ARJ reflects on its 19th birthday.
Happy Birthday to us all involved with the journal, especially our associate editors, authors and reviewers. It takes a village!
ARJ has matured beyond being an (award winning) upstart. In tandem with our refocusing of mission in 2019, our citation index has doubled and stabilized. We saw this as affirmation for developing and publishing work on transformative action research (ART) in response to our eco-social crisis. We are more committed to this focus than ever.
As we enter our 20th year, it’s timely to curate more review and commentary type papers, at least one issue a year. We’ve experimented with adding an innovative book/resources review section. This one, from Kent Glenzer, comes with its own soundtrack!
What fundamentally differentiates the work of ART is that it is done with stakeholders to the issues of eco-social crisis, including the change agents themselves. Today many of us scratch our heads and wonder how democracy has become so fragile. How can authoritarianism be on the rise? How can the planet be so imperiled, while wars are declared? is in this crazy making context in which we continue to want to offer the best accounts of action research. We want members of the global community to see one another as we continue to develop and learn. There can be more sense of empowerment when we feel ourselves in this together. We see our maturing work as planting seeds that will find the right soil in the right time.We can practice patience. We can practice together.
At ARJ we want to support authors to cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries and find points of connection to adjacent fields. We aim to reach into the many fields of social change and inquiry where the good news of action research has yet to arrive. Yes, more than ever, we want action research to become a vital complement to many more social change efforts!
In the papers curated for this more review oriented final issue of 2022 we start with a critical review of the field by Antonio Delgado Baena & Antonio Sianes. Based on their review of Web of Science, the authors call us to stay on top of a key matter, namely whether we use the methodology of ART in pursuit of social change. Too many, they warn, are merely reproducing power relations while “playing with” a powerful set of methods.
Find this latest issues at the ARJ Sage website: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ARJ/current
Latest posts by Hilary Brad (see all)
- On co-creating with (lamenting) teachers by Nicola Nasi - December 10, 2024
- Practices For A Darkening Time: Some noble saints meet in a coLAB… - November 30, 2024
- learning to be activists with Kristen Goessling - November 30, 2024