Kind Minded Integralists

Thanks to Tom Habib, Ph.D., Chairperson, International Consortium of Integral Scholars for inviting his Integral colleagues to review for the Action Research journal – and to those who have since volunteered!

And thanks for encouraging kind-spirited Integralist colleagues to see how ART “should have a prominent role within your international Consortium,” given shared focus on “helping heal some of the divisions throughout academia.”

In his letter Tom explains “I wanted to say a word about Action Research. I do believe that the objectives and goals of AR+ align with several of the core purpose of The International Consortium of Integral Scholars. Similar to goals of The Consortium, Action Research emphasizes mentoring students in a model of inquiry and research to increase “the relevance of conventional social research to wider society.” In addition to real world applicability, it also resolves the problem of fragmentation caused by reductionism by privileging “the context of practice over disembodied research.” It accomplishes this by grounding research within the real-world experiences of the practitioner by making them “co-researchers.”This has the advantage that the subject of inquiry is “…richly contextualized in the local knowledge of practitioners” which helps with previously mentioned relevance and application.

The last point of making the practitioner a co-researcher is especially relevant. In the earliest days of my career I heard the leadership within Psychology express a hope that researchers and clinicians could work together to best develop the interdependence between theory and practice. This never was widely achieved. There are so many reasons why, many I am sure you are familiar with in your respective domains. Thirty years later, the American Psychological Association is as fractured along the same lines of academic researchers and the clinical practitioners, as it was then.

I believe that Action Research is in the best position to help heal some of these divisions throughout academia. Action Research does not seek to replace traditional empirical training, but rather to increase the relevancy of these valuable efforts to validate and elucidate practice. I further believe this method of research inquiry should have a prominent role within The Consortium and would like to know your thoughts. I am including Bradbury’s (2010) paper (with my highlighting), which is a clear description of Action Research.”

Thanks Tom!

We wondered if the integral community might be especially interested to learn about a call for papers to a Special Issue on Artfulness in the Organizational Playground. We offer a C-19 extension too – till August 1st. Details at this link.

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Hilary Brad

Kind Minded Integralists

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