Communicative space and the emancipatory interests of action research

Abstract

The theory and practice of communicative space is explored through three select action research studies from a past edition of Action Research, that focus on the practice of “opening communicative space” in action research. In an examination of these studies, a story is told of how the emancipatory interests of the marginalized (i.e. African-American students in public schools, the Aged in healthcare, and the Roma people of northeastern Hungary) can be realized through the opening and emergence of communicative spaces throughout the action research process. This story is told through successive themes that include the expectations and interests of action researchers, the challenges that they encountered once the action research process was underway, and finally, their reflective observations upon new communicative spaces that had emerged. While theoretical perspectives on communicative space are considered, such as the social theory of Jürgen Habermas, this article looks especially to the practical framework of William Isaacs on “Fields of Conversation” to understand how the opening of communicative spaces contributes to the emancipatory interests of action research.

Keywords

Communicative space dialogue (in action research)emancipation fields of conversation Habermas

Introduction

In an exploration of the concept of communicative space in action research, this article considers three select action research projects from a past edition of Action Research¹ with a focus on the study of race and racism in schools, organizational conflict in healthcare, and rural community development. These studies are revealing of the experiential, or practical, side of “opening communicative space” in action research, particularly with respect to the emancipatory interests of the marginalized and dispossessed. The authors (i.e. researchers) of each of these studies share a story that begins essentially with an account of their initial expectations and intentions as facilitators of the action research process. A narrative of challenges (and disappointments) follows, however, once the action research process unfolds and reveals itself, and concludes with reflections on the emancipatory interests associated with doing action research. Attention is given especially to the nature of communicative space and the responsibilities that action researchers, and research participants, have (or ought to have) for the emancipatory interests of action research.

In his Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas (1971) points to three forms of knowledge grounded and governed by human interest, reiterated by Welton (2013) as technical-instrumental interests involved in the reproduction of human existence; communicative or moral-practical interest, as reflected in our living together, and learning, under accepted norms and values; and, emancipatory interests that come into play essentially, whenever we are not treated with dignity and respect, and hence, exploited and oppressed. Through the opening of communicative space, action researchers may begin to understand how oppression can be hidden to researchers and participants alike. This is where the paths of learning and emancipation cross, and the focus of each of the three studies featured in this article.

As an introduction to the special edition of Action Research from which the action research studies are drawn, Gayá Wicks and Reason (2009) look in part to the longstanding interpersonal theory of Schutz (1958, 1994) of the human needs of inclusion, control and intimacy as integrated into a framework of group development. As an alternative, this article considers Isaacs’s (1999) fields of conversation (i.e. fields of politeness, breakdown, inquiry, and generative flow) in which communicative space is constructed as a dialogical process in action research. The fields of politeness and breakdown are applied in general to an understanding of the early challenges faced by the action researchers. The fields of inquiry and generative flow, however, are more relevant to the subsequent changes and reconfigurations of communicative space, as expressed through their reflective observations. These fields serve as a framework in which to understand the nature of communicative space in theoretical terms, yet even more from a practical perspective as they take shape through the action research studies featured in this article. An interpretive account of how this framework applies (or not) to each of the three studies is illustrated in Table 1, with commentary in the conclusion of the article with respect to the limitations of Isaacs’s fields of conversation. Further, some thought is given to how these fields of conversation could be relevant to research studies of dialogue, for instance, and the interactions of participants that take place within emerging, and evolving, communicative spaces associated with the action research process.

Table 1.

Communicative space as fields of conversation.

