Ecology and Economics

Hello and Happy Memorial Day,

When I think about Action Research and the "Environment" I am often bombarded by other phrases and words like earth, nature, ecology, economics, and sustainable development.  Within this group of related subjects I cannot help but notice the commonality between economics and ecology.  So today, I attempt an oh so brief historical analysis of the amazing prefix “eco.”

For starters I am a student of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is a theory about linguistic relativity and argues that language is a primary shaper of ideas and has the potential to determine and shape our perceptions of reality.  Language, or lack of it can limit or expand one’s thoughts.  This is a powerful accusation, with roots in cultural anthropology and symbolic interactionism.  If words can influence our perception of reality by providing us with common symbols for communication and understanding, then words also have the ability to shape our actions affect our praxis.  From this theoretical point of view, lets depart on this abbreviated etymological adventure…

The prefix “eco” can be traced back to “oikos," which means “house”, “household”, or “home” in Ancient Greek.  The prefix "oikos" is found in oikonomikos, or economics with the root word “nomos” meaning “the law of something.” Thus oikonomikos translates into the “law of the house," or “relating to household management.”  From here the prefix “oikos” became “oeco” in Latin, and more familiar “eco” in French.

Here are several names, dates, and neologism all relating to the evolution of economics and ecology.

1. Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) built upon the works of Socrates and Plato and talked about “The economy as a system which organizes the activities of people in a community, to best use the available resources to satisfy the private and collective needs of the community.”

2. Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 CE) discusses economics in terms of “value of goods” and related this to Christian morals.  Aquinas believes that the value of goods is equal to the amount of work that has been put into them.

3. In 1749 the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778 CE) published a book called The Oeconomy of Nature.  Linnaeus’s goal was to describe and catalog all known organisms and his work eventually became the foundation of modern taxonomy.  

4. Adam Smith (? – 1790 CE) published A Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, and introduced the wonder phrase “the invisible hand,” which would later be used in his 1776 publication Wealth of Nations. 

5. Some of Karl Marx’s work (1818 – 1883) can be viewed as a reaction to Smith’s ideas, arguing against his interpretation of the true value of one’s work (capitalist verses communalist ideologies).

6. In 1859 the English naturalist Charles Darwin's (1809-1882 CE) published On the Origin of Species, which laid the foundation for the emergence of evolution and ecology.

7. In 1866, Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919 CE) a German philosopher and biologist coined the term “Okologie,” (ecology) and stated that it pertained to: “all the knowledge and science of the relationship between an organism and the other world surrounding it.” 

8. Then in 1935, the British ecologist Arthur G. Tansley introduced the term “ecosystem”, meaning “a system formed by the interactions of a community of organisms with their environment.”

9.  Recently the study of ecology has been used in the classroom to focus on areas such as social/psychological relations, technical core of instruction, physical structure and organizational routines, discipline and classroom management, and attitudes, perceptions, and expectations (Ellison et al. 2000).

Given this wide western history and perspective of “eco,” and our current paradigms’ global-hegemonic-industrial-capitalist assault on the earth, I believe it is these two concepts, economics and ecology that need to be remarried.

Alan

Notes:

Ellison et al.  2000.  CLASSROOM CULTURAL ECOLOGY: The Dynamics of Classroom Life in Schools Serving Low-Income African American Children. Published by the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk

Does the “community” really have voice? – Deb Dole

The business of health care has effectively muffled, if not silenced the voice of communities. The real needs of communities are often overlooked as health care dollars, programs and initiatives are rolled out in an effort to "fix" what is believed to be broken. The result is a labeling of individuals and communities as "non-compliant" or "resistant" when the pre-determined initiatives do not have the desired effect. I was perusing http://www.Grants.gov/ to see what the latest topics in maternal/child health were being funded. All of the buzz words such as "health disparities", "infant mortality", and "teen pregnancy" were prominently displayed in many titles. After reading further, a majority of funding opportunities were directed at implementation of programs previously "proven effective". Where is the voice of the community in determining what their own needs are or what programs might be useful? Issues of power and control continue to rule the day.

