The Action Research Planner: Doing Critical Par...

Unlike earlier editions, The Action Research Planner focuses specifically on critical participatory action research, which occupies a particular (critical) niche in the action research 'family'.

Robin McTaggart is Adjunct Professor at the Griffith Institute for Educational Research at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. He was formerly Professor and Head of School of Administration and Curriculum Studies at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia, and Dean of Education and Pro-Vice-Chancellor Quality Assurance at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. He was also Adjunct Professor in the International Graduate School of Management PhD program at the University of South Australia for several years. He has practised, taught and published extensively about critical participatory action research in many countries including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.

Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to action research emphasizing participation and action by members of communities affected by that research. It seeks to understand the world by trying to change it, collaboratively and following reflection. PAR emphasizes collective inquiry and experimentation grounded in experience and social history. Within a PAR process, \"communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers\".[1] PAR contrasts with mainstream research methods, which emphasize controlled experimentation, statistical analysis, and reproducibility of findings.

PAR practitioners make a concerted effort to integrate three basic aspects of their work: participation (life in society and democracy), action (engagement with experience and history), and research (soundness in thought and the growth of knowledge).[2] \"Action unites, organically, with research\" and collective processes of self-investigation.[3] The way each component is actually understood and the relative emphasis it receives varies nonetheless from one PAR theory and practice to another. This means that PAR is not a monolithic body of ideas and methods but rather a pluralistic orientation to knowledge making and social change.[4][5][6]

PAR has multiple progenitors and resists definition. It is a broad tradition of collective self-experimentation backed up by evidential reasoning, fact-finding and learning. All formulations of PAR have in common the idea that research and action must be done 'with' people and not 'on' or 'for' people.[1][2][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] It counters scientism by promoting the grounding of knowledge in human agency and social history (as in much of political economy). Inquiry based on PAR principles makes sense of the world through collective efforts to transform it, as opposed to simply observing and studying human behaviour and people's views about reality, in the hope that meaningful change will eventually emerge.

PAR draws on a wide range of influences, both among those with professional training and those who draw on their life experience and those of their ancestors. Many draw on the work of Paulo Freire,[14] new thinking on adult education research,[15] the Civil Rights Movement,[16] South Asian social movements such as the Bhumi Sena,[3][17] and key initiatives such as the Participatory Research Network created in 1978 and based in New Delhi. \"It has benefited from an interdisciplinary development drawing its theoretical strength from adult education, sociology, political economy, community psychology, community development, feminist studies, critical psychology, organizational development and more\".[18] The Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda and others organized the first explicitly PAR conference in Cartagena, Colombia in 1977.[19] Based on his research with peasant groups in rural Boyaca and with other underserved groups, Fals Borda called for the 'community action' component to be incorporated into the research plans of traditionally trained researchers. His recommendations to researchers committed to the struggle for justice and greater democracy in all spheres, including the business of science, are useful for all researchers and echo the teaching from many schools of research:

These principles and the ongoing evolution of PAR have had a lasting legacy in fields ranging from problem solving in the workplace to community development and sustainable livelihoods, education, public health, feminist research, civic engagement and criminal justice. It is important to note that these contributions are subject to many tensions and debates on key issues such as the role of clinical psychology, critical social thinking and the pragmatic concerns of organizational learning in PAR theory and practice. Labels used to define each approach (PAR, critical PAR, action research, psychosociology, sociotechnical analysis, etc.) reflect these tensions and point to major differences that may outweigh the similarities. While a common denominator, the combination of participation, action and research reflects the fragile unity of traditions whose diverse ideological and organizational contexts kept them separate and largely ignorant of one another for several decades.[22][23]

Action research in the workplace took its initial inspiration from Lewin's work on organizational development (and Dewey's emphasis on learning from experience). Lewin's seminal contribution involves a flexible, scientific approach to planned change that proceeds through a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of 'a circle of planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action', towards an organizational 'climate' of democratic leadership and responsible participation that promotes critical self-inquiry and collaborative work.[30] These steps inform Lewin's work with basic skill training groups, T-groups where community leaders and group facilitators use feedback, problem solving, role play and cognitive aids (lectures, handouts, film) to gain insights into themselves, others and groups with a view to 'unfreezing' and changing their mindsets, attitudes and behaviours.Lewin's understanding of action-research coincides with key ideas and practices developed at the influential Tavistock Institute (created in 1947)) in the UK and National Training Laboratories (NTL) in the US. An important offshoot of Tavistock thinking and practise is the sociotechnical systems perspective on workplace dynamics, guided by the idea that greater productivity or efficiency does not hinge on improved technology alone. Improvements in organizational life call instead for the interaction and 'joint optimization' of the social and technical components of workplace activity. In this perspective, the best match between the social and technical factors of organized work lies in principles of 'responsible group autonomy' and industrial democracy, as opposed to deskilling and top-down bureaucracy guided by Taylor's scientific management and linear chain of command.[31][32][33][34][35][36][37]

The works of Balint,[52] Jaques,[53]) and Bion[54] are turning points in the formative years of psychosociology. Commonly cited authors in France include Amado,[55] Barus-Michel,[56][57] Dubost,[58] Enriquez,[59] Lévy,[60][61] Gaujelac,[62] and Giust-Desprairies.[63] Different schools of thought and practice include Mendel's action research framed in a 'sociopsychoanalytic' perspective[64][65] and Dejours's psychodynamics of work, with its emphasis on work-induced suffering and defence mechanisms.[66] Lapassade and Lourau's 'socianalytic' interventions focus rather on institutions viewed as systems that dismantle and recompose norms and rules of social interaction over time, a perspective that builds on the principles of institutional analysis and psychotherapy.[67][68][69][70][71] Anzieu and Martin's[72] work on group psychoanalysis and theory of the collective 'skin-ego' is generally considered as the most faithful to the Freudian tradition. Key differences between these schools and the methods they use stem from the weight they assign to the analyst's expertise in making sense of group behaviour and views and also the social aspects of group behaviour and affect. Another issue is the extent to which the intervention is critical of broader institutional and social systems. The use of psychoanalytic concepts and the relative weight of effort dedicated to research, training and action also vary.[2]

In education, PAR practitioners inspired by the ideas of critical pedagogy and adult education are firmly committed to the politics of emancipatory action formulated by Freire,[26] with a focus on dialogical reflection and action as means to overcome relations of domination and subordination between oppressors and the oppressed, colonizers and the colonized. The approach implies that \"the silenced are not just incidental to the curiosity of the researcher but are the masters of inquiry into the underlying causes of the events in their world\".[14] Although a researcher and a sociologist, Fals Borda also has a profound distrust of conventional academia and great confidence in popular knowledge, sentiments that have had a lasting impact on the history of PAR, particularly in the fields of development,[28] literacy,[103][104] counterhegemonic education as well as youth engagement on issues ranging from violence to criminality, racial or sexual discrimination, educational justice, healthcare and the environment.[105][106][107] When youth are included as research partners in the PAR process, it is referred to as Youth Participatory Action Research, or YPAR.[108]

Community-based participatory research and service-learning are a more recent attempts to reconnect academic interests with education and community development.[109][110][111][112][113][114] The Global Alliance on Community-Engaged Research is a promising effort to \"use knowledge and community-university