Reflection on the Purposes of Research,Action, and Scholarship: A Case of Cross-Cultural Participatory Action Research

Beginning with some basic principles of participatory action research, the author draws upon personal experience to identify the ways in which the experience of the practice of participatory action research creates forms of publication somewhat different in intent and nature from conventional forms of research. The experience selected involves cross-cultural research, and the particular problems of representation of the other in such settings are engaged. The overall experience is then drawn upon to identify some of the key qualities of action research which differ both from other forms of research and from some of the advocacies for action research.     

Systemic Action Research as a Strategy to Face the Institutionalization of Participatory Approaches: a Case Study in the Basque Country

Systemic Practice and Action Research - Institutionalization is one of the challenges met by action research (AR) processes aiming at structural changes in society, but what institutionalizing AR...     

Practicality, Positionality, and Emancipation: Reflections on Participatory Action Research with a Watershed Partnership

In the last few decades, there has been a trend towards increased stakeholder and public participation in natural resource management in North America. To a certain extent, the rationale for this trend is found in the complexity and uncertainty of environmental issues, which confront us with the coexistance of multiple legitimate values and perspectives in society. Recognizing this “epistemological plurality” has important implications for both policy and science. In this paper, I critically reflect on my experiences as a doctoral student engaged in participatory action research (PAR) with a watershed partnership in Ontario, Canada. In providing this biographical account, I seek to make a contribution to ongoing discussions regarding the nature, challenges and benefits of this methodological approach for academic research, as well as to emerging debates on PAR in the context of environmental governance and “post-normal” approaches to natural resource management.

Guest Editorial: From Cartagena to Ballarat: A Report on the Joint Fifth World Congress on Action Learning,Action Research,and Process Management and Ninth World Congress on Participatory Action Research

Systemic Practice and Action Research -     

Coproduction in Practice: Participatory Action Research to Develop a Model of Community Aged Care

Coproduction has become synonymous with innovative approaches to public service delivery in European Union countries as well as in Australia. Coproduction has the potential to bring together individuals, communities, and organisations in a process to collaboratively develop new models and services which improve public services. Yet, Australian policy makers and practitioners who would like to deploy coproduction within the context of older adult social care can only draw on a handful of papers and reports that could guide implementation. This paper fills this gap by reporting on the implementation of a multi-stakeholder coproduction approach to the development of a consumer directed care model for older people with complex health issues. The paper describes and critically highlights methodological challenges encountered during the 12 month-long participatory action research phase of a larger project involving older people with complex care needs, their carers, and government and non-government stakeholders. The paper outlines key considerations regarding (1) the involvement of older people with complex needs, (2) collaboration with industry partners, (3) engagement of government representatives, and (4) reflects on implementing participatory research projects within a context of outsourcing and interlinked supply chains. While not all challenges encountered could be resolved, the coproduction approach was successful in bringing together a wide range of stakeholders with competing agendas in an iterative process geared to resolve a plethora of concerns raised by older people, carers and services providers. This paper provides an example for others seeking to use coproduction and participatory methods to provide person-centred care services for older people.     

Ethical Issues and Role Duality in Insider Action Research: Challenges for Action Research Degree Programmes

Insider action research describes the process when a member of an organisation undertakes an explicit action research role in addition to the normal functional roles they hold in an organisation. Real-world work-based research is relevant and important to many full-time managers, consultants and members of organisations including those who choose to undertake higher degrees in business as part-time postgraduate students. Within these programmes a proposal for an insider action research project is often associated with important and interesting research projects that have already arisen in an organisation where the researcher works full-time, and are part of their existing role and established working relationships with key stakeholders. Ethical issues in organisationally located insider action research can differ from other forms of action research because of role duality, i.e. that the researcher holds an ongoing work role and power relationships associated with this as well as the action research role. Ethical issues can be associated with choices about alternative options, expected impacts and outcomes on the researcher, participants, organisation and stakeholders, and these are important considerations for academic supervisors, institutional review boards and human research ethics committees.     

Enhancing Organisational Innovation Capability Through Systemic Action Research: A Case of a Swiss SME in the Food Industry

This paper presents detailed insights into the nature of innovation dynamics of an SME operating in the food industry. Furthermore, the paper highlights how Action Research has changed and enhanced SME??s capability to innovate. Within the exploratory action research based case study described in this article, the researchers interacted closely with one company with regards to a newly launched innovation process over a time period of more than 18 months. The analysis contributes to the fields of action research and innovation research in three respects: First, it exemplifies how systemic action research as a method can be applied on the organisational level in the private sector. Second, it demonstrates how useful action research can be for fostering the innovativeness and creativity of a company. Lastly, the analysis illustrates the extensive time horizon of an action research project.     

