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`This is an excellent book for helping professionals and students on undergraduate and postgraduate research courses. It is an essential purchase for understanding the inter-relationship between the `thinkers′ and `doers′ engaged in investigating and understanding the society in which researchers live′ - European Journal of Social Work

`A remarkable reframing of action research that engages the spirit as well as the mind, in inquiry that matters, shared among inquirers who matter. "Validity" as we once knew it will never be the same after these improvements. Wonderfully provocative!′ - Karl Weick, University of Michigan

`This is truly a significant work. Not only has action research reached maturity, but in the context of the postmodern constructionist debates its scope has been dramatically expanded, its conceptual underpinnings deepened, and its forms of practice enormously enriched. The present confluence of humanism and pragmatism has inspired lively conversations between us; the work has the potential to transform the very idea of social science′ - Kenneth J Gergen, author of An Invitation to Social Construction and Mary Gergen, author of Feminist Reconstructions in Psychology

`A wholly new kind of human inquiry is emerging. It is to do with taking our own, previously ignored, spontaneously responsive, living involvements with our surroundings seriously. Rather than with views and perspectives, rather than with a one-way manipulative understanding, gained by merely observing movements from a distance, it is concerned with quite a different kind of participatory, experiential understanding - the kind of understanding we have when playing a part in an activity which also to an extent `plays′ us. Workers are beginning to bring to light the many different knowledges present to us in the different practical ways in which we can be relationally involved with the others and othernesses around us. Everything changes when we get up close and personal. All that is solid melts into air! In this exciting Handbook, Reason and Bradbury have collected together a large number of the central workers in this new and developing sphere of participative inquiry. Overall, in the detailed explorations they conduct, just as in becoming familiar with a new and strange landscape, they help us get to know our `way about′ in its rich and intricate `landscape′. Literally, this is a landmark volume′ - John Shotter, University of New Hampshire

`The Handbook of Action Research is truly a remarkable book. We are greatly indebted to the editors Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury, who managed to avoid the usual tower of Babel, and succeeded to forge and orchestrate the somewhat incoherent mosaic of action research, with its many voices, into an intelligent comprehensive and logical whole. This handbook provides a much needed clarification of a critical transition in the social sciences′ - Hans van Beinum, General Editor of Concepts and Transformation, International Journal of Action Research and Organizational Renewal.

′A valuable resource for both researchers and for research methods courses′ - Dr Ruth Northway, Nurse Researcher

The publication of the Handbook of Action Research is a publishing milestone, drawing together the different strands of action research, demonstrating their diverse applications and showing their interrelations.

Far-reaching in scale and scope, the Handbook informs readers about the latest approaches, both quantitative and qualitative, in social inquiry, and moves the field forward with fresh insights and applications. Throughout, the contributing authors grapple with questions of how to integrate knowledge with action, how to collaborate with co-researchers in the field, and how to present the necessarily ′messy′ components in a coherent fashion. The organization of the volume reflects the many different issues and levels of analysis represented.