Themes (as described below)	Hyland	Newton & Goodman	Bodorkós & Pataki
Expectations & Intentions	“Becoming a critical friend”	“Speaking our language”	“Human and environmental relationships”
Collusions, Compromises & Challenges	“Social press” (Politeness) “Battle over whose meaning will have more power” (Breakdown)	“Pattern of absence” (Politeness) “Closing of the ranks” (Politeness)	“Attending to instrumental arguments” (Politeness)
Reflections, Reconfigurations & Responsibilities	“Counter cultural discourse … Reconfigured a true communicative space” (Inquiry) “No longer a project to these teachers” (Generative Flow) “An awareness of the primacy of the whole … new possibilities come into being” (Generative Flow)	“A fraught climate of ‘what do we do now?’” (Inquiry) “Adopt an emancipatory worldview in the interests of society’s outsiders” (Generative Flow)	“Future initiatives on behalf of the Roma people … [not] without some extra support from ‘gadjo’ (non-Roma) people” (Inquiry)

“Modern action research,” as Maksimović (2010) describes it, has its origins in the work of social scientists and philosophers over a century ago, such as Dewey (1910), who emphasized the importance of experience as a continuous transaction, or interaction, between human beings and their natural and social environments (McTaggart, 1997; Masters, 1995). While it was indeed Lewin (1946) who brought the paradigm to the public with his study Action Research and Minority Problems, the term itself, however, as Neilson (2006) points out, was coined by Lewin's colleague, John Collier. Simply stated, “Action research is an orientation to knowledge creation that arises in a context of practice and requires researchers to work with practitioners” (Bradbury-Huang, 2010, p. 93; italics in original). Each of the steps outlined in the cycle of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting, as typical of action research, as research methodology, is best undertaken collaboratively by coparticipants; however, not all proponents of action research place an emphasis on collaboration, arguing instead that action research is often a solitary process of systematic self-reflection.

While Kemmis and McTaggart (2005) concede this point, they maintain that action research is best conceptualized in collaborative or participatory terms, as an opportunity for people to gather together and address common problems or issues aimed at informing themselves in response to the fundamental and practical question of “what is to be done?” (p. 592). Action research, in particular, as participatory action research, places a special emphasis on emancipatory interests; that is, it “aims to help people recover, and release themselves from, the constraints of irrational, unproductive, unjust, and unsatisfying social structures that limit their self-development and self-determination” (p. 567; italics in original). Through this form of action research, people have the opportunity to engage collaboratively in dialogue, or conversation, as coparticipants in the struggle “to use disagreements and arguments to learn, grow, and change” (Chambers, 1995, p. 169), and importantly to rethink, and potentially to remake, their practice whether, for example, in schools, healthcare facilities, or communities as found in the research studies considered in this article. As such, these three studies attend in particular to the emancipatory interests of action research with a focus on the issues of African-American students in public schools, the treatment of the Aged (i.e. the elderly) in healthcare systems, and the Roma people,² as people of colour, situated on the floodplain of northeastern Hungary.

What Habermas calls communicative action is premised essentially on the good-faith effort of “two or more people trying to come to an understanding or agreement … to speak in the most truthful, best-informed way they can” (Brookfield, 2005, p. 1153).³ In Between Facts and Norms (1996), however, Habermas identified a previously unconsidered aspect of communicative action; that is, the concept of communicative space, described as the “social space generated in communicative action” (p. 360). In this sense, action research as a participatory, or collaborative, endeavor may be understood as communicative space – and it is this space, when opened with its shifts and reconfigurations is reminiscent of the Liebnizian conceptualization of space as relational and entirely dependent on context, in contrast to the Newtonian version of space as static, detached and immobile (Agnew, 2011). This view of communicative space, as an evolving and highly contextualized social space generated through communicative action, offers a more nuanced and formative understanding of Habermas’s well known vision of the democratic process in which all relevant voices are to be heard, and the best of all arguments to be accepted and acknowledged through “the non-coercive coercion of the better argument” (1992, p. 260). Of course, the question is raised about exactly whose voices are deemed relevant, and how is such relevance determined. In that regard, de Souza (2007) offers an alternative perspective on communicative space as allowing for “the discursive emergence … of not just [rational] argument, but expression of emotion through narrative” (p. 292). In this way, communicative space may serve as a forum “for the formation and enactment of social identities” (Fraser, 1992, p. 126, in de Souza, 2007, p. 292), and moreover, as a space, or container, “where actors from the margins and actors from the dominant public can interact with each other in meaningful ways, including discussion, confrontation, and disclosure” (de Souza, 2007, p. 293). Communicative spaces offer the opportunity for marginalized members of society, in effect, to become socially visible so that those with influence or authority may listen, and at the very least “bear witness” to the stories of those normally left unsaid (de Souza, 2007). This is a space, as Newton and Goodman (2009) maintain, of “bounded disturbance” in which individuals come together with a willingness to “be ‘bothered’ with and by the other” (p. 292). This metaphoric understanding of communicative space as “bounded,” or as a “container,” as Isaacs (1999) describes his fields of conversation, is especially significant given the unfolding and emergence of communicative space in the featured action research studies.

