that action research in OD seeks to generate practical knowing. There are different forms
of knowing, what Reason and Torbert (2001) refer to as an extended epistemology, which
includes propositional or scientific knowing and practical knowing. Toulmin (1990) has
pointed out that as the rational became the focus of modernity to the exclusion of the
humanistic, practical knowing became excluded from scholarship as after the seventeenth
century as philosophers turned to problems of the objectivity of knowing. This was a shift
from knowing in a descriptive mode to knowing in explanatory mode where things were no
longer presented in relation to the knowing subject but were related to one another in
recurring patterns.
There is a problem about the use of the term ‘science’ in relation to action research
(Cassell and Johnson 2006). ‘Science’ is defined typically in terms of a particular form of
knowledge articulated by positivist norms. But as Putnam (1978) argues there is more to
knowing than scientific knowing and that, in his view, it is a cultural necessity to include
practical knowing in our efforts to understand ourselves and science. In action research
theory and action are interlinked inextricably, each feeding into the other in recurrent
systemic cycles (Levin 2012).
The realm of practical knowing, as contrasted with that of scientific knowing which
seeks to create universal knowledge, directs us to the concerns of human living and the
successful performance of daily tasks and discovering solutions that work (Lonergan 1992;
Coghlan 2011). It is particular, contextual and practical and it changes with every situation
as what is familiar in one place may be unfamiliar in another and what works in one setting
may not work in another. Therefore, practical knowing is always incomplete and can only
be completed by attending to figuring out what is needed in situations in which one is at a
given time. As no two situations are identical we reason, reflect and judge in a practical
pattern of knowing in order to move from one setting to another, grasping what modifications
are needed and deciding how to act.
Dick et al. (2009) discuss that terms like ‘theory’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ are
synonymous, with theory being the ‘grand’ term for the activities of knowing, understanding
and making sense. In this article, we are using the term practical knowing as a
term that encompasses notions like ‘knowing how’ and ‘actionable knowledge’. Focusing
on knowing rather than knowledge enables attention to how we know rather than what we
know and allows the philosophical and practical activities of action and reflection to be
described as action researchers articulate the operations of their experience, their understanding,
their judgments and their actions (Meynell 1998; Coghlan 2011). Accordingly we
are focusing on quality, defined in process terms of being rigorous, reflective and relevant,
rather than on scientific outcome.
Our second feature is that action research involves researching in the present tense.
Action research builds on the past, takes place in the present with a view to shaping
the future (Chandler and Torbert 2003). Accordingly, engagement in the cycles of
action and reflection perform both a practical and philosophical function in its
attentiveness and reflexivity as to what is going on at any given moment and how that
attentiveness leads to decisions and choices and yields purposeful action. Accordingly,
action researchers need to show how they engaged in cycles of action and reflection in
collaboration with others, how they accessed multiple data sources to provide contradictory
and confirming interpretations, what choices were made along the way and
how they were made, provide evidence of how they challenged and tested their
assumptions and interpretations continuously throughout the project and how their
interpretations and outcomes were challenged, supported or disconfirmed from existing
literature.