critical thinking and reasoning skills help

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Critical Thinking and Reasoning Skills Help

Introduction to Critical Thinking and Reasoning Skills

"The more one listens to ordinary conversations, the more

apparent it becomes that the reasoning faculties of the brain take

little part in the direction of the vocal organs."

Edgar Rice Burroughs, American author and creator of the

Tarzan series (18751950)

Lesson Summary

You've probably heard the terms "critical thinking" and "reasoning

skills" many times, in many different contexts. But what exactly

does it mean to "think critically"? And just what are "reasoning

skills"? This lesson will answer these questions and show you why

critical thinking and reasoning skills are so important.

No matter who you are or what you do, you have to make

decisions on a regular basis. You may not realize it, but even those

decisions that seem like second naturelike deciding what to

wear when you're getting dressed in the morningrequire some

critical thinking and reasoning skills. When you decide what to

wear, you take many factors into considerationthe weatherforecast; the current temperature; your plans for the day (where

are you going? who will you see?); your comfort level (will you be

walking a lot? sitting all day?); and so on. Thus, you are already a

critical thinker on some level. But your life is complicated, and you

face decisions that are much more difficult than choosing what to

wear. How do you handle a conflict? Solve a problem? Resolve a

crisis? Make a moral or ethical decision?

"The person who thinks before he acts seldom has to apologize

for his acts."

Napoleon Hill

(Think and Grow Rich)

While there's no guarantee you'll always make the right decision

or find the most effective solution to a problem, there is a way to

significantly improve your oddsand that is by improving your

critical thinking and reasoning skills.

What Are Critical Thinking and Reasoning Skills?

To improve your critical thinking and reasoning skills, you need to

know exactly what they are.

Critical Thinking

Think for a minute about the words critical thinking. What does

this phrase mean? Essentially, critical thinking is a decision-

making process. Specifically, critical thinking means carefully

considering a problem, claim, question, or situation in order to

determine the best solution. That is, when you think critically, you

take the time to consider all sides of an issue, evaluate evidence,and imagine different scenarios and possible outcomes. It sounds

like a lot of work, but the same basic critical thinking skills can be

applied to all types of situations.

Tip

It is important to keep in mind that all problems have more than

one solution. Like potato chips, you can't stop at just one. Keep

thinking (and munching!) and see how many possible answers you

can find. You might be surprised.

Critical thinking is so important because it helps you determine:

How to best solve a problem

Whether to accept or reject a claim

How to best answer a question

How to best handle a situation

Reasoning Skills

Reasoning skills, on the other hand, deal more with the process of

getting from point A, the problem, to point B, the solution. You

can get there haphazardly, or you can get there by reason.

A reason is a motive or cause for somethinga justification for

thoughts, actions, or opinions. In other words, it's why you do,

say, or think what you do. But your reasons for doing things aren't

always reasonableas you know if you've ever done or said

something in the heat of the moment. Reasoning skills ask you to

use good sense and base your reasons on facts, evidence, or

logical conclusions rather than just on your emotions. In short,

when you decide on the best way to handle a situation or

determine the best solution to a problem, you should have logical

(rather than purely emotional) reasons for coming to that

conclusion.

Logical: according to reason; according to conclusions drawn from

evidence or common sense

Emotional: drawn from emotions, from intense mental feelings

The Difference between Reason and Emotion

It would be false to say that anything emotional is not reasonable.

In fact, it's perfectly valid to take your emotions into

consideration when you make decisions. After all, how you feel is

very important. But if there's no logic or reason behind your

decisions, you're usually in for trouble.

Let's say, for example, that you need to buy a computer. This is a

rather big decision, so it's important that you make it wisely.You'll want to be sure that you:

Carefully consider your options

Consider different possibilities and outcomes

Have logical reasons to support your final decision

It may seem obvious that you need to choose a computer that

best suits your needs and budget. For example, as much as you

might like the top-of-theline gaming computer with the best video

card, almost unlimited memory, and built in surround sound, you

shouldn't get it if you only need this computer for simple

functions. But for a variety of emotional reasons, many people do

make these kinds of unwise, unreasonable decisions. They may

have thought critically and still made the wrong choice because

they let their emotions override their sense of logic and reason.

