Action Research - Applied Research, Intervention Research, Collaborative Research, Practitioner Research, or Praxis Research?

Abstract

This article relates common ways of conceptualising action as intervention, collaboration, interactive applied and 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 providing real added value in relation to more conventional social 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 and conventional ways of conceptualising action research. Key words: action research, collaborative research, research, practitioner research, praxis, ways of knowing In this article I will address different ways of conceptualising action according to how it seems to relate to its field or subject of study. Different conceptualisations do not necessarily imply radically different or incompatible practices. But despite practical similarities between action schools and individual researchers, conceptualisations differ, creating sometimes fruitful tensions and sometimes confusion, partly because the differences may often be more terminological than really conceptual. Often the practices of action are better than their conceptualisations of what they do. But these differences need to be discussed. Hopefully, the following contribution will help to clarify some conceptual and terminological differences and similarities that might decrease confusion, but at the same time increase fruitful differences and tensions. Many action approaches use terms like and or interactivity in describing their ways of doing things and how they relate to their field of study, and / or they think of their activity as a form of applied applying either methods or results to interpret or guide practical development work. Among the interventionists we find people like Argyris (1970; 1985), Engestrom (2004), Rapaport (1987). Traditions at the Work Research Institute (WRI) in Oslo and at the ISEOR in Lyon often talk about intervening, and so, of course, do explicit intervention researchers who normally do not call themselves action but still have many things in common with certain forms of action (cf. Rothman & Thomas, 1994; Fraser et al., 2009). 1 Others, like Greenwood and Levin (1998) emphasise some form of collaboration between and practitioners, and so do many from the Norwegian WRI-tradition (B.Gustavsen and others) and in the UK within CARN (J. Elliott and others) and CARPP (P. Reason and others). Swedish (Svensson, Eilstrom, & Brulin, 2007) prefer to talk about interactive while Eden & Huxham (1996) and others seem to prefer to talk about action as applied research.2 Terms like these can, of course, have many different meanings in different contexts. Some are relevant, others irrelevant for action purposes. Although sometimes the emphasis is on one term more than on others, the different terms may, of course, be quite compatible and not in any way contradictory or contrary to each other. This could indicate that the differences are mostly terminological or simply designate different aspects of a complex practice. In action and social more generally, however, terms like these do presuppose a distinction between insiders, usually thought of as the practitioners immersed in the social field concerned as objects of change or study (organisations, communities, families, individuals, etc. …