Action research and community-based participatory research hold the promise of changing the dynamics of the discussion…redistributing the power. The midwife in me tends to want to mother those around me. While well-intentioned, sometimes this is not the most helpful approach. Let me help you often turns into let me do it for you. Engaging communities, not just health professionals who work in communities in the discussion is critical to turning up the volume of community voice. Teaming those who have access and voice (academic community, medical professionals) with those who have been muffled or silenced can fundamentally change the ways in which public policy directed at the health of communities can be shaped to actually benefit those communities. Change from the inside out…lasting and meaningful…How do we start?

Maybe we start by listening.

Health policy how is it directed - Bernard Young

Recent events of health care reform have put a spotlight on the political aspects of health policy development on the national scale. The same consideration should be brought to the local and regional discussion. AR and CBPR are looking at questions of health care policy and the practical involvement of the community of recipients in service determination. I think a naturally developing question is whether there is a need to bring into the discussion a different balance between corporate practice and community values, considering the context of economics and technological change, in the determination of health standards.

In the past the health care business has been left to the control of the identified experts -- doctors, medicine men, shaman, healers, etc -- but the influences of urbanization, economics, technology, and politics have increased along with the influence of corporations on the law and policy. It seems to me that there is an increasing role for citizens in directing the course of health care policy. Responding to this need requires investigation into how, in our diverse and complicated society, consumer and citizen participation can be supported efficiently and effectively yet responding to the health needs of the individual and the collective.

Expanded information distribution through the media, web, and advertisement reflects an interest to influence rather than mirror the general public. My question is, whether appropriate consideration is being given to recognizing the cultural concerns, values and goal of every day citizens by providing adequate and unprejudiced support to avenues of citizen and service recipient involvement in health care policy development. How should the academic community be involved in this discuss? Tell us about your work in this area. What do you think?

Ethics - Mentors

Think about the person who did the most to mentor you.  What three words would you use to describe this individual?  This is the question I asked the participants in last week’s Teaching Research Ethics workshop to consider.  Then I asked them to write down these three words on post-it notes and we collected all of the contributions and created a concept map in which we tried to organize the terms by theme.  I also took the post-it notes with me following the session and after copying them all into a word document, I created a wordle image based on the words.  If you have used wordle before, it’s a website (go to www.wordle.net) that takes a text and creates an image that represents the most often occurring words in larger type while less often occurring words are included in smaller type.  The resulting “word cloud” gives you a visual sense of which words are most central in the text.  Here’s the word cloud we created from the words we collected.  While words reflecting knowledge, scholarship, and experience appear, it’s clear that the most compelling characteristics of a good mentor are qualities like patience, generousity, encouraging, kind, compassion….the values associated with a caring and supportive individual.  What does this have to do with ethics and AR?  I’d argue that it is in the context of a mentoring relationship that most of us learn the values that will guide our actions as scholars.  Our actions establish the model our students and others who look to us for guidance will use to create their understanding of what it means to be an ethical action researcher. Take a minute to look over the wordle image and think about those you mentor.  How are you reflecting the values these participants identify as most critical to a positive mentoring relationship?

Centering, pulling, shaping together---action researching together

I spend quite a bit of my free time covered in mud. Several times a week I head to a pottery studio where I make all manner of vessels for mostly practical purposes. Because I tend to think about things in images or pictures-- I've included a picture of me and one of my daughters working together at the wheel to create a cylinder that later became a tall, thin mug. Both of my children accompany me to the studio and will help me shape (as in this picture) as well as glaze pieces. I can't think of a better image for educational action research than this collective centering, pulling, and shaping of clay.


Nolen and Vander Putten state that "Educators see [action research] as a practical yet systematic research method to investigate their own teaching and their students’ learning in and outside the classroom."

The folks over at edchange.org have a nice definition for teacher action research and I'll include it here as well: Teacher action research (TAR) is a method for educational practitioners to engage in the assessment and improvement of their own practice. It can be an individual tool, helping classroom teachers reconsider their teaching methods or to adapt in order to solve a problem.


This clay that teacher researchers center and then pull and shape together--their practice as teachers and the learning of their students--can be difficult to work with. When seeking to make a change--as we do in our classrooms through educational action research--it often feels like an immovable lump of hard clay. However,  with a community of teachers and learners and family members as participants, the action researchers can center and really get a handle on what the real problems are. Potters add water and use their hands, ribs, and other tools to change the clay--to move it to a different position so that they can see what can be created from the initial lump. Teacher action researchers do much the same through the action and reflection cycle. 


