action research

VOLUME 2

THE

SAGE

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

ACTION RESEARCH GENERAL EDITORS

DAVID COGHLAN MARY BRYDON-MILLER

($)SAGE

reference

Los Angeles I London I New Delhi

Singapore I Washington DC

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discourse and in the process reframe the situation. In the mid-1990s, Argyris and Schon issued a paper , c edition of The01y in Practice and a revtsed edition of Organizational Learning II ( 1996), drawing on their own insights resulting from research, consulting and teaching as well as on the work of their students. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Schon continued to teach the core course in the Urban Studies and Planning Department, often with Langley Keyes; to conduct a research course in design with, among others, John Habraken, Larry Bucherelli, Jean Bamberger, John DeMoncheaux and a host of other design faculty and students from across MIT and to teach and develop a hands-on master's course in business leadership at Duxx, in Monterrey, Mexico, informed by design thinking and reflective practice. Overall, his career of four decades after his education is best conceived as a set of four periods in which various key themes come to the fore through inquiry and publication. During the first period (later 1950s to late 1960s), invention and innovation featured prominently (influenced by Hainer). In the second period (late 1960s to late 1970s), he inquired deeply, with Argyris, into the individual and organizational behavioural worlds in which invention and innovation are played out. In the third period (late 1970s to late 1980s), he focuses on in-depth inquiry into the nature of practical and professional knowledge and how to teach it working with colleagues in the MIT School for Architecture and Planning. Finally, he turned to intractable policy controversies with Rein. In the process, he reached across many institutional, professional and academic boundaries rather than focusing on one specific discipline or field of function. Not surprisingly, a colleague of Schon described him as the 'fox' in Isaac Berlin's 'The hedgehog and the fox', whereby the hedgehog knows one deep truth and the fox knows many. The early themes of his career-epistemology and inquiry into indeterminate situations, musical improvisation and artistry, social change and messiness, power and conservative mediocrity- were always there. When Schon passed away prematurely in 1997 at the age of 67, he had in mind a publication that could be a career capstone- a contribution to action research and Action Science. Willem Overmeer See also Action Science; Argyris, Chris; Dewey, John; double-loop learning; extended epistemology; mapmaking; practical knowing; reflective practice

Further Readings Schon, D. (1963). The displacement of concepts. London, England: Tavistock.

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Schon, D. ( 1967). Technology and change: The new Heraclitus. Oxford, England: Pergamon. Schon, D. (1973). Beyond the stable state. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Schon, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. London, England: Temple Smith. Schon, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schon, D. (Ed.). (1991). The reflective turn: Case studies in and on educational practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Schon, D., & Argyris, C. ( 1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schon, D., & Argyris, C. ( 1978). Organizational/earning: A theory of action perspective. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Schon, D., & Argyris, C. ( 1996). Organizational/earning II: Theory. method and practice. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Schon, D., & Rein, M. ( 1994). Frame reflection: Toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. New York, NY: Basic Books.

SEARCH CONFERENCE Search Conferences are a much used action research form that shape arenas for participative planning and development. The theoretical model behind a Search Conference is a participative process aimed at combining a description of a problem area with the development of a vision for a desirable future. In addition, a Search Conference also generates diverse strategies and actions aiming at reaching desired goals, collectively prioritizing the best strategies and forming plans for implementation. In short, Search Conferences help develop understanding of a problem, prioritize what is important and ensure that someone starts working actively to reach the desired solutions. The Search Conference is a method which has its origins in action research, and research groups in Norway and Australia have dominated its development. The first Search Conference in Norway was carried out in a fishing community and was aimed at developing strategies for development of business and social life in this active coastal community. The main actor in the development of Search Conferences on the Australian continent has been Merrelyn Emery, but now Search Conferences have been held on almost every continent.

The Overarching Structure A Search Conference may ideally last 2 days. Two sets of factors are important in this regard. First, a 2-day

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conference allows participants to establish relations, because they will then, among other things, have dinner together and will often be staying in the same place. When a Search Conference is held in a place where participants can stay the night, it has the benefit that participants are removed from their daily tasks. This allows them to focus all their attention on the conference. The evening and night also give participants time to reflect and learn from the challenges and learning that the first day has contributed. A smart routine is to start the next day by asking whether anyone has pondered on anything or has any new ideas since the previous day. This often gives rise to many exciting ideas. In principle, a Search Conference starts with the identification of a problem area, and it ends with the generation of concrete projects to meet the challenges that the conference has brought to light. Activities in a Search Conference are, as mentioned, divided between presentations and discussions in the plenary session and work in groups, and the group work is usually conveyed to all participants in plenary. The Search Conference is led by a staff of professionals (at least two people). In addition, it is often natural to involve key local players. The local participants can contribute local knowledge which is necessary to select the right stakeholders, but they can also function as a doorway to the local community.