Justifying Your DecisionOne way to help ensure that you're using your critical thinking

and reasoning skills is to always justify your decisions and actions.

Why did you do what you did? Why did you make that decision?

Why did that seem like the best solution? Try this with even your

everyday decisions and actions. You'll get to know your current

decision-making process, and you'll be able to determine where in

that process you can become more effective.

Why Critical Thinking and Reasoning Skills Are Important

You will face (if you don't already) situations on the job, at home,

and at school that require critical thinking and reasoning skills. By

improving these skills, you can improve your success in everything

you do. Specifically, strong critical thinking and reasoning skills

will help you:

Compose and support strong, logical arguments

Assess the validity of other people's arguments

Make more effective and logical decisions

Solve problems more efficiently

Essentially, these four skills make up problem-solving skills. For

example, if someone wants to change your mind and convince

you of something, you have a "problem"you have to decide

whether or not to change your beliefs, whether to accept that

person's argument. Similarly, when you have a choice to make, or

a position you'd like to support, you have a different type of

"problem" to solvewhat choice to make, how to support your

position. Thus, the term problem solving can refer to any one of

these situations.

Tip

Don't be fooled by the use of the term argument. In this lessonn,

the word doesn't mean raised voices, harsh tones, and veiled

insults. Instead, in this arena, according to Princeton, the word

argument means "a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating a

truth or falsehood; the methodical process of logical reasoning."

In Short

Critical thinking is the act of carefully considering a problem,

claim, question, or situation in order to determine the best

solution. Reasoning skills, which go hand-in-hand with critical


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thinking, ask you to base your decisions on facts, evidence, and/or

logical conclusions. Critical thinking and reasoning skills are

implemented simultaneously to help you make smart decisions

and solve problems effectively. They also help you make stronger

arguments and better evaluate the arguments of others.

Skill Building until Next Time

Notice how many decisions you make throughout the day andhow many different problems you face. What kind of decisions

and problems do you encounter most often at home? At work? At

school?

Write down the process you went through to make a decision or

solve a problem today. What did you do to get from point A, the

problem, to point B, the solution?

Evaluate a decision or problem you solved recently. Do you think

it was a wise decision or effective solution? Why or why not? Did

you consider the range of issues, or did you neglect to take certain

issues into consideration? Did you make your decision based

mostly on reason or mostly on your emotions?

Exercises for this concept can be found at Critical Thinking and

Reasoning Skills Practice.

Macro & Micro Economics

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Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now

than a few years ago.Paul Samuelson

INTRODUCTION

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production,

distribution, and consumption of goods and services. A focus of

the subject is how economic agents behave or interact and how

economies work. A given economy is the result of a process that

involves its technological evolution, history and social

organization, as well as its geography, natural resource

endowment, and ecology, as main factors. These factors givecontext, content, and set the conditions and parameters in which

an economy functions. The world economic events and how they

affect the domestic economy .The economic activity, and of the

interactions of consumers and businesses. Government policy and

its effects.

SCARCITY AND EFFICIENCY: THE TWIN THEMES OF ECONOMICS:

Robbinss definition of economics (economics is the science of

scarcity)

Scarcity of an economic goods or services (means not that it is

rare but only that it is not freely available) occurs where it's

impossible to meet all unlimited desires and needs of the peoples

with limited resources. Society must find a balance between

sacrificing one resource and that will result in getting other.

Efficiency denotes the most effective use of a society's resources

in satisfying peoples wants and needs. It means that the

economy's resources are being used as effectively as possible to

satisfy people's needs and desires. Thus, the essence of

economics is to acknowledge the reality of scarcity and then

figure out how to use these resources to produce the maximum

level of satisfaction possible with the given inputs & technology.

Any problem marked by scarcity of means and multiplicity of

ends, becomes ipso facto an economic problem, and as such, a

legitimate part of the science of economics.

sOCIOCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

In the United States, anthropology usually is considered to consist

of four subdisciplines, or sub-fields: archaeology (describing and

understanding past human behavior by examining material

remains), physical or biological anthropology (describing the

evolution and modern physical variation of the human species),

anthropological linguistics, and sociocultural anthropology. Most

university departments of anthropology have faculty in three or

four of these subdisciplines. Socio-cultural anthropology often is

called simply cultural anthropology in the United States, although

a few academic programs use the term social anthropology, the

common designation in Europe. Some anthropologists identify

applied anthropology as a fifth subfield, while others consider it

part of sociocultural anthropology.

