For me spiritual life is not an interest, it's a way of life, of being in the world, the foundation of everything. bell hooks, (hooks, 1991:218)
One of the interesting debates within the family of methods which we call action research?co-operative inquiry, participatory action research, action science, action inquiry, appreciative inquiry?has concerned what we mean by validity. Positivist science is (relatively) clear that validity is about epistemology, about truth in some sense, a correspondence between theory and empirical evidence. However, in action research, as we have explored these questions, we have realized that validity, or a better term may be quality, is a rather different, and more multidimensional, notion.
There is clearly an epistemological dimension to quality in action research. Action research is an approach to the generation of knowing which aims to bring ideas and knowledge and action together, to produce practical knowing. There is a huge debate, to which I have contributed, about the nature of such practical knowing, and the epistemological changes that the action research perspective brings to the academy (Heron & Reason, 1997).
Action research has over the years also addressed political questions. The argument from the PAR community is that the processes of knowledge creation have been monopolized by those who have power, and thus they create knowledge in the service of their own interests. What is the point of findings that are ?true' if they have been produced in circumstances that disempower people, that distort social relations, and add to the monopoly power of dominant groups? So validity or quality in action research is also about political relations, it is fundamentally about democratizing ways of cre ...