Action Research

This section describes my understanding of action research, and explains how an ethnographic stance and research-through-design inspired and informed my way of conducting this action research project.

Action research is a methodology that is based on explicit democratic, participative, and interdisciplinary values, which aim to support collective action and (social) innovation (Gaventa and Cornwall 2008; Hayes 2011). A key characteristic of action research is that it aims to induce change, to improve certain aspects of the targeted research domain. To do so, action research often involves participants (e.g. members of an organization) in the preparation and implementation of the research. Therefore, when doing action research, the focus is on making research efforts with people who are experiencing real challenges in the research domain, rather than to doing research for or about the people involved (Hayes 2011).

Historically, Action research builds on practice-oriented currents such as the work of the early pragmatists, including John Dewey, who were interested in everyday practices and concerns related to the public (Hayes 2011; Robson 2002; Stringer 2007). Hayes (2018) emphasizes that Dewey in particular developed the idea that thought and action, or practice, are inseparable. Therefore, the practice has been the core of action research from the very

beginning. However, Kurt Lewin first made use of the notion of action research (Lewin 1946).

He regarded action research as a way to learn about organizations by attempting to change them (Robson 2002). Thus, Lewin’s push for change made intervening in research settings an acceptable approach to conducting scholarly inquiry (Hayes 2018). On this basis, action research has continued to encourage organizational change and development. Over time, action research has been established as an approach with a strong and explicit concern for emancipation. Lewin, whose research and publications emerged right after the Second World War, treated action research as an approach to advancing democracy (Robson 2002).

This was eventually interpreted and taken on as ‘an embodiment of democratic principles in research’ (Robson 2002, 200). To emphasize this emancipatory aspect of this research approach, Stringer (2007) refers to ‘community-based action research’. This is to underline the fundamental premise of action research, which is to empower groups of people in various settings by enabling the participation of those involved in a given problem in the research process. This dissertation draws on this viewpoint, in that it also works with the belief ‘that all stakeholders – whose lives are affected by the problem under study – should be engaged in the processes of investigation’ (Stringer 2007, 10).

In contrast to the positivist research tradition, where the ideal is for the researcher to have an external and objective relationship to the field of study, in action research the ideal is for the researcher to actively contribute to democratic development and change in the field

(Bradbury 2015). Action research emphasizes an understanding of the world and a change/transformation in the world. Thus, action research differs from other research

approaches in that these beliefs put the researcher and his or her relations with the research participants at the centre of the research process. Moreover, action research explicitly recognizes that this constellation influences all aspects of data collection and analysis, how the research is communicated, and how change is implemented (Hayes 2011).

Action research ascribes to ontological and epistemological commitments which differs from other research approaches (McNiff and Whitehead 2006). In research, ontological

commitments refer to how we, as researchers, consider ourselves in relation to our work and to other people, such as research participants. In action research, it is crucial for people to be aware of these commitments, owing to the action researcher’s deep engagement with the research domain, and the partnerships between the researcher and the research

participants (Hayes 2011). This high level of engagement means that action research cannot be value neutral, ‘because researchers bring their own values with them into the field.

Researchers inherently act in relation to the field site, the research literature, and the

that it is not only the researcher who influences the research, it is simultaneously influenced by other actors involved the project (e.g. the research participants, collaborators, and the broader community), who also bring their own values to the process.

Ontological commitments influence the underlying epistemological commitments that action research ascribe to (Hayes 2011). The role of the action researcher is to be a co-creator of knowledge through trusting and equal relations with research participants. This co-creation of knowledge includes both examining and documenting existing situations, and

experimenting with causing change, which is meant to improve the situation while maintaining a democratic perspective throughout the process (Aagaard Nielsen and Svensson 2006). Thus, an action research approach argues that knowledge is generated through collective research processes. This means that knowledge generation implies that action researchers are committed to the idea that knowledge is co-constructed and evolves (Hayes 2011). In other words, an action research approach implies that knowledge is generated through action. Hayes emphasizes that ‘a practice perspective provides action researchers with a way to engage and learn about the world by focusing on everyday practices. In this view, doing and knowing are more important than what is done and what is known, meaning that the practice perspective engages with the world in its becoming rather than the idea that it ‘is’ at any given point in time’ (2018, 303–4). This again identifies action research’s inherent focus on practices, which connects with this dissertation’s underlying practice perspective.

