-defined approach to cogenerative learning is particularly appropriate to our pragmatic approach to AR. It is called searching. We will present it in extenso here,

Preparing for the Pragmatic Action Search

Many roads lead to a search conference. In some cases, the local actors are familiar with search conferences and accordingly know what they are looking for. In this situation, the task for the initiators is to find a facilitator to take on the job. A standard bureaucratic method is simply to call for proposals

Planning and Executing a Pragmatic Action Search

1. COMMISSIONING THE SEARCH CONFERENCE The first step in searching is working with the local actors who want to commission a search. This discussion is important for many reasons. The ini­tial question that motivates local people may not necessarily be the most fun­damental one for their group or may not be stated in a

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Participatory Research and Southern Pragmatic Action Research

We begin with an analysis of participatory research (PR) and participatory action research (PAR), a set of approaches that came into existence as a critique of inequality and a practice of liberation set within the framework of a model of class struggle. Though such practices and struggle exist in wealthy countries, these approaches are

Educational Strategies in Pragmatic Action Research

One of the most important and frequent paths leading people into the practice of action research (AR) has been through the field of education5 in its various contexts. Education, as we use the term here, refers to everything from reforms of the formal school system, from primary to secondary schools, to universities and postgraduate

Feminist Analyses of Inequality and Development in Pragmatic Action Research

In our teaching experience over the past decade, after we have laid out the basic perspectives of AR, students ask about the relationship between feminism and AR. They correctly perceive that feminist views deal with many of the same issues found in AR: a critique of positivism, an analysis of power relations, a respect

Frameworks of Educational Action Research

Though not all AR-relevant educational work deals with adult education, one of the peculiarities of this field is that it seems that the major intellectual syn­theses and setting of the frameworks in use come from adult education rather than from conventional primary and secondary education and higher educa­tion. These larger syntheses serve our purposes

Reforming Education in the North

1. EDUCATIONAL AR IN THE SCHOOLS AND TEACHING PROFESSIONS No practice that is engaged in by hundreds of teachers and university fac­ulty is likely to be homogeneous; under the heading of educational AR, there are many varieties. To summarize the main thrusts, we see this field as center­ing on primary, secondary, and higher education

Adult Education Approaches in Industrialized Countries

As we stated in the introduction to this chapter, the field of educational AR is huge and heterogeneous. In many ways, the theorists and synthesizers in adult education have gathered the many threads into an overall picture that is more synthetic than those provided by educational action researchers, who may have a more limited

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Corporate Classrooms

A striking feature of late capitalism is the emergence of the corporate class­room. The trend is for many companies to create their own training and edu­cation systems. Major actors in this field are multinational consulting firms that have their own training facilities, where all newly employed consultants must go to get an understanding of

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Adult Education and Community Development

1. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT In Chapter 10, we covered a major portion of what can be classified as adult education. Community development efforts such as those spearheaded by the Highlander Center, by the various movements centering around people like Belenky, Bond, and Weinstock (1997), Freire (1970), Gaventa (1982), Hall (1975), and Hinsdale, Lewis, and Waller

The Authority of Evaluation

Being visited by an evaluator, accountant, assessor, accreditation reviewer, or any of the many other figures playing a professional evaluation role is usually experienced as being placed in a subordinate position to a person whose pro­fessional role is to review and evaluate you, your program, or your organiza­tion “objectively.” Nearly all of us have

The Emergence of Participatory Evaluation

Whatever else it does, conventional evaluation generally does not aim to make a positive impact on a project while the project is underway, except in cases of interim evaluations of multiyear projects. Generally, it records outcomes for a particular audience of decision makers. Programs to fight poverty, to teach the uneducated to read, or