Updating Scholarly Practice: Action Research for Transformations at a Time of Eco-Social Crisis

Abstract

The symposium brings together global scholar-practitioners to discuss and illustrate action research as a contemporary scholarly practice. Over the past decade, action research for transformations (ART) illustrates a growing capacity for grappling with and achieving global sustainability goals. Participants will learn of its key conceptual underpinnings, namely constructivist pragmatism and adult development. These in turn are shown to animate a meta-model that combines concern for relational, conceptual and experimental spaces, guided and assessed by seven quality choicepoints. Key in the transformations support by ART is researchers’ integrating objective perspectives with subjective reflexivity. As an expression of contemporary constructivist pragmatism, action research for transformations thereby illustrates and works with a deeper emphasis and respect for the relational nature of people within change contexts. In this integration ART may offer a revitalization of social science itself. The discussion of how concepts as well as objectivity, intersubjectivity, and subjectivity combine will be brought alive with two impactful cases from worlds of i) policy makers in government in Spain and ii) work of JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) with thousands of employees in Vancouver Canada. The symposium will be of interest to change leaders and educators concerned with transformative social change, as well as social scientists interested in new paradigms of social science.