Action research is a perspective that employs an array of methods, and thus is not itself a method. Hayes (2018) suggests considering action research a ‘meta-practice’, to shed light on how action research and practice theory’s shared academic traditions, the organization members application of scientific thinking, and an emphasis on details from a day-to-day practice provide a compelling approach to transformative technological interventions and creation of critical knowledge. To encourage these aspects of action research, throughout this research project I took an ethnographic stance. Moreover, owing to the project’s focus on design, a significant part of the research revolved around designing as a form of action to create change in the research domain. In the following paragraphs, I elaborate on the roles of these subordinate but supporting methodological approaches.

4.1.1 An ethnographic stance

Stringer (2007) argues the action researcher’s task is to enable different stakeholder groups to formulate ‘jointly constructed descriptive accounts of the situation at hand’ (p. 67).

As a way of understanding the existing situation, I have taken an ethnographic stance, meaning that I draw on characteristics of ethnographic fieldwork. Blomberg et al. (1993, 139) describe ethnography as ‘a way of developing a descriptive understanding of human

activities’, and emphasize guiding principles for doing ethnography. These include

conducting the field work in a field setting, considering how the activities studied relate to a broader social context, developing a descriptive understanding of people’s actual behaviour, and understanding the world from the participants’ point of view (Blomberg et al. 1993, 125–

27). This use of an ethnographic approach aims to develop a description and interpretation of human activity in its everyday settings, where the activity takes place (Robson 2002).

Although this is an action research project, I wanted to design interventions and cause change based on a rich understanding of the existing situation and data practices from the organization members’ point of view. Thus, taking an ethnographic stance enabled me to better understand the relationalities of the practices that might be involved in, and affected by the action research.

4.1.2 Research-through-Design as a critical inquiry process

The second supporting methodological approach that inspired this action research project is research-through-design (Frayling 1993), which I used as a critical inquiry process.

Research-through-design has been defined as ‘a research approach that employs methods and processes from design practice as a legitimate method of inquiry’ (Zimmerman 2010).

Moreover, it is known as a research approach that acknowledges how design actions play a formative role in the generation of knowledge (Stappers and Giaccardi 2014). The notion of research-through-design originates in Christopher Frayling’s influential distinction among three design-research approaches: research into art and design, research through art and design, and research for art and design (Frayling 1993). Since then, research-through- design has established itself as a maturing research discipline, and has been applied in a growing number of studies in the field of human–computer interaction (HCI) (Hansen and Halskov 2018; Vaughan 2017). Zimmerman et al. (2010) argue that the increased interest of the HCI community relates to the growing engagement with ‘wicked problems’, which

demand more complex design practices. Furthermore, Zimmerman et al. (2010) emphasize three main reasons for using research-through-design as an approach to scientific inquiry.

(1) A research-through-design approach allows the researcher to rely on designerly activities as a way to address complex situations with vague or conflicting agendas. (2) A research- through-design approach prompts the researcher to focus on research for the future, rather than that of the past or the present. Finally, (3) the focus on the future that a research- through-design approach embeds enables the researcher to be an active and intentional producer of the change desired by the participants in the research domain. As Koskinen

(Hansen and Halskov 2018; Vaughan 2017) has also pointed out, these three reasons provide useful overlaps between action research and research-through design.

To summarize, this research uses an action research approach supported by an

ethnographic stance and research-through-design as critical process of inquiry. The interplay of these methodologies has enabled me, as a researcher, to engage with members of IU to stimulate organizational change that is based on a rich understanding of the existing

situation and, in part, takes place through design activities. In the next section, I elaborate on the action research interventions and the related research activities.