Abstract
ARJ Editorials have been tame affairs to date. I wonder what happens if we use this space to speak more collegially, as if over coffee together. How do we describe what is on our heart/minds about the work of action research that flows through this important journal. ARJ is the premier action research periodical and the editorial board works with a level of, dare I say, passion we might feel for being a part of a movement to create a different practice of transformative knowing/inquiry.
Herewith then, a new experiment that invites different members of the ARJ editorial board to write a brief editorial, either for the journal or AR+. 1 I’ll go first …
I love the action research community. I love our potential to transform knowledge creation. In my vantage I see a huge wave of interest in our work, growing at the same time that our concepts and practices are being articulated more robustly. But I have a “beef,” a secret annoyance that I think is good to share, perhaps especially with novice action researchers.
ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE MINDLESS REFERENCES TO LEWIN’S WORK. BUILD ON THE EFFORTS OF RECENT ACTION RESEARCHERS.
Don’t get me wrong. I am one of Lewin’s greatest fans. He was a genius. Before the advent of systems thinking he named the experience of the shared field in which we do our work. I say he was a genius because he understood—albeit without systems language—the self is deeply relational, embedded and conditioned in a field of cultural, linguistic, emotional relations. Well he went on to become the father of social psychology. Not so shabby!
Yet Lewin’s genius is not what novice action researchers have in mind with the (overtly simplified) “Plan, Do, Act” cycle. I am all for simplicity on the other side of complexity. But I am pretty sure it is not present in these references. And—well—while am venting—Lewin’s work is 80 years old already. We have a journal replete with better, fresher models. So enough already with references to the so-called Lewin’s model. In truth I think that “Plan, Do, Act” cycle is more W. Edwards Deming’s model anyway, Deming who bridges the worlds of engineering and action research and brought transformation to large manufacturing plants of the Modern era.
My point is that times have changed AND there has been over 10 years of excellent writing on action research in this journal (and of course in other places too!). Maybe not as sticky as that Deming model. But more importantly, I think we need to reconnect with Lewin’s concern for the field, and for transformative relational experience. We are a transformational social science!
Transformation is! But unfortunately we don’t realize that. I am suggesting that we live in a world in which human beings find ourselves without easily defined boundaries; experientially, we are never alone. We are part of constant transformative metabolizing of shared resources (air, water, ideas, language) that holds us within complex nonlinear processes (and problems such as climate change). Yet if, after Newton, philosophers and social engineers conceived a clockwork universe of particles that acted as billiard balls, it feels natural that, say, in my field of management, individuals are treated as cogs in a big machine to be fitted into vast bureaucratic systems. Ignoring that the world is emergent and interactive, the result has been fragmentation and natural systems decline. We continue to treat ourselves and natural processes as atoms, much like billiard balls, as if subjectivity doesn’t matter, as if the “system” has nothing to do with intersubjectivity. As we learn to grapple with the implications of relational subatomic swirl, it is now timely to re-conceive human and systems coordination as webs of collaboration—the basic orientation of action research—rather than heavy-handed social engineering. There is an invitation here to re-imagine transformation as a collaborative potential, consciously directed toward optimizing our natural and human systems.
So enough with references to Lewin as the sole founding father. If we need “sticky” models (sticky as in memorable, which I mean in the best way) let’s look elsewhere. Otto Sharmer’s U process and David Cooperrider’s 4D model are much better for today! These are perhaps the most popular models of action research at this moment in time. Each uses different tone and valence, but each addresses the importance of relationship, field dynamics, and invites people to wallow/soak/sink into/appreciate reality. We see in both the influence of David Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. This is not experience as in “O yea I had an experience …,” it is experience as in, I sink into what life wants me to know. Sounds esoteric? Not really, unless we remain too conditioned by rational—overly simple, mechanistic!—models.
But as the journal’s editor-in-chief it is not enough to point only to the popular models. The whole point of a journal is to invite new/fresh perspectives. To which yet again we invite you in these pages. I am simply saying, “enough with the references to an 80 year old model!” Did I mention that I also find it annoying that there is too little reference to the Latin American (Orlando Fals Borda) or feminist traditions (Marja Liisa Swantz coined the term PAR, participatory Action Research). So OK point made, dear authors, please look well-beyond Lewin and build on the work of your colleagues in the global community of action research. We will accomplish more together than alone.
And there is a deeper note behind my venting, namely, an invitation to look to your own experience of the world, beyond all the models you have been socialized to replicate and cite. Read a bit more widely. Find the wealth in the many other articles we publish. Some of them in these upcoming pages to which I now I invite you in this September 2016 issue.