Unmet challenges and unfulfilled promises in action research

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olav Eikeland
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Current Action ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
The One ◽  
Second Wave

This article is a response to Davydd J. Greenwood’s critical review of defensiveness and sloppiness in the current action research (AR) community. My experience of the situation in AR coincides to a large degree with Greenwood’s. His claims are hard to test, however, since he hardly gives concrete examples. In order to sort out real “sloppiness” (whatever that is), we have to take into consideration the conditions under which most AR to work. I also think Greenwood’s contention that AR suffers from “complacency about fundamental issues of theory, method and validity” has to do with fundamental changes in AR’s self-understanding between “old AR” before 1965 and “the second wave” from the 1970s on. Personally I recommend an AR-strategy — immanent critique — that balances between “morally superior, but sloppy and complacent AR” on the one hand and “conventional social research” (whatever that is nowadays), but find it hard to find much support in the AR community, for reasons, I believe, that have to do with the mentioned fundamental change in justification-strategy and self-conception within AR. At the end I announce some issues I would like to discuss further, but for which I lack the space in this article.

Action research

2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davydd J. Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Moral Superiority ◽  
Harsh Critique

This article examines how and why the academically-based social sciences, both pure and applied, have lost their relevance to practical human affairs (praxis) and links this discussion to the reasons why action research is a marginal activity in the academic and policy worlds. It also contains a harsh critique of action research practice focused on action researchers’ combined sense of moral superiority over conventional researchers and general complacency about fundamental issues of theory, method, and validity. The central argument is that “doing good” is not the same as “doing good social research” and that we action researchers need to hold ourselves accountable to higher standards, not only to compete with conventional social research but for the benefit of the non-academic stakeholders in action research projects.

Varia: Attribution, predication, apposition – Part second

Proglas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Getsov ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Grammatical Relation ◽  
The Status ◽  
Syntactic Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Syntactic Relations

The paper is part of a series of publications that set out to examine various aspects in the analysis of appositive constructions. The purpose of this particular study is to reveal the multidimensional, diverse, and complex interaction between three types of syntactic relations – attributive, predicative, and appositive. The study offers a critical review of various theories on the status of the grammatical relation between the components of non-detached (close) appositive constructions. The main argument of this paper is that determining this status, on the one hand, is a function of the morphological and semantic characteristics of the components of the construction, while, on the other hand, it determines their syntactic status.

Translation and interpretation in Abhidharmakośa

Diogenes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitko Momov
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
The Other ◽  
Young Scholar ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

Rosemberg (1991) has made a critical review of a long-standing discussion between Eastern philologists and Buddhist philosophers. The discussion is centered around the translation of the doctrine on the one hand, and its philosophical systematization on the other hand. When scientific-philological translation prevails, the literal meaning of Buddhist terminology is declared to be its basis. The young scholar, who had specialized in Japan, studied Buddhism from Japanese and Chinese sources and collected lexicographic material from non-Hindu sources. After comparing them, he encountered inaccuracies in the translation. In an attempt to overcome them, he preferred the point of view of the philosophy of Buddhism. The conclusion that he has drawn in the preface of this edition is that the study should begin with a systematization of antiquity.

scholarly journals Age of the Post-rift Sequence I from the Araripe Basin, Lower Cretaceous, NE Brazil: implications for spatio-temporal correlation

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-46
Author(s):  
João Carlos Coimbra ◽  
Tiago Menezes Freire
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Lower Cretaceous ◽  
Temporal Correlation ◽  
Isotopic Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Stratigraphic Framework ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Radiometric Ages ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

A robust biostratigraphic zonation based on microfossils supports the stratigraphic framework and correlation of the interior basins of the Lower Cretaceous of NE Brazil. This zonation has also allowed correlations with coeval sections in the Brazilian marginal basins and in the Gabon and Congo basins (central-west Africa). These records, consisting mainly of non-marine sediments, were a great challenge with regard to the correlation with the International Chronostratigraphic Chart. Therefore, local stages were used, the most recent being the Alagoas local Brazilian Stage, with which the Post-rift Sequence I of the Araripe Basin is related. Regarding lithostratigraphy, this sequence includes the Rio da Batateira (Barbalha for some authors) and Santana formations, the last one with the famous Crato, Ipubi, and Romualdo members, from the base to the top. Although currently there is a consensus on the age of the Alagoas local Brazilian Stage in the Araripe Basin, recently a new age for at least part of the Post-rift Sequence I was proposed. This new proposal, based on isotopic analysis of Re-Os, arose as a panacea to correlate the Rio da Batateira Formation and the Crato and Ipubi members with the international stages. Surprisingly, their authors, although on the one hand, they seem to underestimate biostratigraphic results, on the other they seek to support their proposal from microfossils studied by previous authors, but they do so in an inappropriate way, leading readers to misinterpret their results. Therefore, this paper presents a critical review on the age of the Alagoas local Brazilian Stage in the Araripe Basin and nearby basins, refuting a Barremian age for part of the Post-rift Sequence I. Keywords: Alagoas local Brazilian Stage, biostratigraphy, ostracods, palynomorphs, radiometric ages.

