Action Research as Constructive Epistemology: Pragmatist Evasions in the Certain

• In Event: 75.041 - MTCC Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: 75.041-12 - Deweyan Attention to Process

Abstract

Action Research (AR) is a research tradition that has inhabited many time periods, geographies, disciplines, and scholars, and that centers issues of participation, democracy, community, inquiry, problem solving, action, reflection, and progress. The multiple tensions at many levels between different AR schools are indications of a scholarly tribalism, reflecting constructive and formalizing tendencies and a quest for cultural certainty. Such tribalism is then antithetical to the very stated mission of AR, one that should be situated in openness, indeterminacies, vagueness, and complexity. This study uses Eventual Textualism, a cultural discourse theory that draws from but extends Deweyan Pragmatism, to critique such a quest for certainty in AR, and to provide some AR reconstructions.

Author

• Ali H. Hachem, Stephen F. Austin State University