About action research…
What is Action Research?
© Yoland Wadsworth 2004
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The piece may be cited as:
Wadsworth, Yoland (2004) ‘What is action research?’, online webpage of the System Participatory Inquiry Research Action Learning (SPIRAL) network, http://spiral-victoria.net/ Action Research Issues Association Inc. Melbourne, Australia
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Action research is a form of critical social science that contributes understanding-in-action about the most valuable responses to make to a myriad of contemporary questions and issues facing people.
The field and demand have grown exponentially in recent years because it is a practical and natural form of human inquiry that involves attention to standard social science steps:
Questioning
Observation
Analysing
Reflecting
Theorising
Concluding, and
Experimenting
– but conducts these collaboratively ‘onsite’ in real life practice to achieve change and improvement.
In its contemporary form it has made a contribution worldwide for at least a century. However there have been similar elements in many historical communities including traditional Indigenous societies, some of which continue actively in use in those communities today.
In the past two or three decades, action research has emerged as a major new development in education, business, industry, human services, community-building, agriculture, the environment and international development because of the way it aims to understand both ‘how things are’, and theorises and trials as part of the research process changes to achieve ‘how things could instead be’.
Its popularity lies also in the way it can work with the involvement of significant numbers of stakeholders. These may include individuals, groups or members of the communities who have the critical questions and issues at stake; professional practitioners; funders and policy-makers. The methodology assists these parties to the inquiry to engage together to build effective new knowledge for improved practice.
The key conditions to which action research is specially suited include:
* Conditions of rapid social change,
* Issues of diversity and multiple perspectives,
* Increased demands for participatory consensus decision-making, and
* Pressing situations where existing knowledge has reached its boundaries, and creative new ways forward need to be researched in complex real-life practice
Some of the major social, economic and political changes underpinning these conditions include:
* A breakdown of older forms of consensus and social organisation
* An upsurge in community diversification and multiple cultures at the same time as lifeworld fragmentation and isolation
* High levels of geographic, workplace and social mobility
* Widespread loss of traditional forms of social fabric and other sources of community co-operation
* The growing understanding that extended involvement of people in inquiry and feedback processes can build ‘systemic intelligence’ to reduce the effects of complexity, powerlessness and uncertainty
* The widespread take-up of economic rationalist practices which has required services, people and communities to think creatively in response, and
* The growth of a resourcing/facilitating role for ‘the new service professional’, requiring skills to operate as a facilitator of others’ self-reliant inquiry and change in a context of rapid growth and risk in the service and human service industries.
For more on the methodology and epistemology of action research see the open-access article in the online Action Research International journal:
‘What is Participatory Action Research?’ (1998)