Opening communicative space

The practice, in particular, of opening communicative spaces is considered through three featured action research studies. In each of these research studies, however, issues are raised of the marginalized, specifically African-American students in public schools, healthcare of the Aged, and the oppression of the Roma people through three progressive themes, presented as subheadings; for each theme, questions are raised.

1. Expectations and intentions

In this first theme, the expectations of the researchers (as facilitators) are considered; for example, how do they understand their roles in the research? How do they expect the research process to be carried out? What are their expectations of the participants? What are their intentions in terms of the final results of the action research process?

2. Collusions, compromises and challenges

The second theme takes into consideration the problems that researchers face with participants once into the action research process; for example, how do the participants respond? Do they respond in ways typically expected by the researchers? If not, what issues or questions emerge for the researchers as facilitators? How are these issues defined, or re-defined, for the next phase of the action research process?

3. Reflections, reconfigurations and responsibilities

In the third and final theme, questions are raised upon reflection of the nature of communicative space in relation to the action research process, as well as responsibilities that researchers have to their participant groups and to society at large; for example, what is the nature of “communicative space” as it emerges throughout the action research process? What is the role of the researcher, as facilitator, in the action research process? What is the role of participants? Do action researchers (and research participants) carry any responsibilities to their participant groups, and to society at large? If so, what are those responsibilities?

These three themes are applied to the featured research studies as a way of understanding, from a practical point of view, the nature of communicative space, and importantly, the ways in which communicative space evolves throughout the action research process. As Hyland (2009) observes, the aim is to give an account of a “real-life example of the complexity of opening communicative space” and while not devoid of a theoretical framework, this exploration is meant to offer “a rich description of how the theory of communicative space was enacted, challenged, and lived in practice” (p. 336). To begin, then, an account is given of the expectations and intentions of the researchers, as well as the social context in which each of these research studies originate.

Expectations and intentions

In these three action research studies, the researchers as facilitators begin their narratives with certain expectations and intentions of what they have in mind. In the action research study of race and racism in public schools, Hyland (2009) expresses early expectations of becoming a “critical friend” (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) of participants engaged in a self-reflective inquiry of the prevailing discourse and practice of racism. The participant group, however, meets this vision with resistance and denial. In a second study, Newton and Goodman (2009) share their initial observations of their participant group, consisting of a Steering Committee of two separate service agencies entrusted with the healthcare of the Aged, as “speaking our language” and prepared apparently to engage in a transparent inquiry of their healthcare services. These expectations are dashed, however, by what is described as an “unconscious collusion” among participants to see the project fail (at least in the way envisioned by the research team). In a third study, Bodorkós and Pataki (2009) focus their attention upon rural community development. Although this research team does not express expectations per se, they do point out explicitly their intention of focusing on “useful research” for local communities with the purpose of generating interest among community members whose views had become noticeably jaded by recent projects.

