Collaborative Action Research Methodologies

Ochocientas casitas unifamiliares de planta baja en la orilla del río Besós, cada una de un color diferente, comprimidas entre una zona industrial semiabandonada y la nueva Barcelona del AVE y del Fòrum. En este lugar de márgen, desconocido y estigmatizado, grupos de migrantes y autóctonos lucharon juntos para crear un paisaje humano excepcionalmente denso y rebelde: un barrio anticlerical y anarcosindicalista, en el cual la resistencia duró ochenta años, donde buscaron amparo Buenaventura Durruti, Quico Sabater y un sinfin de excluidos e indeseados de todos los sitios y de todas las épocas.

Mientras las excavadoras del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona avanzan en el derribo de esta ciudad horizontal, un grupo de habitantes retoma la histórica tradición de lucha del barrio para oponerse al nuevo urbanismo de bloques de pisos, reivindicando la importancia de sus calles, de sus estilos de vida, y de la convivencialidad que permitía la forma urbana de qué se habían apropiado.

Este trabajo es el resultado de una implicación a la vez etnográfica, política y humana con el barrio de Bon Pastor durante los años del derribo (2002-2012), para desvelar la profundidad del trauma que representa la desaparición progresiva de un barrio, con sus memorias de autogestión y autonomía, con su vida cotidiana basada en la proximidad, con sus fiestas que servían para resolver conflictos, y de sus conflictos que creaban comunidad.

Standpoint theory is a social epistemology and aligned methodological stance predicated on the understanding that, as recent work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) has shown, scientific knowledge of all kinds is irreducibly social (e.g., see Science, Sociology of). It is characterized by a distinctive ‘inversion’ thesis according to which those who are marginalized or oppressed, and therefore often discounted as knowers, may in fact be better positioned to understand social relations and a range of other phenomena than those who are comparatively privileged. This thesis underpins research programs within the social and behavioral sciences and offers a rationale for participatory action and community-based collaborative research (PAR, CBPR) captured by critical race theorists, feminists and others who advocate ‘starting research from the margins’. It has also been extended to the biological and physical sciences by practitioners and STS scholars who are intent on understanding how the social relations that structure scientific inquiry shape research agendas and outcomes across the sciences.

"There are many tools available to elicit knowledge and provide understanding of organizational
concerns. This paper focuses on the rich picture (RP) used within the soft system
methodology. The RP is a diagrammatic means of identifying differing world views with
the aim of creating shared understanding of the organization. The RP has predominately
been used as a freeform, unstructured tool with no commonly agreed syntax.
Our research suggests that the RP requires structure to become a contemporary knowledge
elicitation device.We claimthat there has been a change to icons that are renowned as being
synonymous within previous RP construction. Our research has investigated the modern
iconography to be incorporated within a symbol legend for future RP construction. We
conclude that a contemporary icon legend key could offer considerable benefits to the creator
and interpreter of the RP ensuring greater appreciation of the problem situation. Copyright
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd."

"Re-imagining 21st century education is ambitious, an ambition born of a sadness as I reflect on a book written 30 years ago.  And I shall of course fall far short of the ambition.  Just to reiterate again the question raised in the invitation to this talk.

What sort of educational vision and practice may be fostered to underpin a new world where people matter?

This is an age-old question.  Its origins is in the idea of the good society that has long been the object of philosophical and political debate. So, specifically we can ask, what sort of education does a vision of the good society demand?  And how should schools be organised to lay a foundation for the realisation of this vision?
"

There has been a continuous attack on education, particularly alternative, progressive, democratic and liberatory forms of education that seek social justice and an equality of opportunity for all to develop.  In the UK this has led to an attack on educators as 'the enemies of promise' by the Secretary of State for Education.  However, what is being proposed by policy makers are the old 'know your station in life' strategies of managing inequality.  These have always resulted in a violation of the intelligence of people.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Este artigo vem mostrar uma possível utilização dos games na construção de conhecimento com o método da pesquisa–ação participativa nas áreas de agroecologia, engenharia de pesca e economia solidária. O trabalho apresenta o estado inicial das atividades do Projeto Pirarucu-Gente, um projeto de pesquisa e extensão voltado para a assessoria, capacitação e mudança social. O projeto tem como objetivo assessorar agricultores, pescadores artesanais e piscicultores da região denominada Território Central da Cidadania de Rondônia na utilização de práticas sustentáveis de gestão de empreendimentos de produção, beneficiamento e comercialização de modo a garantir sua autonomia e sustento. Um metaverso será usado como ferramenta de trabalho e de divulgação de boas práticas.

