This article relates common ways of conceptualising action research as “intervention”, “collaboration”, “interactive research”, “applied research”, and “practitioner research” to a number of different ways of knowing, extracted from the works of Aristotle. The purpose is not...

I think of action research as an extension of a natural approach to problem solving. Faced with a novel situation we often first investigate. We then develop an intention to act, and carry it out. We notice if it worked. Action research similarly cycles between intention, action and review. To...

The article illustrates that there seems to be a fairly large distance between action research ideals of dialogue, democracy, participation, and involvement and the actual challenges we have met when practicing dialogic action research in hierarchical organizations where dialogue is always...

The essay tries to argue why conventional researchers are obliged as researchers to be interested in certain forms of action research. The 60 years of ignorance have been illegitimate. The essay starts by listing two commonly encountered arguments paraphrasing Karl Marx and Francis Bacon via...

My reflections from the field are shared in an effort to assist others. I commence by describing a social problem that was the focus of an action research project. I then articulate the paradigmatic, methodological and method choices made. I share extracts of data collected during different...

The competencies of employees are a critical success factor for any organization. Competency Management Systems help to develop competencies by supporting processes such as needs identification, intervention planning and implementation, and evaluation. However, the design of Competency...

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. The current problem is that there is no specific guidance to form communities of practice (CoP) in higher educational institutions to...

Die Zusammenarbeit von Wissenschaft und Praxis birgt viele Potentiale in Public Health, insbesondere im Hinblick auf Forschung und Qualitätsentwicklung in der Gesundheitsförderung und Prävention mit sozial Benachteiligten. Partizipative Ansätze, die in der Tradition der Aktionsforschung...

Die deutschsprachige Debatte um den Ansatz der Aktionsforschung unterscheidet sich wesentlich von der angloamerikanischen Debatte. Dort wurde der action research Ansatz in den 1940er Jahren von dem Sozialpsychologen Kurt Lewin entwickelt und erfreut sich als Forschungsstrategie auch heute noch...