Anthropology is defined as the study of human commonalities and

differences and expressly includes the entire temporal and

geographic range of humankind in its scope. The database of the

discipline is large, including prehistoric populations as well as

every variety of contemporary society. In distinguishing itself fromother social sciences, anthropology emphasizes the holistic,

comparative, culture-centered, and fieldwork-de-pendent nature

of the discipline.

In Europe, social anthropology is more closely allied with

economics, history, and political philosophy than it is with physical

anthropology and archaeology, which often are taught in separate

programs. As social anthropology evolved in Europe, it came to be

associated with studies of the economy, ecology, polity, kinship

patterns, and social organization of non-Western peoples,

particularly in colonial Africa and Asia. The European approach to

theory was associated with sociological (especially functionalist)

and, more recently, historical approaches. In the United States,

where research focused initially on Native Americans and was

strongly influenced by the particularistic descriptive approach ofFranz Boass ethnography, anthropology came to be associated

with culture, that complex whole (in Edward Tylors words)

encompassing customs, language, material culture, social order,

philosophy, arts, and so on. European social anthropologists have

not failed to address culture and Americans have not neglected

social structure, yet the difference in terminology distinguishes an

emphasis on social relations from an emphasis on shared meaning

and behavior.

The heart of sociocultural anthropology is ethnography, the

written description of a culture group. Ethnography has

undergone many changes since it began with field reports by

missionaries and colonial officials. The pace of change has

increased since the 1960s, as recognition of global links has

become standard, other social scientists have adopted

ethnographic methods, and postmodernism has imposed stricterself-reflective criteria on writers. The methodological partner of

ethnography is ethnology, the comparative study of societies. In

its first decades, anthropology established the ideal that a

complete ethnographic record of the worlds cultures would allow

comparative studies that would lead to generalizations about the

evolution and functioning of all societies. Cross-cultural studies

continue to be one of the distinctive contributions of

anthropology to the social sciences.

HISTORY

Anthropology and sociology share common origins in the

nineteenth-century European search for a science of society.

Sociocultural anthropology and sociology also share a theoretical

history in the ongoing struggle between the desire for a

generalizing, rule-seeking science and that for a humanistic

reflection of particular lives. Throughout the twentieth century,

academic specialization and differences in research topics,

geographic focus, and methodological emphasis separated the

two disciplines. In the last several decades, globalization has

fostered a partial reconvergence of methods and subjects, though

not of worldviews, ethos, or academic bureaucracies.

Sociocultural anthropology often is contrasted with sociology: It is

said that anthropologists study small-scale societies, assume that

those societies are self-sufficient, and are usually outsiders

(politically, ethnically, and economically) to the groups they study.

These generalizations are partly true.

The methods of sociocultural anthropology have emphasized the

usefulness of seeking the large in the small by becoming

intimately acquainted with a single band, village, tribe, island, orneighborhood, and anthropologys early link to colonialism and its

base of support in Europe, Japan, China, and the United States has

privileged wealthy outsiders as observers of peasants, tribal

peoples, and marginalized groups. However, anthropology has

always kept the larger picture in mind, and for every study of an

isolated population, there are ethnographiesthat reveal links at

the regional, national, and global levels. The affiliation of socio-

cultural anthropology with archaeology and paleoanthropology

ensures that the long term and the large scale are never far from

sight. Ethnographies of industrialized societies, ranging from


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ethnic minorities to corporate cultures, begin with the microcosm

but connect to larger questions. Sociology has been associated

from its beginnings with studies of modernization and

globalization in Western societies. In the postwar world,

anthropologists became of necessity students of these processes

in the same small communities that had been their prewar

subjects of study. Anthropologists have sought ways to

encompass urban life, regional processes, and global economic

and political transformations in their work, leading them todevelop skills in quantitative social research as well as their

traditional qualitative methods.

