Action Research

Pragmatic

A primary purpose of action research is to produce practical knowledge that addresses issues of concern in personal and professional life. A wider purpose is to contribute through this to the increased well-being—economic, political, psychological, spiritual—of human persons and communities, and to a more equitable and sustainable relationship with the wider ecology of the planet of which we are an intrinsic part.

Participatory

Action research is a participative and democratic process that seeks to do research with, for, and by people; to redress the balance of power in knowledge creation; and to do this in an educative manner that increases participants' capacity to engage in inquiring lives. At a methodological level, participation is important because one cannot study and improve practice without the deep involvement of those engaged in that practice—the necessary perspective and information are simply not available—and one can only study persons if one approaches them as persons, as intentional actors and meaning makers. But participation is also an ethical and political process: People have a right and ability to contribute to decisions that affect them and to knowledge that is about them, and action research has an important place in the empowerment of people.

Many Ways of Knowing

Action research draws on a wide range of ways of knowing as we encounter and act in our world. This “extended epistemology” starts with everyday experience and is concerned with the development of living knowledge; it thus includes the experiential and the tacit; presentational forms drawing on story, theatre, graphic arts, and so forth; propositional knowing through theory and models; and practical knowing as expressed in skill and accomplishment.

Worthwhile Purposes

The focus on practical purposes draws attention to the moral dimension of action research—that it is not a value-free process but inquiry in the pursuit of worthwhile purposes, raising questions of values, morals, and ethics. Here there can be no absolutes; moral choice is always a matter of balance between competing goods. So in the practice of action research, we must continually ask what worthwhile purposes we are pursuing, and whether they continue to be appropriate and relevant.

...