This volume is an essential resource for scholars and professionals engaged in social and political inquiry, organizational research and education.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Introduction
• Inquiry and Participation in Search of a World Worthy of Human Aspiration
• Part 1 Groundings
• Theory and Practice
• The Mediating Discourse
• Participatory (Action) Research in Social Theory
• Origins and Challenges
• Action Research in the Workplace
• The Socio-Technical Perspective
• Infusing Race into the US Discourse on Action Research
• Uneven Ground
• Feminisms and Participatory, Action-Oriented Research
• Power and Knowledge
• Knowledge and Participatory Research
• Exploring the Relevance of Critical Theory for Action Research
• Emancipatory Action Research in the Footsteps of J[um]urgen Habermas
• Pragmatic Action Research and the Struggle to Transform Universities into Learning Communities
• The Humanistic Approach to Action Research
• Engaging Sympathies
• Relationships between Action Research and Social Constructivism
• The Relationship of 'Systems Thinking' to Action Research
• Action Research as the Hidden Curriculum of the Western Tradition
• Part 2 Practices
• Action Science
• Creating Communities of Inquiry in Communities of Practice
• I Wish This Were a Poem of Practices of Participatory Research
• The Practice of Co-Operative Inquiry
• Research 'with' Rather Than 'on' People
• Appreciative Inquiry
• The Power of the Unconditional Positive Question
• Large Group Processes as Action Research
• The Use of Words
• Improving Enterprises by Improving Their Conversations
• Ethnodrama
• Constructing Participatory, Experiential and Compelling Action Research through Performance
• Clinical/Inquiry Research
• Community Action Research
• Learning as a Community of Practitioners, Consultants and Researchers
• The Practice of Action Inquiry
• The Turn to Action and the Linguistic Turn
• Towards an Integrated Methodology
• Educational Action Research
• Part 3 Exemplars
• Working Together, Learning Together
• Co-Operative Inquiry in the Development of Complex Practice by Teams of Social Workers
• The Early Mothering Project
• What Happened When the Words 'Action Research' Came to Life for a Group of Midwives
• Citizens' Participation in Natural Resource Management
• Learning with The Natural Step
• Action Research to Promote Conversations for Sustainable Development
• Transforming Lives
• Towards Bicultural Competence
• Action Research to Develop an Interorganizational Network
• Transpersonal Co-Operative Inquiry
• Using Co-Operative Inquiry to Transform Evaluation of Nursing Students' Clinical Practice
• Collaborative Inquiry with African-American Community Leaders
• Comments on a Participatory Action Research Process
• Participatory Research and Education for Social Change
• Highlander Research and Education Center
• Creative Arts and Photography in Participatory Action Research in Guatemala
• The Art of Clinical Inquiry in Information Technology Related Change
• The Sights and Sounds of Indigenous Knowledge
• Participatory Action Research in Southern Tanzania, with Special Reference to Women
• Six Street Youth Who Could...
• Part 4 Skills
• Collaborative Off-Line Reflection
• A Way to Develop Skill in Action Science and Action Inquiry
• On Working with Graduate Research Students
• The Mirror, the Magnifying Glass, the Compass and the Map
• Facilitating Participatory Action Research
• Self-Reflective Inquiry Practices
• The Third Task of Universities or How to Get Universities to Serve Their Communities
• Conclusion
• Broadening the Bandwidth of Validity: Issues as Choice-Points to Ensure Quality in Action Research

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Peter Reason is Reader in Organization Behaviour and Director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice in the School of Management at the University of Bath. He is the author of many books and articles on participative inquiry, including the classic Human Inquiry (with John Rowan), published in 1981.

Hilary Bradbury is Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

CONTRIBUTORS′ AFFILIATIONS OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA:

Mike Baldwin University of Bath

Penny Barrett University of Sydney

Gloria Bravette South Bank University

Goran Brulin National Institute for Working Life, Stockholm

David Coghlan University of Bath

Andrea Cornwall University of Sussex

Olav Eikeland University of Oslo

Orlando Fals Borda National University of Colombia

Bob Flood Monash University

Victor J Friedman Ruppin Academic Center, Israel

John Gaventa University of Sussex

Bjorn Gustavsen University of Oslo

John Hall International Centre for Co-operative Inquiry, New Zealand

Stephen Kemmis University of Ballarat, Australia

Morten Levin Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim

Judi Marshall University of Bath

Joe McDonagh University of Dublin

Jim Mienczakowski Central Queensland University

Stephen Morgan Griffith University, Australia

Elizabeth Ndedya Rural Integrated Project Support programme, Southern Tanzania

Oyvind Palshaugen The Work Research Institute of Oslo

John Rowan Minster Centre, London

Mwajuma Masaiganah Saiddy

Marja Liisa Swantz University of Helsinki

Lesley Treleaven University of Western Sydney

Yoland Wandsworth Victoria University