Handbook of action research
Participative Inquiry and Practice Peter Reason Hilary Bradbury editors Sage Publications Introduction: Inquiry & participation in search of a world worthy of human aspiration
Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury I do not separate my scientific inquiry from my life. For me it is really a quest for life, to understand life and to create what I call living knowledge—knowledge which is valid for the people with whom I work and for myself. MarjaLiisa Swantz Knowledge is always gained through action and for action. From this starting point, to question the validity of social knowledge is to question, not how to develop a reflective science about action, but how to develop genuinely wellinformed action—how to conduct an action science. Bill Torbert I am not a social scientist interested in more participatory research, but an educator and activist exploring alternative paradigm research as one tool in the multifaceted struggles for a more just, loving world. Pat Maguire Practical knowledge, knowing how, is the consummation, the fulfilment, of the knowledge quest... it affirms what is intrinsically worthwhile, human flourishing, by manifesting it in action. John Heron The aim of participatory action research is to change practices, social structures, and social media which maintain irrationality, injustice, and unsatisfying forms of existence. Robin McTaggart Participatory research is a process through which members of an oppressed group or community identify a problem, collect and analyse information, and act upon the problem in order to solutions and to promote social and political transformation. Daniel Selener Action Research can help us build a better, freer society. Davydd Greenwood and Morten Levin We must keep on trying to understand better, change and reenchant our plural world. Orlando Fals Borda
Action, participation and experience In this Introduction, we draw together some of the major threads that form the diverse practices of action research, to provide a framework through which the reader can approach this volume. We know that our readership is varied. You may be new to action research, wanting to know
link to: http://www.bath.ac.uk/carpp/publications/index.html
whether it has anything to offer you. You may already be an action research practitioner, maybe with allegiance to one of the schools included (or maybe not included), in this volume, and wondering how we have presented the kind of work you are committed to. You may belong to an academic discipline which draws on more orthodox forms of inquiry, wondering how this action research animal can be understood as science. And of course you may be downright hostile to the idea of action research, and are reading this to show how misguided the editors and contributors are! There is no ‘short answer’ to the question ‘What is action research?’ But let us say as a working definition, to be expanded on in this Introduction and indeed the rest of this volume, that action research is a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview which we believe is emerging at this historical moment. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities. What we want to say to all our readers is that we see action research as a practice for the systematic development of knowing and knowledge, but based in a rather different form from traditional academic research—it has different purposes, is based in different relationships, it has different ways of conceiving knowledge and its relation to practice. These are fundamental ...
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