It's only after several cycles of action and reflection by both the educational action researchers and the potter that the real possibilities can be seen and the real change can begin.


I'm interested to know what images or metaphors you use to describe educational action research. What projects are you contemplating, initiating, researching now? Would you share those with us? Please feel free to share your thoughts here. You are also welcome to email me at dusty.embury@uc.edu if you'd like to write a post about action research in education.


Peace, Dusty

Urban- Nature- Trash

Hello and happy Monday,

As an activist-scholar I am Dionysian in my initial approach to “research.”  Today, I introduce a series of video’s that explore what Heron and Reason refer to as co-operative inquiry cycles.  This method is outlined in chapter 12 of the Handbook of Action Research (2008) and discusses the transpersonal inquiry of medical practitioners as they explore holistic medicine.  My account blends their AR process with Urban-Nature¹ beautification. 

This past Earth Day, April 22 my brother and I went for a walk in Eden Park.  We decided to explore the wooded hill from lower Kemper Avenue to the main Ohio River overlook.  As we entered the woods at the bottom of the hill we were taken aback by the amount of trash littered throughout this section of the park.  After completing our initial ascent, we went back to my residence, got 4 trash bags, a camera with video capabilities, and retraced our steps through the woods to pick up the misplaced refuse.  As you read this entry, please follow along with three YouTube video postings of our Urban-Nature-Trash experience.

According to Heron and Reason, there are 4 steps to co-operative inquiry; the first being an exploration of agreed upon human activity, in our case, a walk though the woods (145).  The second phase of research involves becoming co-subjects and engaging in action that satisfies both parties (145). This phase occurred after our initial observations (mostly disgust) and is embodied in our decision to clean up this segment of Eden Park.

Urban Nature Trash: Into the Woods (video 1) 

The third step in co-operative inquiry is when the co-subjects become fully immersed in and engaged with the action and experience (145).  For us, this was the physical act of picking up the trash. An important aspect of this third phase is the unpredicted action and creative insights that flow from process. 

Urban Nature Trash: Removing Refuse (video 2) 

The fourth and final step in when the researchers or practitioners re-assemble to share their experiences and data (146).  For my brother and I, this step occurred after we had filled our bags to the brink, despite the large amounts of trash that still inhabited the hillside.  We found ourselves sitting just below the crest of the hill, listening to music from car stereos in the park, and contemplating the residential high rises over looking the park, the Ohio River, and Northern Kentucky.  It was during this part of our journey that we made the pact to return to the park with more trash bags, people, and time later that week. 

Urban Nature Trash: Reflection and Resolve (video 3) 

Notes and reflective thoughts:

1. The concept Urban-Nature applies to segments of our natural environment that are essentially enclosed by our built environments. These unique pieces of “nature” are set aside for enjoyment and use by the surrounding populations.  Parks located within cities and suburbs typically have well worn walking paths, makeshift homeless shelters, and misplaced pieces of trash that provide common markers of Urban-Nature.

2. I simply cannot believe the amount the trash littered throughout the sparsely traveled parts of this amazing park. 

3. While picking up the trash we were bombarded by labels and advertisements of our consumer goods.  I felt the desire to contact these respective organizations and politely request their assistance in cleaning up the misplaced end products of their supply chain.

4. As an environmentalist, I am intrigued by our culture’s propensity to drive automobiles to nature-recreating areas.  Nature has become something separate from our urban and suburban environments.  We must travel to “enjoy” nature.

5. This type of action was repeated in Eden Park and Brunette Woods later that week.


Onwards and Upwards,

Alan
wightra@ucmail.uc.edu

Theory and Practice - The Apprentice

  
Having completed my dissertation and graduating in June, naturally I am looking at what is next for me in my life journey.  I admit, I have no idea what lays before me.  I have searched for some glimmer of the future but never seem to have a clear picture.  Times like this, I often turn to tools that may give me some insight into my current situation.  I may meditate, write in a journal, and look for repeating “signs” in my daily life.    An image/concept I have seen a few times now is the “apprentice.” I have taken notice of this image, but I have been confused about how the apprentice relates to me at this time. 