Developments in method and theory in the twentieth century

have led to a widely perceived split between sociocultural

anthropologists who seek a natural science of society and those

who emphasize anthropologys humanistic role as an interpreter

of cultural worlds. These differences are reflected in the

distinction between emic and etic strategies. Based on the

linguistic concept of the phoneme, emic work calls for the

researcher to understand the inside view, focus on meaning and

interpretation, and grasp the natives point of view to realize

his vision of his world, in Bronislaw Malinowskis words.A good

ethnography enables readers to understand the motives,

meanings, and emotions of a different cultural world. The etic(from phonetic) approach seeks generalizations beyond the

internal cultural worlds of actors, applying social science concepts

to the particulars of a culture and often using cross-cultural

comparisons to test hypotheses. A good ethnography presents

data that can be compared with other cases. In recent years, the

writing of ethnography has self-consciously struggled to develop a

style that can evoke the sensibility of a culture while including

descriptive information in a format that allows cross-cultural

comparisons.

Sociocultural anthropology begins with description and usually

intends that description (ethnography) to be a prelude to cross-

cultural comparison that will lead to generalizations about types

of societies or even about human universals. At the same time,

anthropologists are as likely as other social scientists to be

influenced by fashions in theory.THEORY

The nineteenth-century origins of anthropology, like those of

sociology, are rooted in the expanding inquiry into the nature of

human society that characterizes the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries, but anthropologys roots also involve the

questions of biological and social evolutionism characteristic of

the era, as epitomized in the work of Charles Darwin and Herbert

Spencer. Anthropology and sociology share origins in the

foundational work of Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. However,

cultural anthropology adds to its pantheon of ancestors Tylor,

Morgan, and Frazer; it is in the work of these three men that one

can see how anthropology was set on a different trajectory. The

American Lewis Henry Morgan (Ancient Society, 1877) and the

British Edward Burnett Tylor (Primitive Culture, 1871) and James

Frazer (The Golden Bough, 1890) are counted among the founders

of anthropology because they sought to establish general laws of

human society through the comparative study of historical and

contemporary peoples. Tylor, Morgan, and Frazer were unilineal

evolutionists who believed that universal stages of evolution

could be identified in the transition from simple to complex

societies and that modern peoples could be ranked in this

evolutionary scale. These two strandsthe belief that comparison

can produce scientific generalizations and the search for

evolutionary processescontinue to characterize anthropology,

though the racist evolutionism of these early approaches was

discarded as anthropology was established as a discipline in the

1920s and 1930s.

While the work of the nineteenth-century social theorists

presaged both anthropology and sociology, by the turn of thecentury, each field was established in separate academic

departments and increasingly distinct research programs. In the

United States, anthropology as a scholarly project emerged

through the work of scholars drawn to the task of reconstructing

Native American cultures and languages, especially under the

auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology and the formative

political, administrative, and scientific work of Franz Boas. Boas

responded to the prevailing ideas of unilineal evolutionism with a

theory that came to be called historical particularism, rejecting

broad generalizations about stages of evolution in favor of

detailed studies of the environmental context and historical

development of particular societies. Boas also trained the first

generation of professional anthropologists in the United States,

and his students, such as Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert Lowie, and

Edward Sapir, pioneered new theories that could replace unilineal

evolutionism. Sapirs and Benjamin Whorf s work on links

between language and culture, Margaret Meads on enculturation

and psychological anthropology, Ruth Benedicts on ethos, Zora

Neale Hurstons on folklore, and Kroebers on the superorganic all

fostered decades of theoretical development that pushed

American anthropology in distinctive directions. Field studies with

Native Americans and other North American minorities honed the

skills of the first generations of American anthropologists in

linguistic work, informant interviews, life histories, and historical

reconstruction and established the holistic style of American

anthropology, integrating archaeology, linguistics, and physical

anthropology with the study of society and culture.