In their research study, Bodorkós and Pataki look well beyond the organizational realm (e.g. public schools, healthcare) to rural community development. In particular, this research team focuses on the Merzocsat Micro-Region (MMR), located in northeast Hungary along the Tisza River. Over several centuries, people settled along the river and had developed farming practices adapted to the cyclical patterns of flood and drought, thus developing a unique economy and culture indicative of the floodplain; however, this ancient and synergistic rhythm of humanity with nature has been replaced by the “logic of modern, industrial agriculture” and in its conquest of traditional polyculture has “converted the diverse agriculture of a floodplain economy to the monocultures of wheat fields” (Bodorkós & Pataki, 2009, p. 317). In the aftermath of the global economic recession of the 1990s, this story begins with the formation of nine settlements known as “micro-regions,” including the socio-economically underdeveloped MMR founded in January 2004. While a first phase of an action research project had been initiated with the formation of the MMR, these researchers indicate that their interests shifted gradually in a second and follow-up cycle from a preferred social-scientific inquiry of “human-nature relationships and interactions … [to] something useful to local communities” (2009, p. 315). The decision to follow the community-development interests of the participant group is significant as it is consistent with the participatory, or collaborative, ideals in general of action research; however, this shift toward instrumental aims to attract the wider community, consequently directs attention away from the emancipatory issues of the Roma people.

The study of healthcare for the Aged is also driven, at least at first, by instrumental aims. In this project, the research team was invited to assist the Acute Sector Interface Project (ASIP) Steering Committee to evaluate the implementation of government-mandated (Australia) “communication tools” designed to bring together two service sectors, namely the acute health care and community health services (Newton & Goodman, 2009). The researchers indicate that Phase 1 of the ASIP project had been undertaken to collect client level data on health service usage to assist with regional planning. Initial feedback, however, had shown that this project had not been sufficiently illuminating; thus, the Steering Committee suggested that an “outsider” action researcher would serve in making the second phase of the project more effective, with an explicit focus on more “on the ground experiences” of actual interactions between the service sectors to help “illuminate about enablers and barriers for communication across this interface” (Newton & Goodman, 2009, p. 303). Newton and Goodman share their initial feelings of optimism as the Committee “seemed to be speaking our language and at first it seemed like an ideal action research brief” with talk, for example, of “‘flexibility’ in the way we took up our research roles … [and] the need to ‘learn from experience,’ and that some of this experience would be emergent” (2009, p. 303). What they found soon afterwards, however, was that the Steering Committee’s apparent enthusiasm about the action research study had shifted to a narrative of organizational expectations of productivity, and moreover, pressure to comply with complex organizational documentation – a different language altogether.

Similarly, Hyland’s (2009) study of race and race relations focuses on Woodson Elementary School, located in a mid-sized city in the midwestern United States. At the time, Woodson Elementary was the sole neighborhood school serving the city’s African-American community; notably, the school ranked last in the school district in standardized test scores, and was regarded by the school staff of mostly White teachers as “the worst” in the district. This study began initially, however, with an ethnographic inquiry of how Woodson teachers, in a school of mostly White staff and a primarily African-American student body, understood and enacted race in their practice; notably, this is in contrast to the researcher’s previous experience as a White teacher of African-American students in a school with a principally Black staff. As a result of this initial ethnographic work, Hyland reports that several teachers began to think explicitly about race and race relations in their school for the first time. The principal (an African-American woman, and former teacher at the school) suggested a further study that would provide an opportunity for teachers to talk about some of the issues that had been raised. An action research project was launched, then, with the purpose of setting up a “critical inquiry group” that would engage teachers in a conversation about race and racism as experienced at Woodson Elementary. This researcher reveals her vision for a project as consisting of a small group of staff members meeting weekly to converse over readings and their own experiences, and had hoped that “this small group would form a bond that could shake up the deficit discourses at the school and emphatically voice an anti-racist, democratic, community-based counter-discourse and practice” (Hyland, 2009, p. 341). Although this vision came to fruition later in the project when a small group of committed and engaged teachers had come together on their own, the initial response to the research study resulted in a much larger, diverse and unwieldy collection of 27 of the total of 30 teachers on staff, including 20 White, six African-American, and one Latina teacher.