scholarly journals Macintyre on identity of ethics and politics

2006 ◽  
pp. 29-56
Author(s):  
Michal Sládecek
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Ethics And Politics

In first chapters of this article MacIntyre?s view of ethics is analyzed, together with his critics of liberalism as philosophical and political theory, as well as dominant ideological conception. In last chapters MacIntyre?s view of the relation between politics and ethics is considered, along with the critical review of his theoretical positions. Macintyre?s conception is regarded on the one hand as very broad, because the entire morality is identified with ethical life, while on the other hand it is regarded as too narrow since it excludes certain essential aspects of deliberation which refers to the sphere of individual rights, the relations between communities, as well as distribution of goods within the state.

scholarly journals An Evaluation of Methods to Assess Team Research Consultations

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-58
Author(s):  
Ashlynn Kogut ◽  
Pauline Melgoza
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Assessment Method ◽  
Assessment Methods ◽  
Team Process ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
Technical Paper ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Project Deliverables ◽  
The One

Abstract Objective – Due to the individualized nature of consultations and institutional constraints, research consultations can be challenging to assess. At Texas A&M University Libraries, subject librarians use research consultations to teach information literacy to upper-division engineering student teams working on a technical paper project. This paper describes an action research project designed to evaluate which assessment method for consultations with student teams would provide the most actionable data about the instruction and the consultation logistics as well as optimize librarian time. Methods – For three semesters, we simultaneously used up to four consultation assessment methods: one-minute papers, team process interviews, retrospective interviews, and questionnaires. We followed the action research cycle to plan the assessments, implement the assessments, reflect on the data collected and our experiences implementing the assessments, and revise the assessments for the next semester. Each assessment method was distributed to students enrolled in an engineering course at a different point in the technical paper project. The one-minute paper was given immediately after the consultation. The team process interviews occurred after project deliverables. The questionnaire was distributed in-person on the last day of class. Focus groups were planned for after the assignment was completed, but low participation meant that instead of focus groups we conducted retrospective interviews. We used three criteria to compare the assessments: information provided related to the effectiveness of the instruction, information provided about the logistics of the consultation, and suitability as an assessment method in our context. After comparing the results of the assessment methods and reflecting on our experiences implementing the assessments, we modified the consultation and the assessment methods for the next semester. Results – Each assessment method had strengths and weaknesses. The one-minute papers provided the best responses about the effectiveness of the instruction when questions were framed positively, but required the most staff buy-in to distribute. The team process interviews were time intensive, but provided an essential understanding of how students think about and prepare for each progress report. Recruiting for and scheduling the focus groups required more time and effort than the data collected about the instruction and logistics warranted. The questionnaire provided student perspectives about their learning after the assignment had been completed, collected feedback about the logistics of the consultations, was easy to modify each semester, and required minimal librarian time. Conclusion – Utilizing multiple assessment methods at the same time allowed us to determine what would work best in our context. The questionnaire, which allowed us to collect data on the instruction and consultation logistics, was the most suitable assessment method for us. The description of our assessment methods and our findings can assist other libraries with planning and implementing consultation assessment.

Scripture and Shape

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Change ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

The culture of hagiography, that of the saints’ Lives, was deeply conservative, and there was little fundamental change in the way in which it represented dragons and their stories across the one and a half millennia in which it thrived. One consequence of this is that dragon’s physical evolution in the wider Christian world outside the Lives (as documented in Chapter 4) had relatively little impact on its representation within them, and for the most part the hagiographical dragon remains worm-style in form. The story-types in which the dragon is engaged in the Lives are strongly shaped by an agenda established by the representation of dragons, serpents, and sea-monsters in scripture, e.g. the Old Testament’s treatments of Leviathan, Rahab, the Serpent of Eden, Jonah’s fish, the Apocrypha’s treatment of the Dragon of Babylon, and the New Testament’s treatment of the Dragon of Revelation.

scholarly journals Nurturing the buffer zone: conducting collaborative action research in contemporary contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412096537
Author(s):  
Hayley Bennett ◽  
Richard Brunner
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Buffer Zone ◽  
Collaborative Action Research ◽  
Research Management ◽  
Collaborative Action ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Research Collaborations ◽  
And Training

There is a shift in university-based social research towards interdisciplinary working and collaboration with non-academic partners, which requires a reconsideration of methodological concepts and research practices. In this article, we draw on intensive collaborative action research (CAR) into public service reform to demonstrate how this ‘collaborative shift’ both challenges and creates new considerations for mainstream research approaches. We contend that the contemporary emphasis on research collaborations creates challenges for both social science researchers and non-academic partners, which require greater conceptual consideration. Researchers need to engage in distinctive, significant and ongoing relational, pragmatic and political work in multi-agency contexts. We present the concept of a ‘buffer zone’: a dynamic, contextual space and set of practices necessary to undertake participatory research within complex and changeable settings. This has implications for research management, design, funding and training.

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