From Researching Regions at a Distance to Participatory Network Building: Integrating Action Research and Economic Geography

This paper describes the change in a researcher's practices from one of studying regional industrial development at a distance to one of working closely with a network of agri-food managers. This is accompanied by a discussion of the methodological and theoretical possibilities for an action research inspired economic geography. Some of the core characteristics of a pragmatic conceptualization of action research are revised. It is argued that theoretical developments within economic geography make possible a dialogue between researchers and local actors and that economic geography is challenged to accept that knowledge is generated through such a dialogue. Attempts to create a dialogue between action research and economic geography in a specific Norwegian industrial and geographical context are described. These attempts indicate that the researcher's methodological approach has been transformed from a narrow one relying solely on conventional social science methods to a broader one including participatory action research.     

Using Action Research to Improve Communication and Facilitate Group Work in a Multicultural Classroom: A South African Case Study

This study started with problems that my colleagues (and I) were experiencing with interaction and intercultural communication among students in our diverse classrooms. Educators were also experiencing difficulties in motivating students to work effectively in groups. The purpose of this paper was to seek solutions to these problems by exploring variations of the group oral assessment structure in a multilingual and multicultural context. Four phases of assessments were conducted at two tertiary institutions in South Africa using a combination of action research and a participatory approach. Not only did this study succeed in addressing the problems but it also revealed the added benefits of using an action research methodology.     

Some Common Ground That Can Provide a Basis for Collaboration Between Action Researchers and Scientists: A Philosophical Case That Works in Practice

By analysing 22 case studies of good research, both action research and agricultural science, I believe I have found some criteria of good research that is common to all of them. These criteria match the philosophical pragmatists argument that the best a researcher can do is to provide a warranted assertion from a methodology which is fit for the specific research purpose and is internally consistent. They also include Popper's requirement that a methodology needs to seek disconfirming evidence and Habermas's requirement that subjective data is important in all research. These criteria have provided me with a basis for collaboration with my scientific colleagues and can provide a basis for collaboration between other researchers, whatever their methodology.     

Analytic and Dynamic Approach to Collaboration: A Transdisciplinary Case Study on Sustainable Landscape Development in a Swiss Prealpine Region

The involvement of stakeholders and the public in societal decision processes has lately received increased attention. We suggest that appropriate and tailored techniques should be selected and integrated to provide the prerequisites for inclusive involvement depending on the issue, type, goals and phase of the decision process in question, i.e. an analytic, systematic and dynamic approach to collaboration. In a transdisciplinary case study design we integrate diverse analytical methods whereby a process of mutual learning between science and people from outside academia is strived for. Our framework for collaboration is illustrated by a case study on sustainable landscape development in the Swiss prealpine region of Appenzell Ausserrhoden.

The Role of Action Research (AR) in Environmental Research: Learning from a Local Organic Food and Farming Research Project

We expand on the FMA model of inquiry elucidated by Checkland and Holwell (Syst Pract Act Res 11:9, 1998) and identify three kinds of research: interactive Action Research (AR), extractive participatory research, and traditional science, that were integrated into an interdisciplinary agro-environmental research project involving researchers from eight countries around the Baltic Sea. The research project held the goal of creating scientific understanding of the ecological, economic and social effects of the sustainable development of local food systems, while also having the explicit goal of implementing change in the studied systems. Based on our experience working as action researchers in the project, we highlight the role that normative goals and facilitation process competence play in complex interdisciplinary research projects. Our reflections focus on project design, including the relation between AR and other kinds of research when employed in a single project, and includes reflections on preconditions for stakeholder participation in AR projects.     

Yeperenye Dreaming in Conceptual,Geographical, and Cyberspace: A Participatory Action Research Approach to Address Local Governance Within an Australian Indigenous Housing Association

Systemic Practice and Action Research - This paper discusses work in progress with an Indigenous housing association in Central Australia. It builds on and extends a 2-year policy and planning...     

Awareness of Residents Regarding the Construction of a Sustainable Urban Community: A Case Study of Action Research in Taiwan

Chung-Sheng Community in Taoyuan City, Taiwan is a typical urban community. By adopting participatory action research, this study examines resident awareness regarding the feasibility of transforming Chung-Sheng Community into a sustainable community. Action research can help avoid constant “trial and error” in constructing sustainable communities and enhance process efficiency. Meanwhile, an active research approach can help communities better achieve sustainable development. Constructing a sustainable urban community requires energy, effective frameworks, and professional assistance. Achieving these requires a continuous and participatory action research process, and careful exploration of the awareness of community residents, which is the focus of this investigation.     