     Yesterday, while teaching my Women and Religion class, the image of the apprentice made sense to me.  We discussed creativity in relationship to feminist spirituality.  I had my students do a quasi-photovoice project.  They paired up and walked around the university looking for an object or a scene that represented their understanding and experience of creativity.  All of my students had camera phones to take pictures.  I did not have a plan on how to share the photos – I thought we might huddle around and look at each other’s phones.  When it came time to discuss, I thought out loud about putting someone’s phone on the document projector to show the pictures.  My students said they could just email me their pictures from their phones…GENIUS!!!!! So students emailed their photos, and I projected them on the screen through the computer.  Not only were the students technologically wise, the words and images they produced were profound and transformative.  They brought the concepts of creativity and spirituality to life with image and words.

     So what does this have to do with being an apprentice and action research?  Yesterday in class reminded me that even though I am the facilitator of the classroom experience, I continuously learn from the people around me.  The class was better yesterday because my students took ownership of creating knowledge and of our technological needs to create a place for sharing.  When I looked at the apprentice image, I had forgotten to look at in relationship to all of my roles, the people around me, and my experience of action research. 

     Action research welcomes me into the role of being and doing, continuously learning my trade – whatever that may be.  The apprentice challenges me to continue to learn and grow in community.  An apprentice is not an isolated individual – but a person that works with others.  I am thankful that I took notice of the “sign.”  I am now playing with the idea of how to be an apprentice and a master at the same time.  A paradox that honors the hard work and knowledge I have generated and the experience of continuing to learn and grow from community – in all of its formations.  

Community Health- Beth Miller

Hi My name is Beth Miller. I am a doctoral candidate in Health Promotion & Education at the University of Cincinnati. My area of concentration is nutrition and physical activity. I have spent years as a clinical and community dietitian and in wellness/health promotion in corporations and communities. I became involved in action research through coursework at the University of Cincinnati. It was only then that I made the connection between AR and Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and have been a fan ever since.I have been involved in CBPR projects with Harmony Garden (http://www.hgarden.org/) and at the University of Cincinnati. I locate myself as an Action Researcher within CBPR. The connection to people through this type of collaborative research is rewarding and fulfilling. My interests in both wellness and action research were joined in my photovoice dissertation looking at stress in teens. I look forward to additional research in CBPR related to the effect of environmental and policy changes on determinants of health in communities. I will be facilitating the community health discussion with Deb Dole and Bernie Young. I look forward to our discussions!

Ethics in AR - Mary Brydon-Miller

This week I’m writing from the Teaching Research Ethics Workshop at Indiana University, Bloomington. This is the third year I’ve attended the workshop…first as a participant and now as faculty. The event is organized by the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions  and brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds to spend three days discussing strategies for improving the teaching of research ethics from a grounding in basic philosophical concepts to very concrete pedagogical strategies. It’s really one of the most amazing workshops I’ve ever attended…although you have to be prepared to work! They send out a reader before the event that’s over 400 pages long…and that doesn’t even include the supplemental materials!

The Poynter Center also supports the work of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) which was founded in order to “encourage interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching of high quality in practical and professional ethics by educators and practitioners who appreciate the practical-theoretical aspects of their subjects”. This year’s conference was held in Cincinnati and the students in the Action Research Seminar presented on their First Person Action Research projects. One component of APPE is the Responsible Conduct of Research Educational Committee which is working together to try to improve research ethics education.

Mary Brydon-Miller, PhD

Introduction of Juanjuan Zhao-Education and Action Research

My Name is Juanjuan Zhao. I am a doctoral student in Educational Studies and also a graduate assistant at Action Research Center at the University of Cincinnati. My focuses are both in educational and community-based action research. Here I'll be blogging about Education and Action Research.I came across action research when I was graduating from my master's program back in China and found it an interesting match with foreign language teaching. My recent research includes a participatory research approach:group level assessment with minority and immigrant children at a multilingual emergent school in Cincinnati and curriculum development for a Healthy Girls' Project. Action research as a theory and reserach method is transformative in terms of its cycles of reflective process, emancipatory roles of researchers and participants,strong links between theory and practice and collaborative inquiry,etc. I am looking forward to more discussions through our ARJ blog.

