a)+The+Groundings

=Groundings of Action Research = = = =Ontology =

The defining characteristic of this ontology is that it is participatory and that reality is a co-creation. Subject and object are interdependent in this world view

This ontology radically confronts our assumptions about the nature of our world which for modernists assume a separation of mind and matter. This worldview points to an evolutionary, emergent and reflexive worldview in which the cosmos is continually self-ordering and self-creating and the human body mind actively participates in co-creative action which gives rise to the reality we experience

A participatory world view focuses on the search for purpose and meaning; spirit and beauty. Locates the practical response to human problems in a wider, spiritual context

A participatory world view is a political statement, actively contributes to processes of democratic change and raising of consciousness Humanist psychology: what is humanist about action research are qualities of nondefensiveness, openness, authenticity which are all characteristics of the real self.

=Epistemology =

Action Researchers view "knowledge" as something other than the abstract theorizing of academia - they consider ways of knowing that are rooted in everyday experience, and are expressed through story as well as through concepts, and which directly support our practice.

A participative worldview, with it’s notion of reality as subjective-objective, involves an extended epistemology. It goes beyond empirical and rational Western views of knowing and asserts that there is a multiplicity of ways of knowing that start from a relationship between self and other, through participation and intuition; heavily privileged is local knowledge.

All ways of knowing serve to support skillful being-in-the-world from moment-to-moment as humans act intelligently in the pursuit of worthwhile purposes ‘I do’ rather than ‘I think’ is the starting point for this epistemology

Action researchers agree that objective knowledge is impossible, since the researcher is always a part of the world he or she studies, and point out that knowledge making cannot be neutral and disinterested but is a political process in the service of particular purposes and one which has been institutionalized in favour of the privileged .


 * Other Groundings **

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