Collusions, compromises and challenges

The expectations and intentions of the action researchers of the studies featured in this article, each in unique ways meet certain challenges, or obstacles, throughout the process of opening and developing communicative spaces for their participant groups. The opening of communicative space, and importantly, its emergence through these action research studies in their entirety is captured through the idea of “fields” or “containers” of conversation (Isaacs, 1999); that is, dialogue in groups, such as those found in action research, invariably begins and progresses through certain forms or stages. Isaacs argues that conversations especially focused on difficult issues or problems often begin within a field, or container, of politeness, characterized as a shared monologue, in which the “space of civility” represses the free expression of the individual. This is often followed, however, by a breakdown in the conversation in which people may become impatient and say what they think, although typically from opposite sides of an argument; however, many participant groups never get beyond this point, often recoiling, and recycling back to politeness, “because it is the only other alternative that they know” (1999, p. 266). These two fields appear to be in play early in the three featured action research studies. Isaacs’s (1999) two remaining fields, the fields of inquiry and generative flow, are considered later in the narrative.

In the study of race and racism in Woodson Elementary School, for example, Hyland (2009) observes how her earlier expectations of participants engaged in critical inquiry were overturned by a predominant discourse opposed to any such inquiry or alternative points of view.

Negotiating an inquiry into racism with a group of teachers with such a wide range of understandings about race and racism turned out to be much more difficult than I had hoped following that first meeting. In fact, within a few weeks, I saw this enthusiastic communicative space challenged, contested, and ultimately closed. … In the case of the Woodson School’s staff, when racist views were challenged, many group members engaged in actions and discourses aimed at shutting down communication. The social press to avoid conflict, be congenial, and maintain a colorblind stance ultimately conquered the prospect of creating a democratic context that allowed for honest communication in the face of racial tensions. (pp. 343–344)

The reference in this passage especially to the “social press” is suggestive in particular of Isaacs’s (1999) field of politeness, characterized as a monologue, or a space of self-regulated civility. This sense of politeness, or social press, as Hyland (2009) refers to it, is found in the teachers’ shared solidarity as being “the step-children of the district,” that has resulted in “the press to ‘be nice’ to one another” and to avoid challenging one another publicly (p. 345). When teachers did challenge one another, however, this was often done “with a sense of denial, outrage, and upset at the accusation” (p. 346), reflective of a breakdown in the shared monologue of civility where people “tend to collide and smash into one another … [and] battle over whose meaning will have more power” (Isaacs, 1999, p. 265), only to shift back to politeness as the only safe alternative that they know. As Hyland observes, “The press to remain cordial and avoid conflict overwhelmed the desire to engage in a critical cultural examination” (2009, p. 347) even to the point that teachers in this participant group interpreted their own experiences through “what they called ‘reverse racism’ at the hands of the students … [working] hard to prove that they did not participate in racism, and therefore had trouble even acknowledging racism as a social reality” (2009, p. 344); as a result, the African-American teachers, and many of the other White teachers on staff, were effectively silenced.

This problem of participants colluding, and effectively resisting self-reflective, critical inquiry is also found in the second action research study involving organizational conflict within a healthcare system in Australia. Newton and Goodman (2009) reveal their early observations of a “pattern of absence” that took shape as they found the membership of their Steering Committee (ASIP) had changed significantly within the first three months of its formation as certain individuals had left the group and had not been replaced.

The Midland Region PCP Project Manager (who recruited us) left and was not replaced. The acute hospital’s Community Links manager, who had recommended us, took up another position within the acute setting and her ASIP role became less palpable. The person representing the Division of General Practitioners went to another position within the acute sector and was not replaced for some time. The person representing the acute hospital Primary Care unit also left this position and left the Iris Hospital. During this staff “churn,” the most constant of the ASIP Steering Committee members were those representing the community sector (two community health services and the local government representative) plus we two action research facilitators. We began to realize that the pattern of “absence” from the meetings was producing a conjunction between the least powerful players in the system (community health centres) and the least knowledgeable of the system (the facilitators). … At an affective, gut level, the system was telling us something about itself. (Newton & Goodman, 2009, p. 304)

These researchers continue to tell their story of timeframes that were unrealistic, and a duplicitous Steering Committee that had been given the task of evaluating Service Coordination tools (SCTTs) used for patient care, eventually realizing that they could not meet their obligation, and rather than face the consequences of non-compliance, “colluded to place unrealistic hope” in action research, as if it was “our implicit task was to find some justification for non-compliance” (Newton & Goodman, 2009, p. 306). Similar to the Woodson study with its findings of a “social press” or denial of racist views and practices as shared among the teaching staff, there is effectively a closing of the ranks in this action research study, which manifests itself as an ambivalence to the Aged patients in need of care, in favour of the bureaucratic mechanisms to which the Steering Committee believes itself to be most accountable. In both instances, these researchers appear to have had certain expectations of playing a leadership role in a critically reflective and collaborative process, only to find well-placed opposition among the participant groups.

