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Practical Knowing
Philosophers over the centuries have explored different forms of knowing, such as aesthetic, mystical, religious, interpersonal, moral and common-sense knowing. In action research, this is known as the extended epistemology. While action research belongs primarily to the world of practical knowing, which seeks to shape the quality of moment-to-moment action, it also draws on other forms of knowing. This entry describes the characteristics of practical knowing as it applies to action research.
The realm of practical knowing (sometimes called common-sense knowing) is directed towards the practicalities of human living and the successful performance of daily tasks and discovering immediate solutions that work. One of its particular characteristics is that it varies from situation to situation and from place to place. What is familiar and what works in one setting or place may be unfamiliar and not work in another. Therefore, practical knowing needs to be differentiated for each specific situation so that decisions about what to say or do are appropriate. Accordingly, practical knowing is always incomplete and can only be completed by attending to figuring out what is needed in situations in which one is at a given time. Accordingly, as no two situations are identical, practical knowing requires attentiveness to and inquiry in the present tense so as to learn what is needed for the task at hand and in order to move from one setting to another, grasping what modifications are needed, and to decide how to act.
Cycles of Action and Reflection
In working within the realm of practical knowing where knowing is always incomplete and where reflexive attentiveness to unfolding contextual dynamics in the present tense is central to both understanding and action, action research’s emphasis on cycles of action and reflection is paramount. Action research builds on the past and takes place in the present with a view to shaping the future. Accordingly, engagement in the cycles of action and reflection performs both a practical and a philosophical function in its attentiveness and reflexivity to what is going on at any given moment and how that attentiveness opens up inquiry and decision-making and yields purposeful action.
Scientific and Practical Knowing
A contrast of scientific and practical knowing points to differences in how practical knowing has a concern for the practical and the particular, while science has theoretical aspirations and seeks to make universal abstract statements. Practical knowing is content with only what it needs for the task at hand, while scientific knowing tries to be exhaustive and seeks to know everything and state all it knows accurately and completely. Practical knowing is typically spontaneous, while science is methodical and develops technical jargon. Practical knowing is particular, contextual and practical, and it draws on resources of language with a range of meanings, body language, eloquence, pauses, questions, omissions and so on. In summary, practical knowing remains in the world of things related to us, while scientific knowing relates things to each other.
Scientific and Practical Knowing in the Academy
Practical knowing has been neglected by scholars. After the seventeenth century, philosophers turned to problems of the objectivity of knowing—a shift from knowing in a descriptive mode to knowing in explanatory mode, where things were no longer presented in relation to the knowing subject but were related to one another in recurring patterns. A tendency to relate any method of thinking to the subject was criticized as being subjective and invalid and limited to surface appearances, as contrasted with scientific patterns of knowing. In a parallel vein, the gap between theory and action widened as theory was developed apart from the action that underpins it and action developed without grounding in theory.
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