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Action Research, Sustainability and

Participatory Practice

Peter ReasonBristol

January 2008

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Lowcarbonworks

The challenges in the move to a low carbon society lie not so much in technology as in those ‘contextual’ factors—individual motivations, institutional structures, cultural preferences, taken for granted assumptions, economic and legal conditions and so on—all of which interact in complex ways and profoundly impact on our approach to technological change. While lip service is given to these they are rarely explored with the subtly they deserve.

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Lowcarbonworks questions include

How do we contribute to the emergence of a low carbon society?

How do ‘contextual’ issues interrelate with the technological?

How do we help organizations adopt low carbon technologies?

How do we change the conversation/discourse so that contextual issues are included alongside technological?

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Education as inquiry

“Matching form to content”--Judi Marshall“Creating an attitude of inquiry”Question posingStructured as an inquiry processDeveloping a community of inquiry

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What is the underlying cause of the devastation?'We are talking only to ourselves. We are not

talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual “autism”.'

Thomas Berry

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The Practice of participation questions include

How do we increase our experience of connection with the more than human world?

How can we feel and act as part-of rather than apart-from the community of beings?

What practices can we adopt in everyday life to foster this?

How do we understand this experience of participation?

How do we express this in ways that engage, enliven, surprise, challenge?

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Action Research is an attitude toward inquiry, not just a methodology:

I do not separate my scientific inquiry from my life. For me it is really a quest for life, to understand life and to create what I call living knowledge— knowledge which is valid for the people with whom I work and for myself.

Marja-Liisa Swantz

Living Life as InquiryJudi Marshall

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Five dimensions of action research:Worthwhilepurposes

Participation&

Democracy

Knowledgein Practice

EmergentDevelopmental

Form

Many ways ofknowing

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Looking at it two ways:

Action Research is about creating forms of inquiry that people can use in the conduct of their lives

A process of inquiry that empowers people to make sense of and act reflectively in their world

Action Research is part of revisioning our worldview, a paradigm shift, changing what we take as knowledge

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Extended epistemology

Experiential knowing through encounter with the presence of the world

Presentational knowing clothes experience in imaginal metaphors in story, art, movement

Propositional knowing using concepts that come through the mastery of language

Practical knowing demonstrated in a skill of competence

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Extended Epistemology

Presentational(knowing through expression)

Experiential(knowing through encounter)

Propositional(knowing about)

Practical(knowing how)

SEEING IT; Naming facilitates more explicit and understoodattention in practice, easier identification of the issue under study andpossibility of shared inquiry with others.

NAMING IT; parts of the story e.g. actions, behaviours arenamed by self/others. Creates shared understanding,develops our ideas and enables us (individually/collectively)to share/name (a) where this might have ‘happened’ to us too.In this way the inquiry might be self-referential – we mightsee examples of this named phenomena in our shared historyas an inquiry group.

LIVING IT; ‘Noticing something happened’.Arises in awareness due to cycling, attentionand mutual support. The sophistication of thenoticing increases as the process of inquirycycles around, and through the co-developmentof the inquiry space.

SHARING IT; Story of happening is shared withthe group, through stories, pictures, and othermedia. Experience of being shared with resurfacesmemories for others, who then share their stories.The multi-owned/authored story creates sharedunderstanding in/for the group

(a)

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Experiential knowing

The potential error in experiential knowing is to be trapped in illusion, to create a defensive inquiry which guards against the discovery of the new.

Quality inquiry will courageously seek ways of challenging preconceptions and deepening contact with experience.

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Foundational disciplines can build individual and group capacities for less defensive openness to experience.

Mindfulness meditation, martial arts, psychotherapy, journaling, friends willing to act as enemies….

Dialogue groups, circle groups, public conversations….

The process of democracy, ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ practices….

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Presentational knowing

The potential error in presentational knowing is to stay with the same old stories, to repeat them to oneself and to others so they recreate existing realities and confirm existing beliefs.

Quality inquiry will actively experiment with redescription and draw on narrative practices to turn stories upside down and tell them in new ways.

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Presentational knowing

Experimentation with presentational form through storytelling, freefall writing, reading and writing poetry, drawing, expressive movement etc may liberate presentational capacities

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Propositional knowing

The potential error in propositional knowing is to be held within the hegemonic paradigm and uncritical acceptance of taken for granted theories (and its identical opposite, the uncritical acceptance of the currently fashionable oppositional position!).

Quality inquiry will engage accepted theory critically and forge new theoretical perspectives.

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Propositional knowing

The work of feminism was grounded in re-examining experience and telling new stories in consciousness raising groups, but out of this new theories were fashioned--theories of gender, of power, of human development

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Practical knowing

The potential error in practical knowing is the failure to empirically test practices against outcomes.

Quality inquiry will engage systematically in cycles of action and reflection, provide adequate evidence to test claims, and use a range of critical techniques to explore the congruence of practice against purpose