Effect of Supervision on Stress and Burnout in School Counsellors: A Case of Action Research

School counsellors are permanently in action, the success of which depends on their systemic approach to their action. Due to the difficulty, complexity and scope of their work, school counsellors are often under a lot of stress, which may eventually develop into occupational burnout. Thus, it is very important that school counsellors can use appropriate i.e. systemic, i.e. requisitely holistic ways of coping with stress and occupational burnout. Recently, after many years, supervision has been gaining importance as an action in the form of professional help to school counsellors to enable them to cope effectively with stress and to prevent occupational burnout. The primary purpose of the reported-about study is to determine how supervision, in accordance with the relational family model, affects the perception of stress and occupational burnout. The sample included 30 school counsellors in Slovenia. They were divided into an experimental group (with the presence of supervision) and a control group (without supervision). Results show a positive effect of supervision, in accordance with the relational family model, on the school counsellors’ perception of stress, since stress decreased after supervisory meetings, while the school counsellors’ perception of their professional burnout after supervisory meetings did not change significantly.     

Action Research for Emancipation Informed by Habermas and Hierarchy of Systems: Case Study on Environmental Education and Management of Water Resources in Brazil

Technology is used in order to emancipate. Emancipation for social and environmental justice ought to shape the way technology is designed and used. The relationships across action research, action research spiral, and the General Systems Theory was investigated. The case study refers to environmental education activities as part of a participative management approach to water resources on the Hydrographic Basin of the Upper Maranhão River (Brazil). By introducing action research spiral as a search of rationality in social practices, and describing the nature of lower and higher hierarchical level in General Systems Theory, the higher hierarchical level was associated with Habermasian emancipatory interest, whereas lower hierarchic levels were associated with the specific instrumental concern. To conclude, it is said that the articulation between action research spiral and General System Theory can be the means to strengthen the dialectical potential of the action research spiral in order to achieve both individual and collective empowerment.     

基于耕地压力指数和GM（1,1）模型的区域粮食安全状况研究——以甘肃省天水市为例

在分析天水市1996-2005年耕地、人口、粮食动态变化的基础上,计算最小人均耕地面积和耕地压力指数,运用GM（1,1）模型对未来15 a天水市耕地压力指数进行了预测。研究结果显示：1996-2005年,虽然天水人均耕地面积持续减少,但由于耕地生产率不断提高,粮食产量和人均占有量在持续增加,最小人均耕地面积和耕地压力指数呈现降低的趋势,但是耕地压力指数始终在1之上。未来15 a耕地压力指数将进一步降低,耕地生产力的供给水平高于食物消费水平,区域粮食安全隐患较小。     

Systemic Intervention in a University Department: Reflections on Arrested Action Research

This paper reflects on my experience as an insider researcher attempting to use critical systems ideas and practices to promote quality improvement in a university engineering department. Reflection is a key part of learning. This paper is intended to contribute to critically, self-reflective learning for the community of systems practitioners. These reflections on my questions about participation, ethics, politics of process, and the choices and actions resulting from them may help others to formulate their own. The complexity of systems practice places substantial demands on the researcher, particularly in the case of insider, practitioner research. Nevertheless, the exploration of critical systems approaches to critique boundaries and structure ‘problems’ in the core aspects of higher education in locally meaningful ways should continue. While demanding, it still can work to promote learning about authentic quality.     

Changes in Multicultural Experience: Action Research on a Service Learning Curriculum

Service learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities designed for student learning and development. This study investigated the changes in the multicultural experience of graduate students who participated in a service learning curriculum. The participants comprised six graduate students who enrolled in the “Service Learning Research” course. Action research and qualitative methods were applied to analyze data including interview content, reflection diaries, and community service dossiers. The results revealed the following problems that the participants experienced at the beginning of service learning: (1) a sense of anxiety and anticipation before service engagement; and (2) substantial barriers during service delivery. Through guidance and reflection after intervention, the students demonstrated the abilities to question and observe. Moreover, the evaluation revealed that the participants reflected on the changes in their multicultural experience. Directly contacting service recipients was an essential factor affecting the participants’ changes, and keeping reflection diaries and engaging in in-class discussion facilitated supporting and inspiring the participants. According to the results of this study, we recommend that service learning curricula be reinforced through integrating multicultural teaching and challenging students to reflect on their conduct as well as supporting the students. Additionally, suggestions for subsequent studies are provided.