Lonnie L. Rowell

Action Researchers' Perspectives about the Distinguishing Characteristics of Action Research: A Delphi and Learning Circles Mixed-Methods Study.

The purpose of this study was to identify distinguishing characteristics of action research within the Action Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. The authors sought to delineate the foundational framework endorsed by this community. The study was conducted during January–April 2012 and employed an emergent simultaneous mixed-methods design utilizing Delphi and learning circles methodologies. The findings include 30 distinguishing characteristics of action research practiced within this knowledge community. The discussion addresses the challenges associated with defining action research, specific definitional issues, and prospects for opening dialogical spaces within which action researchers co-create knowledge. Potential implications for action research include: constructing boundaries of conceptual frameworks in action research; fostering coherence across action research studies; contributing to quality and rigor in critiquing action research; and supporting deeper dialogue on the established boundaries of action research frameworks.

Knowledge Democracy and Action Research: Pathways for the Twenty-First Century

The chapter examines issues faced by action researchers working within the context of democratizing knowledge. Four vantage points were delineated regarding the origin of knowledge democracy, progress toward knowledge democracy, and current and future prognosis and recommendations. Knowledge monopoly is discussed by examining progress from intellectual colonialism to global South–North convergences. The monocultural view of knowledge production and the role of universities are critiqued in relation to neoliberal globalization and epistemological diversity. The contribution of action research and the global action research community to knowledge democracy and alternative globalization is underscored. The authors introduce strategies for implementing practitioner-research, including knowledge production and dissemination based on practice-based research evidence as a way to increase knowledge democracy.

Reflective practice and motion sickness: thoughts on the first North American Action Research Study Day

This paper examines the experience of an action research ‘Study Day’ to investigate development of a culture of reflective practice among educators. Shared recognition of the importance of reflective practice in education is now a well-established part of both pre-service preparation and in-service work experience for educators. Osterman and Kottkamp defined reflective practice as a means by which practitioners can develop a greater level of self-awareness about the nature and impact of their performance, an awareness that creates opportunities for professional growth and development. Schon discussed the psychological and epistemological contours of the conscious awareness required for reflective practice. In his view, reflective practice is a dialog of thinking and doing through which one becomes more skillful. In Noffke’s framework of action research, professional development represents a branch of the action research family tree that is intrinsically connected with reflective practice. Somekh asserted that, since the major aim of action research is to develop the practical wisdom or situational understanding of the practitioner, it constitutes a powerful means of professional development.

Children’s and Teachers’ Conceptions of Creativity: Contradictions and Implications in Classroom Instruction

Personal beliefs about a construct are formed based on individuals’ experiences in sociocultural contexts. Personal beliefs are powerful as individuals tend to plan, take actions, and evaluate their own and others’ actions based on their belief system. In this chapter, we review pervasive creativity myths, followed by an examination of teachers’ implicit theories of creative children and creativity and children’s views of creative people and creativity. Contradictions found between teachers’ conceptions of creativity and classroom practices and discrepancies between teachers’ and children’ creativity conceptions are discussed along with instructional implications. Themes of contradictions include: (a) Yes, developing creativity in students is important, but no, not my priority; (b) I may do it if things are ready for me; (c) I am almost there, but they are not; (d) Creativity is art; (e) Amicable trait, but not in my class; (f) Not in our culture; (g) Anyone can be creative; sounds good, but really?; and (h) Assessment of creativity? I have no clue. We underscore the need for professional development and offer a few items that might help in teacher preparation for classroom instruction.

Defining Action Research: On Dialogic Spaces for Constructing Shared Meanings

In this chapter, we explore the challenge of defining action research given its practice in diverse contexts and settings. We are interested in the juncture of action research definitions and knowledge production with regard to the relational aspects of the work being done within what we characterize as the global action research community. Our writing is grounded in a broad and inclusive view of defining action research. We examine our stance against the backdrop of previous research on defining action research and through the lens of some of this Handbook’s authors. We offer four distinctions in defining action research. Our call to action researchers is to create dialogical spaces for constructing shared meanings, generating knowledge flows, and growing our global community.

Toward a Strategic Agenda for Global Action Research: Reflections on Alternative Globalization

The concluding chapter of the Handbook was written and shared in the Rundbriefe (round letters) form circulated among six Handbook authors active in the leadership of key international action research organizations whose history and ongoing action research efforts are reported upon in the Handbook. Each author responded to three questions after reading the prior authors’ responses, as follows: (1) What most excites you about the current global state of action research and participatory research? (2) What is most concerning to you regarding the current global state of action research and participatory research? (3) What direction would you most like to see action research and participatory research heading in regard to global connectedness? Each author then had the opportunity to provide a short concluding reflective response.

