An important practical sourcebook for new ways of undertaking research, this volume presents both an up-to-date assessment of the state of theoretical and methodological debates in collaborative human research and a summary of projects undertaken using collaborative methodologies. It addresses some of the difficulties involved with the collaborative approach: when the researcher is no longer separated from the researched, questions about how to collaborate and how to manage power relations become important. When people are inquiring into their personal experience, questions of subjectivity and validity are raised. These methodological problems are addressed in the first half of the book, while the remainder resolves them in research contexts.
I retired in 2009 from an academic career at the University of Bath in which my primary contribution was to the theory and practice of participatory action research. I was Director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice (CARPP) and co-founder of the MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice. In these programmes we pioneered graduate education based on collaborative, experiential and action-oriented forms of inquiry.
Introduction - Peter Reason PART ONE: DEVELOPMENTS IN METHODOLOGY The Co-operative Inquiry Group - Peter Reason Validity in Co-operative Inquiry - John Heron A Phenomenological Psychodrama Workshop - Peter Hawkins Storytelling as Inquiry - Peter Reason and Peter Hawkins PART TWO: VENTURES IN CO-OPERATIVE INQUIRY Whole Person Medical Practice - Peter Reason Participatory Inquiry as an Instrument of Grass-roots Development - Marja-Liisa Swantz and Arja Vainio-Mattila Managing to Learn - Robert Krim Action Inquiry in City Hall Interactive Holistic Research - Ian Cunningham Researching Self Managed Learning Impressions of the Other Reality - John Heron a Co-operative Inquiry into Altered States of Consciousness Reflection in Action - Judi Marshall and Adrian McLean Exploring Organizational Culture Reflections - Peter Reason
`a significant and stunning contribution to the growing literature on new paradigm research... New paradigm inquiry is finally and ineluctably producing a literature of its own as powerful and persuasive as that which exists for conventional, positivism inquiry. Reason's new book will be a major building-block of that body of methodological and case study literature. For its careful definitions, its methodological deliberations and its exemplars, its utility will be likely long-lived' - Yvonna S Lincoln, Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University `a very exciting book, which will be of great interest to all those who are involved in new paradigm research, and all those who may be sceptical about it' - John Rowan, Self & Society `As an example of practical epistemology, this work is refreshing. It is down to earth, politically motivated and applied. It is about collaborative research inquiry with and for people, and the development of an alternative methodology for research in the social sciences.... worth reading' - Metascience
