Action Research

Action Research has developed and published actionable knowledge since 2003. Our intention is to support learning for transformations among people, organizations, communities and societies at multiple levels, inner and outer: personal, organizational, methodological, conceptual/discursive. We also share authors’ blogs and interviews while seeking to provide community for international scholar-practitioners.

Action Research is not a method, but an orientation to inquiry, with diverse schools, labels, theories and practices. We honor the original working definition from the founding of the journal in which we understand action research as a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview which we believe is emerging at this historical moment. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities.

Today, in the face of our eco-social crisis, we highlight what is transforming and how lives of all beings are being improved.

Choicepoints for quality

The journal’s seven quality choicepoints articulate our understanding of action research in practice. We use these for assessing and developing articles. In sharing them we make the review process more transparent.

The quality choicepoints invite a combination of objective, intersubjective and subjective elements that are needed in action research that empowers us to impactfully shape and catalyze the world of our aspirations.

At first an action researcher might read the seven choicepoints as a sequence of priorities; a more seasoned scholar-practitioner may also see the integrative and impactful interdependence. Because action research is constantly evolving, these choicepoints continue to evolve as well.

Please refer to the Submission guidelines for a full description of each choicepoint.

1. Quality of intention and transformative purpose
2. Quality of partnership
3. Quality of contribution to action research theory/practice
4. Quality of participative methods and processes
5. Quality of sustaining
6. Quality of learning as developmental reflexivity
7. Quality of writing

Quality matters

Clarifying our view of quality should, on the one hand, allow us to avoid practice that is poorly articulated and, on the other hand, prevent borrowing uncritically from conventional, yet inappropriate, quality standards of Ivory Tower scholarship.

We are aware that action research is difficult work. We do not look for individual papers to be perfect in all seven choicepoints. We invite clarity on choices made as authors navigate a middle path between responding to problems within living communities and contributing to research-based theory while needing to engage the interest of stakeholders or the larger society in grappling with greatest human concerns.

We welcome diverse approaches and labels

Action Research embraces many approaches that meet our quality choicepoints. Our Associate Editors are engaged in debates about the limits of a ‘disinterested’ social science; we are committed to developing the perspectives of diverse schools. We invite a ‘big-tent’ attitude to quality action research when selecting and developing papers and special issues. Our 20+ years of publications point to the breadth of work we have developed to publication. Simultaneously we seek to provide a model of social science for the 21st Century as more scholars and practitioners are encouraged to actively respond to planetary crisis as we work toward and create a just and sustainable world.

Ambition is welcome!

"Action Research offers a greatly-needed forum at a time of growing recognition around the world that engagements between researchers and practitioners are central to generating both new knowledge and innovations in practice relevant to many critical problems." L. David Brown, Harvard University, USA

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

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