Dear friends,
Hi! A brief comment on some of Michael's good remarks and on Mike's,
below...
Michael Glassman wrote:
> I don't know an enormous amount about action research, but I do think that Argylis and Schon were very much inspired by Dewey and the idea of experiential learning. ... - making the argument that those actually engaged in the problem solving have a much better understanding of the relationship between Argylis and Schon at least seem to be working from the same perspective - at least from what I can see - that members of an organization have a better understanding of the problem solving than any outsiders, and therefore a better chance of changing themselves when researching how they actually do solve problems.
>
You may be right about the inspiration Michael. From my, admittedly
now-a-bit-dated experience with Argyris's work, the actual evaluation,
assessment and change process involved in learning to distinguish
espoused theories from theories-in-use and to move from Model I to Model
II behavior relies heavily on external consultants (that's what Chris
was trying to train us to be ;-)).
Granted the success of the change process ideally entails the
organizational participants themselves becoming better at openly
monitoring, questioning and responding to their own and each others' own
practices from within an action science framework (note action science
is not self-identical with action research, though part of what we're
doing here, I believe, is trying to instructively cull out the
similarities/differences, if any).
At that point of change in the consulting process, it is interesting to
consider whether folks have simply changed their practices and so are
not really engaged in "research" per se, just in new behaviors. But
then I guess that brings us around to reflective practice, action
science and learning organizations in general. If one is an actively
participating member of a "learning organization" responsible for
ongoing and continuous inquiry, reflection and change is that
participation de facto a type of action research? Perhaps that leads us
to the cultural-historical pathway and associations with "research" with
its perhaps dominantly academic and/or scientific and/or social science
activity trajectories and baggage, no? How important is it to put
specific boundaries around research practice? And what should those
be? Would those include defining as research ongoing participation in
learning organizations?
Regarding Mike's remarks on CHAT being useful for and sometimes utilized
in action research. Definitely, I agree - I included a bullet about the
usefulness of CHAT for action research for that reason (and your point
Mike that it not only lends itself to action research but that it has
been explicitly used for action research is a good one). My only point
is that I don't think there is anything to suggest that making use of a
CHAT framework equals or automatically implies being engaged in action
research. CHAT has been used plenty to engage in external research of
others' activities and actions, no? And your comment Mike seemed to me
even a bit more nuanced in that by looking through the lens of activity
theory and related CHAT theories and concepts you could simultaneously
be studying activity outside of your own practice AND your own practice
as a researcher (if I'm not reading into your comment too much). This
would be yet another combination/hybrid kind of research, imho.
In Peace,
K.
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