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- Volume 8, Issue, 2003
Concepts and Transformation - Volume 8, Issue 3, 2003
Volume 8, Issue 3, 2003
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Ph.D. programs in action research: Can they be housed in universities?
Author(s): Morten Levinpp.: 219–238 (20)More LessCan universities ever become a greenhouse for education in Action Research? Would it be possible to create Ph.D. programs in Action Research that are loyal to the genuine characteristics of Action Research? The hegemony of conventional researcher education has dominated university activities. Action Research has inherent characteristics that break radically with the academic tradition. The core challenge is to assess whether high-level training in Action Research can find a home in universities. Training action researchers in conventional academic institutions will in itself be an action research project. The paper presents three different AR projects, all aimed at training cohorts of students to become professional Action Researchers through obtaining a Ph.D. The first program started in 1989, the second in 1995, and the new program began in May 2003. The main conclusion is that it is a feasible strategy to create action research learning opportunities within a conventional academic context. This is partly due to a change in conceptualization of what constitutes knowledge, adding onto a stronger demand for practical and useful knowledge. At the local design and implementation level, curriculum design — both collective learning processes and theses that were closely connected to real life change activities — were important factors for success.
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From employee to ‘entreployee’: Towards a ‘self-entrepreneurial’ work force?
Author(s): Hans J. Pongratz and G. Günter Voßpp.: 239–254 (16)More LessThis paper presents the argument that we are witnessing a fundamental transformation in society’s disposition of labor capacity, seen in changes in the labor strategy of large employers. This may be leading to a new type of labor power that could be called ‘self-entrepreneurial’. In the paper’s first part the concept of the ‘entreployee’ (Arbeitskraftunternehmer) is presented briefly, after which, the second part examines several important theoretical objections to the concept, raised in the course of current German debate.
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Rehabilitating action research: A response to Davydd Greenwood’s and Björn Gustavsen’s papers on action research perspectives in Concepts and Transformation, 7(2), 2002 and 8(1), 2003
Author(s): Bob Dickpp.: 255–263 (9)More LessIn this brief response I address four topics. In the first place I suggest that single-case action research has a useful contribution to make. In my view, so does action research on the smallest scale: applied to improving the practice of a single practitioner. A second topic is the difficulty of avoiding marginalisation if you are one of those who seek to keep their research practically meaningful. A third one consists of some reasons for my seemingly greater optimism. Finally I try to provide from my own experience some practical measures which can be taken.
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Unmet challenges and unfulfilled promises in action research: A reply to Davydd J. Greenwood and Björn Gustavsen
Author(s): Olav Eikelandpp.: 265–273 (9)More LessThis article is a response to Davydd J. Greenwood’s critical review of defensiveness and sloppiness in the current action research (AR) community. My experience of the situation in AR coincides to a large degree with Greenwood’s. His claims are hard to test, however, since he hardly gives concrete examples. In order to sort out real “sloppiness” (whatever that is), we have to take into consideration the conditions under which most AR to work. I also think Greenwood’s contention that AR suffers from “complacency about fundamental issues of theory, method and validity” has to do with fundamental changes in AR’s self-understanding between “old AR” before 1965 and “the second wave” from the 1970s on. Personally I recommend an AR-strategy — immanent critique — that balances between “morally superior, but sloppy and complacent AR” on the one hand and “conventional social research” (whatever that is nowadays), but find it hard to find much support in the AR community, for reasons, I believe, that have to do with the mentioned fundamental change in justification-strategy and self-conception within AR. At the end I announce some issues I would like to discuss further, but for which I lack the space in this article.
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Action research and the research community
Author(s): Morten Levinpp.: 275–280 (6)More LessThe debate initiated by Greenwood and continued by Gustavsen fills a major gap in action research. The present paper underlines the importance of communicating with the broader research community, relating what we learn from our research activities. The findings of action research are seldom developed and argued in such a way as to connect to the borader intellectual discourses within the scientific community.
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Action research and the single case: A response to Bjørn Gustavsen and Davydd Greenwood
Author(s): Peter Reasonpp.: 281–294 (14)More LessWhile welcoming Gustavsen’s exploration of issues of scale and wider influence in action research, which argues that we need to extend the relatively small scale of individual action research ‘cases’ and see action research as creating social movements and social capital, this article takes issue with the implication that this implies that less attention must be paid to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of action research. Issues of scale must be approached not only through distributive action research as Gustavsen advocates, but also by expanding the emancipatory inquiry space of face-to-face inquiry practices. The integration of the personal with the political is seen as absolutely central to this type of work; a range of examples is offered. The possibility that action research can never be part of mainstream science but rather runs fundamentally counter to mainstream Western culture is explored. It is argued that action research must be seen not as a form of social science producing knowledge or cases, but as a form of day to day inquiry integrated in the lives of individuals, small groups, organizations and society as a whole.
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Wittgenstein’s philosophy and action research
Author(s): John Shotterpp.: 295–301 (7)More LessThree themes seem to be common to both Greenwood’s and Gustavsen’s accounts: One is the social isolation of professional [research] elites from the concerns of ordinary people, which connects with another: the privileging of theory over practice. Both of these are connected, however, with a third: the great, unresolved struggle of ordinary people to gain control over their own lives, to escape from schemes imposed on them by powerful elites, and to build a genuinely participatory culture. An understanding of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and the recognition of its striking differences from any previous philosophical works, can make some important contributions to all these issues. Wittgenstein’s aim is not, by the use of reason and argument, to establish any foundational principles to do with the nature of knowledge, perception, the structure of our world, scientific method, etc. Instead, he is concerned to inquire into the actual ways available to us of possibly making sense in the many different practical activities we share in our everyday lives together: “We are not seeking to discover anything entirely new, only what is already in plain view.”
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