Centering on our Values and Strengthening the Core posted by Mary Brydon-Miller

I often use the metaphor of dance or yoga when I introduce the idea of using self-reflection in order to examine how our values inform our practice as action researchers. Both dance and yoga emphasize the importance of centering--drawing attention to the core muscles that support the body and finding a position of balance.  They also stress strengthening these core muscles in order to provide this balance and to allow the practitioner to move with grace, fluidity, and balance. When the core muscles are strong the body is able to respond to forces that would pull it out of balance and we are able to use our bodies in creative and unexpected ways. Just watch the dancers in Pilobolus if you want to see a remarkable example of the miraculous ways humans can use balance and strength to work together to create amazing art.

Or take a yoga class and feel how your body responds as you move through the poses in the Sun Salutation.

Just as strengthening the physical core allows us to move gracefully and prevents us from falling despite unexpected obstacles in our path, so strengthening our ethical core can provide us with stability and balance when our work as action researchers leads us into unpredictable dilemmas or conflicts—and as we all know expecting the unexpected is something every action researcher must learn to deal with.

So how do we go about building a strong ethical core? I encourage my students to start by articulating the values and principles that have the greatest meaning to them and by critically examining how they embody these values in their practice as action researchers.  If you value social justice, how does your practice reflect this principle? If you see yourself as a caring person and this aspect of your self-image is important to you, how do you embody caring in your interactions with others?

This past year the students in my action research course engaged in a first-person action research project focused on how their own value systems inform their practice. I’ve invited some of them to share their projects and what they learned through the first-person action research project in next week’s post.


The images included in this post were found through Creative Commons

First Person Action Research – the Doctoral Journey

by Vicki Stieha

Reading Valerie’s post this week brings me back to a project that she and I undertook with a group of other doctoral students began almost a year ago. (1) At that time, eight of us drafted a book chapter exploring AR from a student perspective. Our work surfaced many of the same tensions as Burgess (2006) discusses in her article, “Participatory action research: First-person perspectives of a graduate student.”

I’m including the opening paragraphs from our draft, which we hope will someday be published in its entirety. It feels appropriate share this work as several of us have now completed our doctoral journeys and the remaining few are nearing their final stretches.

“Naked on the Page: Stripped Down Encounters with Action Research.”

When we began the work for this chapter we, perhaps naively, thought it would require us to gather a few times over the summer and then we would work independently on our own sections. The question that we initially asked was “What does it mean to conduct AR for your doctoral dissertation?” We hoped to capture our earliest reactions to action research and the ways that each of us have come to think of and through this paradigm. In the midst of writing about action research, we began to see our work as action research. As is the case for many action research projects, ours did not follow our early conceptions of how the work would come together; rather, we found ourselves in a recursive cycle of talking, writing, analyzing, and reflecting as we moved more and more deeply into the many questions and concerns that surround our work as action researchers.

Why have we named this chapter as we did? Perhaps it is because we are aware that our action research dissertations are “the new kid on the block” (Herr & Anderson, 2005) paradigmatically. Or it might be that we chose paths as action researchers that do not allow us to hide behind a “white coat” – to assume a stance of dispassionate observer. In another sense, as action researchers we are emboldened to admit that we are naked; we speak as the fabled wise-child who saw the emperor's non-clothes and said as much. We may feel awkward moments in our nakedness as we feel with our participants and reveal ourselves, but we never forget that it is our choice to be naked - to reveal our positionalities, to form relationships with our participants, to care deeply about our inquiry, and to want fervently to bring about change.

Next time, I’ll add a bit more from our chapter. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from other graduate students about your own experiences of aligning with “the new kid,” as Herr and Anderson (2005) say.

Notes
1 The authors of the book chapter, “Naked on the Page: Stripped Down Encounters with Action Research,” are Vicki Stieha, Valerie Louis, Sarah Hellman, Cathy Ramstetter, Sarah Lanman, Angie Woods, James Stallworth, and Billy Hensley.

2 Herr, K., & Anderson, G. L. (2005). The action research dissertation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Reflection - Valerie Louis

In my post last week I wrote about graduation.  And now I find myself in a place of not-knowing.  I have no idea what is next.  Some days I stress and other days I go with the flow.  Today I looked at this not-knowing time as the time in action research that is exciting, engaging, and yes...unnerving.  In action research, not knowing often means I am on the right track.  The messiness and the chaos means I am in partnership - letting the process unfold - usually into something far better than I could imagine (Brydon-Miller, Greenwood & Maguire, 2003).  So I have been taking this in-between time as a time to reflect and clarify goals for myself.  So for now, I guess my life is my action research project.  Reason spoke of AR as a spiritual practice - something I deeply resonate with.  In this time of reflection, I hope to gain insight into what is important to me as a researcher, educator, student, and citizen.  I have plans of making lists - dreams for the immediate future and for the long term.  I have recognized that I want to travel back to my roots of feminist theory and methodology and explore further the connections to AR.  I want to develop my use of AR in the classroom.  I also want to explore in more detail what it means for me to be an interdisciplinary researcher and thinker in a job market that seems so discipline specific.

I see this time of reflection also filled with much action - including reading and writing. One of the lists I plan to make is a reading list.  I would love to hear from you the readings (from all disciplines, fiction, non-fiction, poetry) that influenced your understanding and journey with action research.  I would also be interested in hearing how AR guides your life - in the community, the classroom, and at home.