Action Research as Process-Based Knowing
Hauptsächlicher Artikelinhalt
Abstract
Action research has long been treated as a marginal methodology in the social sciences, largely owing to its lack of fit with modern assumptions about the nature of scientific research. These assumptions, however, are specific to an empiricist paradigm. My aim in the present offering is to lay out the logic of an alternative paradigm, a process-based paradigm of knowledge, adequate to the practices of action research and its relatives. This logic touches on issues of pragmatic potential, ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Such a paradigm legitimates an enormously important form of knowledge, otherwise obscured by empiricist hegemony, and opens a generative link between action research and a vast array of inquiry and practice in the social sciences. I shall also propose that the forms of research favored by a process paradigm – and most fully realized in action research – are arguably more significant in their potentials than those available within empiricist tradition. In the contemporary context of rapid change and global peril, the potential contribution of such research is unparalleled.
Keywords: action research, process philosophy, social constructionism, pragmatism
La investigación-acción como conocimiento basado en procesos
La investigación-acción se ha considerado durante mucho tiempo una metodología marginal en las ciencias sociales, en gran medida debido a su falta de adecuación a los supuestos modernos de la investigación científica. Sin embargo, estos supuestos son específicos
del paradigma empirista. Mi objetivo en el presente trabajo es exponer la lógica de un paradigma alternativo, un paradigma de conocimiento basado en procesos, adecuado a las prácticas de la investigación-acción y sus afines. Esta lógica aborda cuestiones de potencial pragmático, ontología, epistemología y ética. Dicho paradigma legitima una forma de conocimiento enormemente importante, de otro modo eclipsada por la hegemonía empirista, y establece un vínculo generativo entre la investigación-acción y una amplia gama de indagaciones y prácticas en las ciencias sociales. También propondré que las formas de investigación favorecidas por un paradigma de procesos—y que se materializan plenamente en la investigación-acción—tienen posiblemente un potencial mayor que las disponibles en la tradición empirista. En el contexto contemporáneo de rápidos cambios y peligros globales, la contribución
potencial de dicha investigación es incomparable.
Palabras clave: investigación-acción, filosofía de procesos, construccionismo social, pragmatismo
Bibliography: Gergen, Kenneth J.: Action Research as Process-Based Knowing, IJAR – International Journal of Action Research, 2-2025, pp. 88-102.
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