ABSTRACT
Action research has significant potential for human betterment. While the term ‘action research’ might be superseded or embedded within newer forms of research, what it stands for is durable.
What action research stands for is the realisation of human needs towards autonomy, loving relationships and productive work; the urge towards freedom, creativity and self-recreation. The political counterpart of action research is liberal democracy; the spiritual counterpart a sense of unity between self and the cosmos. Such arenas cannot be investigated using only the traditional E-forms of the social sciences. The form of theory appropriate for such investigation is already in the mind of the person, in that each person is able to say, ‘I understand what I am doing and why I am doing it.’ The theory is embodied within and generated through practice (Whitehead, 2000). Studying our practice and its underpinning assumptions enables us to develop a creative understanding of ourselves and our own processes of learning and growth. When we do action research we make our thinking different. ‘Having made a discovery, I shall never see the world again as before. My eyes have become different; I have made myself into a person seeing and thinking differently. I have crossed a gap, a heuristic gap which lies between problem and discovery’ (Polanyi, 1958: 143).