Action research is teacher process oriented to reflect upon and improve their own practices of teaching and learning. Teachers"reflective practices as a continuous content and pedagogic enrichment to address the diverse needs of the children in their classrooms, through their learning outcomes will be improved.This paper reports on the basis ofparticipatory constructivist and experiential learning results of seven weeks and two credit online course on "action research" for in-service teachers conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). This course provided an opportunity to get on-line training as per their needs and time with continuously mentored and support by subject experts and educationists through web-login credentials such as dashboard, learners profile, scheduled course materials, telegraph messages, forums and synchronous meeting. The course module contains variety of content experts" explanation video, learning materials, assignments and feedback on submitted assignments. In this course a heterogeneous group of 127 in-service teachers has participated from school level teachers to university level faculty members across the India, the investigator used the mixed method approach and the data were collected from 107 teachers the investigator was the part of the learner group; The findings of the study reveals that it"s an good opportunities to the in-service teachers to learn, observe, feel do and reflect, with these learning and doing experiments they came out with wonderful reflective experiences through online action research course with clarity in how to improve the day-today practices in classroom activities with handful resources and mindful ideas of action research to meet the classroom challenges and to improve the practices in the classroom as well.

"A study into the adoption of social media and web technologies in organisations and communities. The findings dispel the myth of the Generation Y dominance on social media, and reveal that the barriers to adoption include individual perceptions and boundaries toward new technologies, incorrect assumptions of prior learning and the need to change leadership styles when utilising social media. The scope of the research and its longitudinal nature make the study original.


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Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

At a community event some years ago on an Indian Reserve in British Columbia, I overhead a Secwepemc elder say to a young man who was fooling around, “You can’t listen when your mouth is moving. So be quiet and learn.” He was suitably embarrassed in front of his peers and thanked her for the important lesson. This paper is about what can be learned when we, as archaeologists, stop talking and listen—advice I have long taken to heart. ....

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

[ The original PhD dissertation may be read and authenticated from the website of the University of Newcastle, NSW, at http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/804346 ]

This thesis argues that foreign and second language teaching productivity can only reach its proper potential when it is accorded priority, second only to language learner productivity, amongst the many competing productivities which are always asserted by stakeholders in educational institutions.

A theoretical foundation for the research is established by examining the historical concept of productivity, and its more recent manifestation as knowledge worker productivity, especially as applied to teachers.

The empirical basis of the thesis is sourced from a chronological series of twenty biographical case studies in language teaching venues in Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and East Asia. The biographical case study methodology, although rare in applied linguistics, is justified by reference to its wide and growing application in other fields of qualitative research. The case studies are analysed for common patterns of productivity, as well as teaching productivity inhibition or failure.

It was affirmed across all of the case studies without exception that external parties could not control or even reliably predict what individual students might learn, and how well, from instances of instructed language teaching. This was regardless of the power of institutional players, external resources, curriculums or the teacher. Student belief in the immediate value of what was to be learned in a given lesson, and personal confidence in an ability to learn it were the most critical factors.

Teaching productivity was found to turn, ultimately, on the teacher's ability to influence the probability of student learning. The teacher could best influence learning probability by enhancing student motivation. The most effective environments for teaching productivity were seen to be those where the teacher was professionally equipped and politically enabled to exercise judgements which maximized opportunities for student language learning productivity. A negotiated pact concerning both curriculum and method often proved effective, especially with mature students, and at times required some deception of institutional authorities.

Empirically, the encouragement of reciprocal learning relationships between teacher and students was found to be powerfully enabling for language teaching productivity in the case studies.

In many venues a small but effective minority of 'intimate learners' were also able to leverage their language learning productivity by forging more personal relationships with the teacher.

The wider cultural paradigm within each of the countries represented in the case studies sanctioned different paths and limitations for both language learners and teachers, and hence was seen to influence teaching productivity in critical ways. It was found that under certain conditions, notably (but not exclusively) those prevailing in many East Asian educational institutions, that certification of foreign language skills had a higher cultural, employment and monetary value than the actual ability to exercise foreign language skills.

A negative influence on teacher productivity in many of the case studies was an ignorance about language learning and teaching amongst institutional players. The disregard of language teacher professionalism was fed by a belief that being able to speak a language was all that was necessary to teach it, and reinforced by misinterpreting the meaning of test results. Related to this, an imbalance of power relationships between teachers or students with other institutional interests was consistently found to interfere with teaching and learning productivities. Overall, the model of productivity understood in institutions instanced by the case studies tended to reflect a 19th Century economic paradigm of capital, raw materials (students) and labour (dispensable classroom workers) rather than any more sophisticated grasp of knowledge worker productivity.

It was demonstrated in the context of the case studies that productivity, and in particular knowledge worker productivity, is a complex concept whose facets require detailed analysis to arrive at a proper understanding of the role that foreign and second language teachers play in educational institutions.

