Abstract
Welcome to another wonderful issue, the editorial for which is more of a product for and by the associate editors than is usual. Immediately below, ARJ Associate Editor Dr Patricia Gayá introduces two articles which she shepherded through the review process. And then Dr Mary Brydon-Miller has crafted an obituary for our recently deceased editorial board colleague Professor Kurt Aagaard Nielsen. Thanks Patch, thanks Mary. Kurt, may you rest in peace.
Portland, OR, USA
Dr Gayá writes:
Alongside the other articles published in this issue, we are delighted to introduce two which succeed in posing some very significant challenges and thought-provoking questions to us all as action researchers, and specifically to those members of the action research community who are located within Higher Education systems across the world. Taken together, these two articles build on a special issue of Action Research published in 2007 (Volume 5, Issue 3), which focused on the processes of training and educating action research in university settings – a subject area which remains relatively underdeveloped in the literature. The germ of the idea for both articles lay in each author’s conviction that graduate students seeking to undertake action research are faced with certain significant, and indeed, almost unavoidable challenges in their attempts to establish that tricky balance of research that is of value and relevance both within and beyond the academy. Each article is written by well-established, seasoned action researchers – the first, entitled ‘Doing and learning action research in the neo-liberal world of contemporary higher education’ by Davydd Greenwood from Cornell University, while the second, ‘Academic integrity in action research’ by Morten Levin from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Both authors have given a great deal of thought, independently and in collaboration with one another, to the ways in which systemic, neo-liberal pressures on HEIs serve to suppress and curtail research that makes a significant contribution to our understanding of complex social systems – both at a ‘knowing about’ and a ‘knowing how’ level.
Each of the present pair of articles begins by taking a step back from the specific practicalities involved in training graduate students to engage in action research, and instead present incisive, challenging critiques at a meta-level, focusing on the ways in which possibilities for such education and learning processes are necessarily bounded and shaped both by contemporary university contexts and accepted professional standards in mainstream social science. Both papers invite – indeed, demand – that, as action researchers positioned within or even at the margins of the academy, we more seriously consider both the very real tensions and also the opportunities involved in shaping the social sciences so that they make a more meaningful, worthwhile, and actionable contribution to the complex and inter-related problems of our times.
Given their considerable experience of developing action research capacity both within and beyond university settings, both authors are painfully aware of the ways in which the vagaries of neo-liberal institutional pressures, and the epistemological errors inherent in much social science research, serve to limit our collective ability to engage in what Greenwood (this issue) refers to as ‘valid, dynamic, and relevant social research’. And yet both authors remind us that the reality is that, ‘in the world of social science as we know it, the opportunity to have influence exists largely within the confines of institutions of higher education’ (Levin & Martin, 2007, p. 226). Essentially, the arguments published here are a rousing call for us to stretch and fundamentally develop our thinking on the ways in which we might engage in and produce work of high quality, of the kind that contributes to a world worthy of human aspiration (Reasons & Bradbury, 2001) and a new social science (see Bradbury Huang, 2009).
In fact, a very interesting and important aspect of both of these articles is that neither limits itself to providing a critique of the hegemonic institutional and social science contexts at the margins of which action researchers generally find themselves. The arguments presented herein are directed internally as much as externally, placing a fair share of responsibility squarely on the shoulders of those of us occupying more senior faculty positions within the academy.
Davydd Greenwood’s contribution offers a penetrating, extensive critique of the dominant neo-liberal and Taylorist structures affecting higher education in general, and the social sciences and humanities in particular. We share in his conviction that there is a crucial paradox with which we must engage here: on the one hand, the neo-liberalization and Taylorist logic of contemporary university systems further cements social sciences’ burial in disciplinary silos. And yet, at the same time, societal and political pressure is such that universities are increasingly called upon to produce relevant and practical research results for ‘the public good’. Action research is nothing if not well-positioned to make such contributions, and yet doing so within the adverse conditions presented by the current system demands a great deal of energy, strategic thinking, and politically savvy action on the part of senior action researchers and graduate students. Greenwood provides advice on how we might rise to the challenge of taking such aggressively proactive and creative action, and reminds us that what is at stake here is the survival within HEIs of socially relevant and humanistic inquiry in the future.
Morten Levin’s article likewise poses very significant challenges to the action research community. His argument is that, whether we like it or not, action research exists within institutional and disciplinary contexts which necessarily impose specific professional standards, norms, and frameworks for how we envision and make judgments about quality in social science research. Levin reminds us that, alongside the more narrowly positivistic and epistemologically suspect of these social science discourses, there is much of value in the scientific method, especially to the extent that it demands transparency in relation to the logic of our reasoning as a prerequisite for claims to rigour, thus laying open for constructive challenge and productive debate the conclusions of our research. The challenge and opportunity for action researchers is to more purposefully and aggressively pursue opportunities to increase the legitimacy and perceived trustworthiness of action research within the wider body of the social sciences, and thus to contribute to transforming these so that claims for both rigour and relevance are perceived as mutually compatible rather than mutually exclusive. Most tellingly, the advice presented here is as applicable to seasoned action researchers as it is to graduate students.
In reflecting on both Levin’s and Greenwood’s arguments, we are reminded of the words of that great contemporary philosopher and systems thinker, Gregory Bateson, whose entire body of work emanates a deep and enthusiastic ‘desire to know about those processes whereby organisms pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ (1956, p. 216). In their contributions to this issue of Action Research, Levin and Greenwood challenge us as action researchers to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and to more proactively and astutely engage with the opportunities presented by the present state of higher education.
Footnotes
Obituary
The Action Research community has lost an important innovator, dedicated scholar, committed mentor, and dear friend with the recent death of Kurt Aagaard Nielsen. As fellow members of the Editorial Board of Action Research which Kurt joined only recently, we want to acknowledge his many contributions to the field of action research and our own fond memories of our times with him. Those of us who had the chance to meet Kurt in person will remember what Davydd Greenwood describes as his ‘kindness combined with strong determination, a kind of gentle rage against injustice, conveyed, not from a soapbox, but face-to-face. That is what I will most remember and would most wish to emulate.’ And we remember his sage advice, as Hilary Bradbury-Huang recalls, ‘I was expressing frustration with the conservative academic model in the USA. He said what is ‘‘most important is to just keep your place inside the system. Just to be there sends its own message.’’’ At the same time, Kurt was a wonderful host whose playfulness and warm sense of humor made every visit with him an opportunity for fun as well as hard work which often included charging around Copenhagen in his little car to see the sights, as Mary Brydon-Miller remembers and then ending the day, as Hilary Bradbury-Huang recalls, at one of ‘those herring and gin barge-bars by the harbor’. Even those colleagues who never had the opportunity to meet Kurt but collaborated with him professionally, knew him as Patricia Gayá notes, as someone who ‘was so easy to work with, so reliable, so thorough and generous in his feedback, so appropriately challenging and constructive in his review, so courteous to me and considerate of the journal’s needs’. We miss Kurt but know that his legacy is well-established and his work continues through the many students and colleagues whose lives he touched and through the impact his scholarship had on so many of us throughout the years. In our next issue, we will explore some of these contributions and Kurt’s continuing impact on the field through the words of his colleagues and students from Roskilde University. Until then we all share Hilary Bradbury-Huang’s final thoughts: ‘It was all wonderful. Thank you, Kurt.’