Knowledge mobilization and action research in global contexts: towards a comparative orientation

Presented in this issue are action research reports from Australia, Egypt, Iraq, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, and Taiwan. This array of geographical representation is evidence of the varied footholds maintained by action researchers working within diverse sociocultural settings and professional practice contexts. In some cases, footholds have taken shape in culture-specific forms tied to well-established infrastructures for knowledge production and dissemination (e.g. articles in this issue by Crimmins; Harlow, Cowie, McKie, and Peter; Henderson; Jonsmoen and Greek; Lu). In other cases, the footholds are taking shape within educational research infrastructures in which action research is just beginning to carve out a place for itself (e.g. articles by Abdallah; Burner, Madsen, Zako, and Ismail; Tana and Atencio). Taken together, all of the articles in this issue highlight the importance of local context in action research as well as the varied ways in which context defines what is addressed in a particular action research project. That is, the formation of the question and how the question is addressed, were related to the specific method the authors chose to apply. The articles also provide a vantage point for viewing action research from a cross-cultural comparative perspective (McTaggart 1993; Dale 2005; McNae and Strahan 2010). One direction to look from this vantage point is toward the tensions between action research in the Global North and the Global South. Action research scholars and practitioners have wrestled for many years with questions regarding the responsiveness of action research to the concerns of people in non-Western cultures (McTaggart 1993; Chambers and Balanoff 2009; Ravitch et al. 2017) and the positioning of action research in relation to a neo-liberal agenda for knowledge production and commodification (e.g. Kincheloe 2009). In his pioneering work in participatory action research (PAR), Fals Borda (1991) made explicit that PAR’s role was to break the monopoly of the dominant ‘establishment’ of knowledge production represented by Western expertise and its vast infrastructure of universities, think tanks, and government-funded research. As Fals Borda (1995) viewed it, the challenges of breaking the monopoly called for certain orientations to be adopted, including to ‘not monopolize your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your techniques, but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers ... [and to] not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals’ (1). Of the two articles in the present issue of EARJ (Abdallah; Burner, Madsen, Zako, and Ismail) that are most reflective of the broad scope of tensions between the Global North and the Global South neither incorporates the vantage point I discuss above. Although clearly not the focus of either article, the lack of even a glance at the dimension of conflicts in knowledge ecologies (de Sousa Santos 2014) can leave a reader with a kind of one-dimensional perspective on introducing action research into new sociocultural spaces, in particular those undergoing severe social, political, and economic disruptions, even when the introduction is enthusiastically supported by government ministries and the education sector. Yet, readers will get a sense in the Abdallah article of how someone working in a cultural context where limited awareness of action research is found can

Challenging knowledge monopoly in education in the U.S. through democratizing knowledge production and dissemination

ABSTRACT We discuss democratizing knowledge production and dissemination in education illustrated in two parts that challenge the current knowledge monopoly. Our discourse includes (a) problematic cultivation of the status quo in the hierarchy of knowledge value in the U.S. as a component of civic illiteracy and (b) the need for more evidence through developing practice-based research evidence as a counter to the fixation with evidence-based practice in education. We point out a cultivated state of complacency with regard to the societal expectations of the roles of educational practitioners in the U.S. and discuss developing a new status of practitioner research for knowledge democracy. A virtual space for mentoring practitioner researchers with a goal to help them produce and disseminate their research was included as an example of knowledge democracy.

Border Pedagogy and Orientación y Tutoría: A Case Study of USA–Mexico Collaborative Action Research

This case study illustrates a project conducted in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, which is bordered with San Diego, California, the USA. A team of three bilingual graduate students in school counseling and their faculty advisor worked collaboratively with a teacher at a public secondary school in Tijuana and an official of the Baja State Department of Education. This collaborative project regarded strengthening guidance practice in delivery of a newly adopted guidance curriculum for schools throughout Mexico, the Orientacion y Tutoria (Orientation and Tutorship [OT]) curriculum, utilizing a guidance approach designed by the US school counseling team. The project was part of a Bi-National Action Research Collaborative established in 2006. The chapter illuminates reflection on the experience of border pedagogy and collaborative action research in the borderlands.

The Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA): Constructing a New Network of North-South Convergence

The Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA) was founded in 2012 to support action researchers throughout the Western Hemisphere and around the world. In this chapter, we describe how the network began; its vision, values, mission, and leadership structure; major accomplishments to date; and the strategic goals that guide the network’s actions. We assert that the temptation to apply technocratic solutions needs to be balanced with the capacity of ordinary citizens to articulate, and try out, creative solutions to social problems. ARNA stands with those who recognize that knowledge should empower, not marginalize or colonize people, and ARNA reflects the potential of all people in the Americas and throughout the world to speak up, take action, and reclaim the capacity for progressive social change.