My name is Vicki Stieha and I am an educational researcher at the University of Cincinnati. Along with several other people here at the UC Action Research Center, I’ll be blogging about AR and Education. My recent research includes inquiry research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) with teachers who have participated in Summer Teachers Institutes to understand their learning and teaching practice following the Institute. I have also begun a new participatory action research project with a group of urban middle school girls who are helping us see their community and their school through their own eyes, by using photovoice. I love action research because of its unpredictability – it matches my belief that there are multiple truths and that important questions are the ones asked by those who are most impacted by their answers. I’m hoping that this blog will help those of us who are interested in education (and by that I am not restricting my thoughts to schooling, but thinking about education writ large) to explore questions and quandaries in our work, in others’ and in our own learning as well.

Meet Dusty Columbia Embury: Action Research and Education

My name is Dusty Columbia Embury. Here at the ARJ Blog I am an editor for Education and Action Research and I will be working along with my colleagues here to open conversations regarding action research in education. I am a part of the action research community at the University of Cincinnati and I am also a new faculty member at Eastern Kentucky University.

My research has focused on co-teaching in inclusive classrooms from the K-12 setting to the university setting and I have been fortunate that my research area is flexible enough to allow for exploration through qualitative, single subject, and action research methodologies. I have a particular interest in opportunities to use action research in classrooms that include students with diverse abilities as well as diverse backgrounds.

If there's a topic you would be particularly interested in discussing that relates to education and action research, I hope you'll email me at dusty.embury@uc.edu so that we can start a conversation that we can share here on the ARJ blog.

Peace, Dusty

Action Research and the Environment -Introductions

Hello all, 

My name is Alan Wight.  For the past 5 years I have been studying the various ways in which humans' interact with and perceive the natural environment (aka the earth).  I have become familiar with the history of the modern environmental movement and specifically ecovillages: non-violent, decentralized, bioregional-laboratories that focus on creating ecologically sustainable communities.  

Feel free to learn more about Cincinnati’s Enright Ridge Urban Ecovillage.

Currently, I am a graduate student in educational studies at the University of Cincinnati with interests in environmental education, Action Research, and how our education systems reproduce culture.  I engage in AR as an activist-scholar to develop an earth-centered ethic among the community, the academy, government, and industry.  Yes, we have our work cut out for us!  Along with my colleagues and fellow editors I am excited about this blog and our diversity of interests.  Every Monday I will be discussing the intersection of AR and the environment.  Please join us as we embark on this experiment of consuming conversation and deliberate debate!

Alan Wight                                                                                                                                                  

wightra@ucmail.uc.edu

Theory and Practice

Hi…my name is Valerie Louis and I am facilitating the Theory and Practice and Special Topics sections of the ARJ blog. I became interested in Action Research out of my love of theory and my background in women’s studies. AR was one of the first classes I took in my doctoral work and we were reading many of my favorite critical theorists. And then when we added action to the theory, I knew that I had found a connection between the theory that I loved and the feminist research methodologies I embraced. Action research took it all to another level…it brought together theory and action/activism while sharing power. My area of interests in regards to action research is AR and organizations, AR and spirituality, multiple ways of knowing, AR and the college classroom, photovoice, co-operative inquiry, feminist AR, and first person AR. In general, I am interested in the spiritual and how it connects to our practical world. I consider myself an interdisciplinary thinker and doer.

I am excited to see where the blog goes, especially exploring new ways to write about action research in creative and authentic voices. Please contact me (valerie.louis@uc.edu) if you are interested in posting for theory and practice or if you have a special topic you would like to propose and/or write about.

Community Health Focus - Meet Deb Dole

My name is Deb Dole. I am a practicing midwife and faculty at the University of Cincinnati, College of Nursing. Action research and I found each other at a coffee shop in a local bookstore. I was a doctoral student with a head full of ideas, thoughts and questions surrounding the WHO, WHAT, WHY and the ever present HOW of a dissertation. I was invited by my dissertation chair to attend an informal meeting of women from many disciplines all interested in issues surrounding mothers, daughters, dialog and girls health. Someone mentioned a project involving Photovoice…a method that involves cameras, participants and the potential for real change – I was hooked! Real people…real stories…real change. I could barely contain myself. My action research dissertation was born that day. Check out this short intro video to PhotoVoice: http://www.photovoice.org/videos/pvfilm2010final.wmv