Selecting Participants The first challenge for a staff that is organizing a Search Conference is selecting participants. A basic feature of the selection process is to find people who reflect as many aspects or interests of the issue in question as possible. It is important to make every effort to give all relevant stakeholders a voice in the conference. For example, in a conference that relates to a local community, participants should include children, youth, politicians, business managers, active women's groups and representatives of public administration. Thorough work must be done in selecting participants based on an assessment of who is important with respect to the specific issue at stake, and the potential participants must be judged to have the ability to co-operate in learning and planning processes. It is also important that the staff responsible for the conference establish as good an understanding as possible of the organization or community that is the focal point of the conference. One possible way of doing this is to interview all potential participants in advance, who will give the staff an understanding of who they are and an opportunity to convey what the Search Conference involves, and to motivate people to take part.

Staging In the first phase of the actual Search Conference, the staff introduces the direction or focus of the activity. It is up to the organizers of the conference to decide whether to keep a tight direction of the topic or to have a more open process. For example, in co-operation with the Canadian Aviation Authority in Alberta, a Search Conference was held in which the topic was 'Increased Efficiency and Safety in Regional Aviation'. Such a precise definition of the topic implies tight direction. In a community context, it may be equally appropriate to announce a general theme concerning a desirable future for the inhabitants. The topic of a Search Conference must, of course, be clarified with the initiating groups. A common way of starting the search is to let a local respected authority of the area (e.g. a mayor, an important professional or a local hero) frame the conference. This will be the first introduction, where everyone is together in the plenary setting listening to the presentation.

How Is the Problem Perceived? At this stage, conference participants are divided into homogeneous groups with an assignment to describe how they understand and experience the issues at stake. Historical development should also be a part of this description, because it helps locate the current situation in a historical perspective. An important perspective in this group work is that no experiences are wrong or right because the aim is to portray the broad understanding that is held by the participants. Therefore, it is important to encourage participants to create an understanding that includes the breadth of the opinions that are conveyed through the group's work. For example, if the conference is run in a manufacturing company, it may be natural to form groups consisting of operators on the floor, mid-level operations management, marketing and sales and top management. These groups should be as homogeneous as possible. The groups' work is presented in a plenary session in such a way that the span of opinions is presented to everyone. It is important in this phase that the staff does not open up for a discussion of what is right and wrong but only gives participants the opportunity to ask clarifying questions. All the groups present their work, for example, by conveying the main points on flip charts. All the flip chart presentations are put up on the wall in the plenary hall and remain there throughout the entire conference. This allows participants to refer back to the broad understanding of how the problem was perceived.

Problem Definition and Desired Future The next step is an assignment where group members are asked to work on how they see the challenges for

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the future. Work is carried out in the same homogeneous groups as in the previous phase. Again, group members should be encouraged to actively support each other in order to provide a basis for broad problem clarification. The objective of this process is to identify what can be seen as the problem situation or definition of the problem. Visions of desirable futures can be woven into this phase, but some process leaders prefer to separate problem definition and visions of desirable future into two different phases in the course of the Search Conference. In both cases, the results of the teamwork are presented in the plenary. Also, at this stage, it is important not to open up for discussions of what is the right or wrong understanding of what characterizes the problem. The first day of the conference ends with reporting out from this problem-defining assignment. In the evening, participants will often have dinner together, and there is opportunity for discussion throughout the evening.

all agree on the way the actual categories structure the problems at hand. Opinions are now sorted by prioritizing what is important. If there are elements that participants do not recognize or that they disagree with, these will simply be issues that none of the participants would vote in favour of. The assigning of priorities can be carried out in different ways. An important challenge for the staff is to understand how disputed some topics can be. If it is likely that a discussion cannot be carried out in a plenary session, it is important to stop the discussion and let it continue in groups. This is an assessment that the staff has to make. If this is the case, it may be relevant to use groups which represent a cross section of participants. Regardless, the result of this process is a list of problems in ordered priority. In this phase of the conference (with a plenary session), visions of desirable futures are presented in different categories of prioritized tasks. This list forms the basis for the next step, which is to develop alternatives for action.

Staff's Organization of the Day's Work

Developing Alternatives for Action

During the evening, the staff prepares the next day's work. The staff's challenge is to organize the input from the first day's work so that consistent categories are developed. Attention is directed at placing the visions of desirable futures in consistent categories that are meaningful to the participants. If it turns out that problem definitions merge into visions of what a desired future is (which may often be the case), it will be natural to integrate them under ' desired futures' . A significant professional challenge for the staff is to understand what meaning the participants attach to their utterances in order to create categories of the contributions from the groups in a way that makes them recognizable to the participants. An absolute requirement is that one keeps all text (as it is written on the flip charts) in its original form. This organizational process is demanding and challenging work, which often leads to little sleep for the staff The second day of the conference starts by sharing the staff's organization of the previous day. Special attention is devoted to understanding the different perspectives on what constitutes the problem in focus.

