Pragmatic Action Research

AR is not just one more social science “method”; it is a fundamentally different way of conducting research and social change work together. Participation in AR is not just a moral value but essential to successful AR because the complexities of the problems addressed require the knowledge and experience of a broad and diverse array of stakeholders. I argue that there is no one ideal form of AR and that what is useful is situationally dependent which is also why AR cannot respect or operate within the disciplinary boundaries or departmental structures of academic. For these reasons, Morten Levin and I prefer to call our work “pragmatic AR”. To complete the paper, I present two cases, one from industry and one from community development, to show how I practice pragmatic AR in context.