Abstract
ARJ celebrates its 19th birthday this month. Happy Birthday to us all. ARJ has matured beyond being an (award winning) upstart. In tandem with our refocusing of mission in 2019, our citation index has doubled and stabilized. We saw this as affirmation for developing and publishing work on transformative action research (ART) in response to our eco-social crisis. Having cleared the queue of papers accepted before the ‘reboot,’ we are more committed to this focus than ever.
Since the journal’s conception we have cared relatively little to publish papers that write abstractly about the importance of action research. Not that we didn’t care. Rather that we treat that as a starting point for our readers. Now we have reached a time of maturity, it is time to reflect on how the field is shaping up. As we enter our 20th year, it’s therefore timely to bring more of a ‘review’ and commentary component to at least one issue a year. We’ll also experiment with adding a new book/resources review section. In all this we want to support authors to cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries and find points of connection to adjacent fields. We aim to reach into the many fields of social change and inquiry where the good news of action research has yet to arrive. Yes, more than ever, we want action research to become a vital complement to many more social change efforts!
What fundamentally differentiates the work of ART is that it is done with stakeholders to the issues of eco-social crisis, including the change agents themselves. Today many of us scratch our heads and wonder how democracy has become so fragile. How can authoritarianism be on the rise? How can the planet be so imperiled, while wars are declared? is in this crazy making context in which we continue to want to offer the best accounts of action research. We want members of the global community to see one another as we continue to develop and learn. There can be more sense of empowerment when we feel ourselves in this together. We see our maturing work as planting seeds that will find the right soil in the right time.We can practice patience. We can practice together.
In the papers curated for this issue we start with a critical review of the field by Antonio Delgado Baena & Antonio Sianes. Based on their review of Web of Science, the authors call us to stay on top of a key matter, namely whether we use the methodology of ART in pursuit of social change. Too many, they warn, are merely reproducing power relations while “playing with” a powerful set of methods. We also enjoy Juan Mario Díaz’s (Díaz, 2022) reflection about Colombian action researcher Orlando Fals-Borda. It captures the period in which Fals-Borda moved from concern with participation “by” to participation “with” the people. This happened during his intense self-criticism after years of radical activism. The review of these papers owes much to senior action researchers around the world. Many thanks especially to John Gaventa and Meghna Guhathakurta. The journal’s review process itself was flexible enough to work first with anonymous reviews required in a first round. Then the reviewers were willing to move toward an increasingly collegial review format. We realize we are practicing community building in the process of reviewing. We’re continuously developing and improving this hybrid anonymous-collegial process as we go forward.
The other three papers support cross boundary discussions. A paper by Federico Piovesan supports debate about the realities of doing collaborative inquiry from a network theory perspective. He emphasizes how scholars and scholarship exist with a complex network of relations that inevitably affect its validity. Emma Rose’s, Amanda Faith Bingley’s and Macarena Rioseco’s paper highlights the intersection between ART and narrative. Rose et al focus on the beneficial shifts in participants’ narratives of self in a context of migration. The article explores how witnessing and being witnessed, in the context of emerging intra-actions and transitions, integrate the authors within those processes, authors’ and clients’ becoming. For this issue it was important to see how they draw from philosophy and psychotherapy and then articulate and illustrate transformative innovation through combining these in practice with learning partners. Merna Meyer and Lesley Angelina Wood’s paper exemplifies one of the many sibling labels of action research that coexist inside the big tent, namely living theory. They show its value in becoming more learner-centered, and in engaging learners in thinking about critical social issues while developing collaborative and leadership skills.
We end with a new style of review. This one by Prof. Kent Glenzer (2022) is of interest not just because of its content (a review of a book by yours truly) but also because of the style. We hope to see more reviews take such a creative style in reviewing. We’d like to be part of proliferating printed and digital resources by and for the global action researching field.
May the scholarly practice new year bring light and encouragement. May it help us feel connected and energized in our Action Research Transformations practice.