There are several ways to approach this phase. To summarize, the purpose is to bring the visions of desirable futures as a goal for concrete problem-solving activity. At this point, participants are in a plenary setting, where the prioritized visions or problems, which now have become development projects, are conveyed by posters or flip charts which are taped up on the walls of the room. Perhaps the most efficient way of manning the various development projects is to let participants ' vote with their feet'. This means that participants sign in on the poster that presents the topic they are most interested in. Thus, groups are formed which can immediately start working on concrete alternatives for action. Each group will make a plan for implementation. This should include a project plan which identifies who will take part and how the project will develop over time (a milestone plan), and an initial consideration of whether it will be important to recruit members other than those who have accepted the challenge at this point. An absolute requirement is that each group has identified who will participate in the first meeting and who would be responsible for calling and leading each meeting. A plenary session with a joint presentation concludes the Search Conference. At the end, the participants have to decide when the first follow-up meeting will take place.

Assigning Priorities for Central Challenges The second day starts with the staff asking participants whether they have thought about other factors related to the issues at stake, or if they have anything else that they would like to contribute. This could be either new perspectives or a further reflection on earlier presentations. Then, the staff explains its reasons for the organization and tests if the structuring categories are in line with the participants' way of making sense of the situation. It is not necessarily a requirement that

Follow-Up Meetings After the Search Conference, there will be several groups working to solve the problems that were identified. This is a situation where there are a number of project groups at work. The follow-up meetings have several purposes. First, it is important to co-ordinate

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the activities of the various groups so that people can build on and support each other's activities. Second, different groups will have encountered different obstacles and seen alternative possibilities, and this is, of course, information which might be important and useful for all groups. Third, the follow-up meetings create a structure which commits participants to report and subsequently co-ordinate activity. The number and frequency of follow-up meetings depend entirely on the particular development process. The staff can conclude its tasks by writing a report of the Search Conference itself. In most cases, it is natural for the staff to continue as long as there are followup meetings, but after the conference, it is important to create local leadership for the development activities. An ideal development is that the professionals from the staff gradually withdraw. Morten Levin See also Development Coalitions; Dialogue Conferences; large-group action research; Norwegian Industrial Democracy Movement; regional development; second person action research

Further Readings Emery, M., & Purser, R. ( 1996). The search conference. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Greenwood, D., & Levin, M. (2007). Introduction to action research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gustavscn, B., & Englestad, P. (I 986). The design of conferences and the evolving role of democratic dialogue in changing working life. Human Relations, 39, 101- 116. Kiev, R., & Levin, M. (2012). Participative transformation: Learning and development in practising change. Farnham, England: Gower.

SECOND PERSON AcTioN RESEARCH Second person action research or second person inquiry is the name often given to action research approaches that involve two or more people inquiring together about questions of mutual concern. In this form of research, the researchers and the research subjects are one and the same. Co-inquirers work together to identify and formulate inquiry questions, to determine the ways in which information will be gathered, to make sense of it and to act on their conclusions. Groups are small enough to have some significant relationship with each other, traditionally meeting face-to-face, although use is increasingly being made of online and virtual inquiry groups. Second person inquiry is widely used by action

researchers and could be said to typify the underpinning values of action research, since a commitment to create collaboration, incorporate diverse perspectives and build mutual respect is a fundamental characteristic of this way of working. The term second person inquiry was coined by Bill Torbert in 1998 to describe a particular quality of conversation and was subsequently developed by Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury in their 200 I Handbook of Action Research to mean all forms of collaborative, face-to-face inquiry. However, this way of working became established at least two decades earlier as 'new paradigm' researchers sought to find creative and collaborative ways of conducting research with human subjects who acknowledged, and even celebrated, their humanity and capacity for selfdetermination. Second person inquiry encompasses a wide range of practices from one-to-one conversations to large-group inquiry processes. The thinking behind this approach and significant variations in this range of work are explored below, together with the main skills required for this sort of action research practice. Second person inquiry holds a particular place in the action research field because it claims that there is a form of knowing that concerns people in relationship with others. The idea of research with people rather than on them is held as a strong, informing value. John Heron, among others, argues that it is logically absurd to hold researchers as autonomous, meaningmaking human agents but to treat the human subjects of research as if they are not equally self-determining. Mainstream research imposes meaning on human behaviour from the outside, as if researchers know what people are doing better than they themselves can. Furthermore, people are more than just thinking agents: They are sentient beings, who draw on experiential, symbolic, expressive and practical ways of knowing their world in addition to propositional sense making. Inquiry into the human experience, therefore, should try not to reduce all knowing to rational thinking. Humans encounter each other in ways that are tacit and cannot fully be described in language: The experience of relationship between persons, the act of encountering each other, is a vital and informing part of human life that is an inextricable part of how the world is understood and how knowledge of it is generated. Although there are certainly aspects of second person inquiry that draw on rationality, conversational approaches to inquiry that draw on a pragmatic tradition stemming from Dewey, at its fullest it is much more than group work or 'putting heads together' to solve problems: It is a way of trying to access and honour the tacit knowing of relationship, where experience is not. There is also a political dimension; knowledge and power are tightly linked: In so far as the researcher is

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