At this point in the healthcare study, however, the research team discovers a mutual interest, which opens the way for a more relational and inquiry-based communicative space for the Committee about what has to be done for the elderly patients in their care.

We discovered that we each had parents who had been caught in the confusing and traumatizing shuffle between acute and primary care and we were mobilized to re-live that experience, wondering why the Steering Committee was preoccupied seemingly with paper work, jargon and politics rather than the patients. Gradually we came to recognize this dynamic as an aspect of the communicative space that needed to emerge. We “held” the patients in mind (and our own revived disturbance, which was painful) while we waited for the committee members to get “real.” (Newton & Goodman, 2009, p. 305)

Their insight makes it possible for these researchers to play a more active role as “critical friends” in opening a new communicative space for the Steering Committee, as Hyland (2009) had envisioned in her work with the teachers at Woodson Elementary. This is, in effect, a turning point in the action research process where the emancipatory interests of the Aged patients, in this instance, have become visible and potentially with voice (or at least, representation) within the communicative space that had been opened by the research team. As Rappaport (1990, p. 53, in Hyland, 2009, p. 351) maintains, research with an emancipatory worldview should benefit “society’s outsiders … [is] done in the context of the people of concern … [and] give[s] voice to the people of concern.” In common with Newton and Goodman’s (2009) observations of the Steering Committee, Hyland had also found of the participant group at Woodson Elementary, that this was “not a group that had a common understanding of who was to be emancipated” (2009, p. 351). In realizing the emancipatory interests of action research, it appears that getting the attention of participants, who may have little interest in such matters, is perhaps the first and most difficult task at hand.

The third action research study is directed toward opening a communicative space for the rural development of communities in a socio-economically disadvantaged region in northeastern Hungary. Like the preceding two action research studies considered in this article, there is a collusion at play among participants, yet of a different and perhaps unexpected form. The research team explains that as the MMRDA was not able to finance their project, they had enlisted the support of a foundation with the condition that their research would focus on agriculture and nature conservation. As a result, these researchers were forced to strike a balance between the scientific interests of the foundation and the developmental needs of the participant group. “This meant attending to instrumental arguments … in order to make the PAR [participatory action research] project legitimate for all the different stakeholders involved … to initiate discussions with and open communicative spaces on local values, assets and development directions” (Bodorkós & Pataki, 2009, p. 321). Hence, a compromise was struck between the instrumental, or developmental, side of rural development to attract the interest and support of the mainstream community at the expense, however, of the emancipatory interests of the Roma people in the region; that is, as Bodorkós and Pataki admit, “Applying instrumental arguments was especially important in terms of inviting local citizens to join discussions around a very specific, tangible topic as previous research experiences demonstrated that locals, due to their earlier disappointments with a similar initiative, do not see any potential in very general discussions” (2009, p. 321). An important issue is raised, however, with respect to the practice of opening communicative spaces for consensus-building. Although the focus on the instrumental, or developmental, interests helps create a sense of agency among local community members, these researchers acknowledge that “the communicative spaces oriented to consensus-building still favour the more privileged members of local communities” – thus, drawing attention to issues upon which it may be easier for participants to agree upon, “such as community or cultural events as they are more ‘apolitical’ and less embedded in local power struggles” (Bodorkós & Pataki, 2009, p. 331). In consensus-making, there is effectively little space left over for those marginalized and without voice in the matters at hand; however, as indicated, the emancipatory interests of the Roma people became the focus of a planned third research cycle.⁴

Reflections, reconfigurations and responsibilities

The later stages of each of the featured studies are characterized by the emergence, or at least, the potential, of new communicative spaces, with questions raised upon reflection of the responsibilities of action researchers, and research participants, to their participant groups and society at large. Perhaps one common theme among the three projects, however, is simply that opening communicative space, particularly as a space dedicated to the emancipatory interests of the marginalized, requires time and a certain measure of resilience among action researchers playing the facilitation role. As Arieli and Friedman (2009) in their study of the paradox of participation in action research suggest, participants in action research are not necessarily always willing (and able) to meet researcher expectations of participative and self-reflective critical inquiry.