Why action research? This question was posed by the editors in the first issue of Action Research; Mary Brydon-Miller, Davydd Greenwood, and Patricia Maguire (2003) http://arj.sagepub.com/content/vol1/issue1/

My answer to "why action research?"... Health care research has primarily been conducted within the biomedical framework producing less than satisfying results for individuals, communities and researchers themselves. The quest for the perfect intervention has led us back to the community where health is defined and experienced locally and in the context of daily life. This is an example of discussion around work being done in the area of health disparities http://blog.case.edu/ccrhd/photo_voice/index

My colleagues Bernie Young and Beth Miller and I will be facilitating an ongoing discussion surrounding community health, health education and access to care issues. Please join us as we plan to devote the Thursday conversation to health related issues and action research.

Let the conversation continue…

Community Health Focus - Introducing Bernard Young

My name is Bernard Young. Over the past 40 Years I have been actively involved as a health professional working to monitor, assess, educate, support and refer clients concerning issues of alcoholism, substance abuse, HIV infection. AIDS, SIDS, family violence, mental health, sexual health, birth control, and sexually transmitted infections. In the last five years as a graduate student of the University of Cincinnati of Cincinnati in Urban Educational Leadership I have been introduced to Action Research (AR). I have found AR to be a method of practice that allows the use of theory, research and practice to solve problems in an ethical manner that brings the subject of observation into a balanced relationship with the researcher and the research. I have chosen to become involved with the blog as way to help expand the science and gain knowledge from the various approaches that AR and related approaches can take

Ethics and Action Research

Just because it's action research doesn't make it ethical. In fact, the ethical implications and potential complications of doing work in organizational and community settings makes it all the more important that we consider carefully the ethical issues involved in AR. In 2006 Davydd Greenwood, Olav Eikeland, and I edited a special issue of Action Research focused on Ethics and AR. At the time we observed that while action research “offers its practitioners the opportunity to engage communities as equal partners in addressing important concerns while improving practice and deepening our shared understanding of critical issues”, at the same time it “raises a unique set of ethical challenges, many of which have been overlooked in the literature to date” (p. 129). I continue to be interested in exploring the ethical challenges and implications of action research and hope that this blog might be a useful forum for extending that dialogue. I’ll be posting my thoughts along with links to articles and resources I think might be of interest every Wednesday, but would also like to invite you to submit descriptions of ethical dilemmas you’ve faced in doing AR or other related issues. I’ll try to offer my take on as many of these questions as I can, and will also open up the blog for responses from other readers to encourage more dialogue about this topic.

One issue that comes immediately to mind is the role of institutional review boards or other human subjects review bodies in deciding if an action research project should be allowed...sometimes against the will of the community. So, who's in charge? Should IRBs/HEBs be allowed to make the determination? Should local participants be allowed to put themselves at risk in the interests of conducting a research project. For an interesting look at this issue see Lundy and McGovern's discussion of their AR project in the North of Ireland in ARJ 4(1).

Let me know what you think and what ethical questions or challenges you've encountered. See you next week.

Welcome to the ARJ Community Blog

A quick introduction…my name is Mary Brydon-Miller. I’m a professor of educational studies and urban educational leadership at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, USA, where I also direct the Action Research Center (www.uc.edu/arc) or join us on Facebook at ARC of UC). I’m an Associate Editor of Action Research (also on Facebook at ARJ Community) and decided to get involved in starting this blog because my students told me that without question this is where they go to get information about new ideas and initiatives. Together with a group of students and colleagues from the ARC who will be introducing themselves here as well, we agreed to lead the development of the ARJ blog and to coordinate contributions. We want to represent the full range of approaches to action research and to provide a forum for action researchers from around the world to engage in a discussion of the theory and practice of action research and the ways in which AR can be more effective in contributing to positive social, economic, and political change. I’m particularly interested in the ethical challenges of doing AR and will be writing each week on this topic. If you have particular questions you’d like to see discussed related to ethics and AR, please post them to the blog and we’ll do our best to respond and to open up the discussion for others to contribute to deepening our understanding of these important questions. I’m looking forward to learning more from my colleagues on the ARJ connectivity team and from all of you who read and contribute to the blog.

Wondering what Action Research is all about? Check out the website of Harmony Garden, one of our community partners here in Cincinnati (www.hgarden.org) whose work on improving girls health and wellness is a fantastic job of AR done right!