What is it about social media that so captivates us? Once popularly viewed as entertainment, cultural gatekeepers such as art galleries an dmuseums are now beginning to embrace social media practices as effective means for life long learning and community engagement (See Appendix 1). Even the heritage branch of the Canadian government is promoting applications like Instagram© and Pinterest© for use by local museums (http://www.rcipchin.gc.ca/sgc-cms/nouvelles-news/anglais-english/?p=7094).Many individuals, (especially youth), are continuously documenting their daily lives, collecting digital artifacts that represent components of identity, and re-distributing these artifacts through social networking spaces (Delacruz and Bales, 2010). Gardner and Davis (2013) explain that for the “App Generation,” social media holds a fundamental position in the enacting, performing and creation of community. How might visual content creation and distribution through social media be a form of artistic production as well as a personally engaging mode of inquiry for students and researchers alike?

My pilot study with tagged mobile photography is one demonstration that through our interdisciplinary, experiential aptitudes, art education specialists are well positioned to develop new ways of knowing, using the myriad of technological tools available. Through research creation, we can provide critical guidance for “app-enabling” (Gardner & Davis, 2013) practices for use with social media and in the digital world that we, and our students, increasingly inhabit.

This was the first-ever article to describe and analyze the possibility of a One-State Solution for Palestine/Israel from a Mizrahi positionality both in the Hebrew original and the English translation. Its composition -- like all of Lavie's writing about the Mizrahi feminist struggle in the context of the Question of Palestine -- has been fraught with all manner of relentless campaigns by those elements in academia that
would rather have Lavie and her research disappear. Needless to say that shortly after this article saw print in the Hebrew original in 2008 its analysis of the possibility for a one state solution for the Israel/Palestine conflict was appropriated and published without proper quotation or citation.

The aim of this study is to use grounded theory methods to develop a theory about how children are been abused and the consequences of these abuse in Nigeria with specific reference to Niger Delta region. The theory generated is intended to derive a general, abstract process of the nature, types, causes and consequences of child abuse in Nigeria in the view of participants in the study.  The process will involve using multiple stages of data collection and the refinement and interrelationship of categories of information

Ce chapitre rend compte de l'étude menée auprès d'une équipe de conseillères et conseillers en emploi d'un service de placement étudiant d'une institution postsecondaire. Souhaitant se munir d'un cadre de référence commun, enrichir leur pratique d'accompagnement ainsi que leurs stratégies d'intervention, ces professionnels ont sollicité la contribution des auteurs (Bourassa, Fournier, Goyer et Veilleux). Cette recherche, qui s'est échelonnée sur un peu plus d'une année, a produit des résultats qui permettent de satisfaire à la fois le développement des pratiques et l'avancement des connaissances scientifiques. Les auteurs présentent d'abord les considérants épistémologiques sur lesquels s'appuie cette étude. Sur le plan méthodologique, on voit ensuite comment ils ont mis à contribution de manière judicieuse et originale le groupe focalisé et la méthode des incidents critiques pour atteindre leurs objectifs. Enfin, les auteurs discutent des retombées progressives et subséquentes de cette démarche de recherche sur les conseillers et conseillères et le service dans lequel ils évoluent, mais également sur l'avancement des connaissances au sujet de ce qui fait la spécificité et la complexité de leurs pratiques d'intervention professionnelle.

Action research is a type of research related to one’s professional practice.  In the field of education, it can be defined as the process of studying a school, classroom, or teaching-learning situation with the purpose of understanding and improving the quality of actions or instruction.  In this sense, it is the ultimate form of teacher reflection.  Described in this chapter expert are the basic elements and the steps of action research.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

Analysis means to break something down into its component parts so that it can be understood. In action research, data are analyzed and organized into categories so that others might come to understand the reality you are trying to represent. Three elements related to data analysis are presented in this chapter: (a) accuracy and credibility; (b) validity, reliability, and triangulation; and (c) inductive analysis.

Abstract: This article relates common ways of conceptualising action research as “intervention”, “collaboration”, “interactive research”, “applied research”, and “practitioner research” to a number of different ways of knowing extracted from the works of Aristotle. The purpose is not to disavow any of these practices but to expand the philosophical, methodological, and theoretical horizon to contain the Aristotelian concept of praxis. It is claimed that praxis knowing needs to be comprehended in order to realize the full, radical potential in action research providing real “added value” in relation to more conventional social research approaches. Praxis knowing radically challenges the divisions of labour between knower-researchers and the known-researched. Thereby it also challenges both the epistemologies and institutionalisations dominating both conventional research and conventional ways of conceptualising action research.