Hyland’s (2009) work offers a case in point of the manner in which communicative space may unfold and evolve throughout the action research process. While the communicative space that had been opened initially for the relatively large and unwieldy participant group had not met the researcher’s early expectations of critical inquiry, a small subgroup of teachers had emerged on its own, and without the researcher’s direction, to maintain a “countercultural discourse,” reflective of the “critical inquiry group” initially envisioned. Upon reflection, Hyland concedes that, “In spite of this disappointing reaction from the large group, it served an important function in allowing a subgroup of teachers, three White and one Black, to continue an examination of race and racism in their lives and practice” (2009, p. 349). Over the weeks that followed, this small collaborative group continued to converse with one another about “becoming anti-racist teachers” and as Hyland reports, “asked me to reflect with them, observe them, or simply call to tell me about something they had successfully tried with their students” (2009, p. 350). One year following the initial meeting of the larger participant group, they were still “communicating with each other informally … sharing articles, calling and emailing me, and working to improve their practice” (2009, p. 350). This committed and engaged group of teachers, as Hyland observes, “had reconfigured a true communicative space outside of the CIG and integrated this inquiry and action in to their everyday work lives; this was no longer a project to these teachers” (2009, p. 350; italics added).

This emergence, as described, of a new and vitally different communicative space is reflective perhaps of Isaacs’s (1999) subsequent field of inquiry, yet moreover, the field of generative flow that extends beyond location, or the formal spaces (e.g. classrooms, boardrooms) invariably associated with groups that come together to inquire into a given problem or issue. Characteristically, a field of inquiry is a space where “people do not simply stand on their position … [but] are willing to explore their assumptions … [and] the nature of the structures that guide their behaviour and action, and they do so increasingly publicly” (1999, pp. 272–273). In this field, as demonstrated through the small subgroup of teachers, argumentation and position taking in the spirit of the adversarial system yielded to a communicative space in which individuals can be open (and safe) to share their perspectives and experiences. In the field of generative flow, however, described as the “rarest of all spaces,” participants may cross over into what Isaacs describes as “an awareness of the primacy of the whole … a time when genuinely new possibilities come into being” (1999, p. 280). This is a space in the Liebnizian sense (Agnew, 2011) that is potentially mobile and extended, with permeable boundaries and contexts, as well as flexible memberships with little distinction between insiders and outsiders. The field of generative flow is essentially a communicative space with a life and future of its own.

Unlike the Woodson Elementary study in which a subgroup of committed teachers had opened a communicative space for critical inquiry on their own, Newton and Goodman (2009) found themselves compelled to intervene when the participant group’s inattention to the Aged patients entrusted in their care had become intolerable. These researchers observe, in particular, that the ASIP Steering Committee “managed to recover their sense of responsibility” (2009, p. 306) when confronted with their intention of using the action research study as a diversion from their inability to meet their obligation to evaluate the SCTTs used for patient care. There was now, as described by Newton and Goodman, “a fraught climate of ‘What do we do now?’” (2009, p. 306). As a result, a significant shift took place in the communicative space inhabited by the Steering Committee, particularly in the way that Committee members began to relate with one another, and importantly, in the manner in which they regarded the Aged patients in their care. Like the Hyland (2009) study, however, this opening of a newly emergent communicative space is reflective of Isaac’s (1999) field of inquiry with its transcendence over position-taking and sheer argumentation. In both instances, there has developed a sense of commitment to the emancipatory interests of the marginalized (i.e. African-American students, the Aged) in their care. In each instance, participants were able at the very least to adopt an emancipatory worldview in the interest of “society’s outsiders” (Rappaport, 1990). Likewise, Bodorkós and Pataki (2009) suggest that any future initiatives on behalf of the Roma people “would not be able to grow much stronger without some extra support from ‘gadjo’ (non-Roma) people” (p. 327; italics in original) from within the MMRDA community. The point is that while the researchers themselves may feel responsible throughout the action research process for carrying forward the emancipatory interests of society’s marginalized, this is a responsibility that must necessarily and eventually be shared by research participants, even if only as a portion or subgroup.

