Using Action Research Methodologies In Building a Frame for Practicing Research

Abstract

I discuss action research methodologies and nuances to recount how my research with art educators using critical encounters with visual culture and senior artists, facilitated gaining a broader view of place. During the study, I recognized my first-person voice operating critically and analyzing paradoxes found in the dialogue and data, which was in conflict with my second-person relationships with participants, insofar as we shared a way of knowing that values multiple forms of participant learning. I used these disjunctures to challenge my outdated notions of what it means to “do” research and learned that action research practice offers multiple insights into working in relation to participants and to myself. I describe the variations of action research employed to frame and to facilitate the study within the events of the workshop which suggested insights into what direction the analysis of the research should take. I conclude with describing participants’ learning through the action of the research. My objectives were refocused by the events of learning in and through the action of the research.