Dear all,
extending Action Research is Participatory Action Research (PAR),
particularly relevant in education and learning, for example, in
researching and instigating change in specific institutional contexts
such as workplaces, neighbourhoods and other communities whereby the
researcher is also a community member and participant. Appreciative
inquiry is an extension of this, and while optimistic, also a little
cosmic despite best intentions to be 'scientific'.
Further, to complicate the idea that research 'finds' or 'discovers'
knowledge, there is praxis, to quote wikipedia, useful albeit the
binaristic explanations (it is late night in Sydney and I don't have
my hard copy references at hand)
'Praxis is conceptualized in its reflexive as well as non-reflexive
variety in Marx (Gouldner 1980:32, 33). The reflexive praxis is
understood as the moment in the dialectic change, and the
non-reflexive one as the routinising mechanism operating within the
ideologies as a reproductive or status quo maintaining. It is, for
Marx, the non-reflexive habituating praxis, which leads to False
consciousness and alienation. To Markoviç, moments of praxis include
creativity instead of sameness, autonomy instead of subordination,
sociality instead of massification, rationality instead of blind
reaction and intentionality rather than compliance (1974:64).'
Praxis, conceptualised as combining action with research has been
advocated by Paulo Freire in his emancipatory educational work in
South America and taken up by feminist researchers, for example, the
collective memory work devised by Frigga Haug et al. at the
intersection of feminism and socialism. This is far removed from the
idea that research 'gathers', 'discovers' or 'tests' knowledge, and
is closer to the idea that research 'generates' knowledge, often
arising from personal, lived experience rather than theoretical
constructs. In this way, conflating theory with method, and sometimes
collapsing the distinction between researcher and participant, ie.
researchers research themselves in a group setting.
cheers, teena
Haug, F. 1987, Female sexualization : a collective work of memory,
trans. E. Carter, Verso, London.
Troxel, J. 2002, Appreciative Inquiry: an action research method for
organisational transformation and its implications to the practice of
group process facilitation, Millennia Consulting, Chicago,
http://www.consult.millennia.com/documents/Appreciative%20Inquiry.pdf
Cooperrider, D. and Srivastava, S. (1987) Appreciative Inquiry in
organisational life, Research in Organisational Change and
Development, Vol.1, http://www.appreciative-inquiry.org/AI-life.htm
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