Conclusions

Isaacs’s (1999) fields of conversation offer action researchers a framework in which to understand the dynamic and evolving nature of communicative space. As found in this article, however, the fields of politeness, breakdown, inquiry, and generative flow will likely not apply perfectly to all action research studies (Table 1). In Hyland’s (2009) study, for instance, the field of inquiry is achieved only when the original research group had broken off, and a new smaller group of teachers with an active interest in social justice had emerged in its place. In Newton and Goodman (2009), as well as Bodorkós and Pataki (2009), there were no apparent debates or position-taking that had taken place. In both research studies, fields of inquiry directed toward issues of emancipation had been realized, or at least considered, without a breakdown or division among the participants. Nonetheless, Isaacs’s fields of conversation in their entirety may serve as a tool for action researchers, especially those with an interest in dialogue, or human interaction, as it changes and evolves, and moreover, effects the research process.

Upon a reading of each of the three studies, however, it became clear that the interests and expectations of action researchers did not coincide with those of the participants, or in the case of Bodorkós and Pataki (2009), the research funders. In Hyland (2009), for instance, the researcher’s initial intention of being a “critical friend” for participants was quickly dashed as participants early on, as a group, showed little inclination to reflect upon their basic beliefs and assumptions about racism in schools. In each of these studies, the emancipatory interests of action research inevitably had to be championed by the participants themselves, whether as a sub-group of social justice-oriented educators in Hyland (2009); as health care workers in Newton and Goodman (2009), who found themselves caught eventually in a dilemma between the administrative interests of their employers, and the well-being of the Aged patients trusted to their care; or prospectively, as empathetic “gadjo” (non-Roma) citizens who have come to better appreciate and understand the unjust circumstances facing the Roma people living among them. While researchers may be responsible, and feel responsible, for shepherding participants through communicative space, as it changes and evolves throughout the action research process, this responsibility needs to be shared with the participants themselves.

In the emancipatory interests of action research, the task at hand for researchers and research participants, then, is to penetrate the “horizon of shared, unproblematic beliefs” (Habermas, 1996, p. 22), or the “unsatisfying social structures” as Kemmis and McTaggart (2005) put it, that govern the ways in which people interact and converse with one another whether in the workplace, such as in schools and healthcare facilities, or communities and society at large. In the realization of the emancipatory interests of action research, the concept of communicative space, as social space generated in communicative action (Habermas, 1996) appears particularly well suited – at least in the abstract and singular sense. Isaacs’s (1999) fields of conversation, as a progression of multiple forms of conversation or dialogue, however, offer a practice-based understanding of how communicative spaces might actually unfold and evolve throughout the action research process. As found in each of the featured action research studies, the notion of opening communicative space implies the continued evolution and emergence of new communicative spaces in keeping with changes or shifts in the action research process, whether through changed membership (Hyland, 2009), for example, or a newly evolved recognition among research participants of social inequities and injustices (Bodorkós & Pataki, 2009; Newton & Goodman, 2009). The opening of communicative spaces, especially when considering the emancipatory interests of the marginalized and dispossessed, is in itself a process that unfolds and evolves as a required and perhaps previously unrecognized aspect of action research.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Paul Kolenick is an assistant professor of Adult Education at Saint Francis Xavier University. His scholarly interests include sustainability education and participatory action research, particularly with respect to the development of dialogue among post-secondary institutions with stakeholders that include Indigenous communities, non-governmental organizations, governmental agencies, business, industry, and others. Further interests include the United Nations University's Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs) of Education for Sustainable Development with over 140 centres established worldwide.

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