While Boass students filled library shelves with detailed and

impressive ethnographies, a new theoretical orientation

developed in Great Britain that would have a great impact on the

culture-centered world of American anthropology. This was

functionalism, and its key proponents in anthropology were

Bronislaw Malinowski (psychological functionalism) and A. R.Radcliffe-Brown (structural functionalism). The period of interest

in the ways in which cultural institutions maintain social order

which affected the United States when Radcliffe-Brown and

Malinowski spent time at American departments of anthropology

in the 1930smarks the point at which most texts officially

distinguish British social anthropology from American cultural

anthropology. Radcliffe-Brown countered Boasian particularism

with an emphasis on the search for general laws of society and

stimulated a generation of European and American students to do

the same. British social anthropologists turned their analytic focus

on the study of persons and relations in persisting social

structures and pushed themselves and their students to develop

the close observation, incisive analysis, and careful record keeping

that marked the coming of age of long-term participant

observation as a research method. Functionalist studies took

place in the context of colonialism, with the limitations and powerimbalance that that implies, yet remain impressive for the quality

of detail and their capacity to integrate descriptions of political,

economic, and kinship relations. Many ethnographic classics were

produced by British social anthropologists of that era (e.g.,

Malinowskis Argonauts of the Western Pacific in 1922 and Evans-

Pritchards Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande in

1937 and The Nuer, 1940) and their students, including Raymond

Firth, Meyer Fortes, Audrey Richards, Lucy Mair, Edmund Leach,

Max Gluckman, and Fred Eggan.

While American anthropologists added the study of social

structure and function to their repertoire, they did not abandon

their interest in historical developments, language, personality,

and ethos and retained a four-fields orientation in the training

of graduate students. While some social anthropologists found

the idea of culture impossibly vague, American anthropologists

reveled in the complexity of the concept, with Kroeber and

Kluckhohn assembling a compendium of more than 150

definitions of culture. Stimulated by the challenge of British

social anthropology, the work of Kroeber, Mead, Benedict, and

Sapir from the 1920s through the 1950s explored culture as a

distinct level of analysis and a way to grasp the distinctive ethos

and worldview of each culture, along with the active role of the

individuals acts and words in shaping a culture.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the influence of materialist approaches in

the social sciences, while limited by the anticommunism in

American public life (explicitly Marxist approaches did not appear

until the 1970s), was manifested in a new set of evolutionary and

generalizing approaches in Ameri can anthropology. The work of

Julian Steward and Leslie White laid the groundwork for a newapproach to studies of adaptation and cultural change. White

argued for an evolutionary scheme in which culture (the uniquely

human capacity to manipulate symbols), as the superorganic

human adaptive mechanism, develops through evolutionary

stages marked by the increasing ability of human groups to

capture energy through technological systems. Steward worked

on a smaller scale, arguing for the analysis of structural similarities

among cultures at a regional level, which can be understood by

recognizing the hierarchical relations among three levels of

sociocultural integration: technoeco-nomics (infrastructure),


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sociopolitical organization, and ideology (superstructure).

Stewards scheme allowed anthropologists to catalogue cultures

as structural types and encouraged the study of change over time

in a multilineal evolutionary process that he contrasted with

Whites more abstract global stages.

Materialist studies continued to develop and to shape

archaeology as well as cultural anthropology. Marshall Sahlins and

Elman R. Service merged Whites and Stewards approaches in a

neoevolutionist theory that encouraged both archaeologists and

materialist-oriented sociocultural anthropologists to consider the

regional and large-scale classification and development of

societies. Marvin Harris, Eleanor Burke Leacock, and Morton Fried

attempted to explain cultural diversity and change in the context

of the causal primacy of production and reproduction. In the

1960s and 1970s, the new field of cultural ecology developed a

neofunctionalist approach that allowed scientists to include

cultural and social aspects of human behavior in natural science

research. Roy Rappaports 1967 Pigs for the Ancestors began with

an effort to measure the energy intake and outflow of a highland

new Guinea population; the 1984 edition included a lengthy

discussion of criticisms of neofunctionalist theory and the

applicability of adaptive and evolutionary concepts to human

groups.

In France, Claude Levi-Strauss was developing ideas that would

transform the world of social science through structuralism, which

emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a totalizing theory aiming at

uncovering the common structures of the human mind.

Structuralism, which was influenced by the linguistics theories of

Saussure and Jakobson, treated the products of culture as

symbolic systems and examined the formal patterns of those

systems in order to envision discern universal structures and

cognitive patterns of the human mind. Structuralism was applied

to myths, kinship, relations to art, and every other aspect of

culture. The work of Levi-Strauss, Edmund Leach, and other

structuralists drew sharp rebuttals from theorists who sought

explanations of human diversity in material and social conditions

rather than in mental templates. Although the abstractness of

structuralism eventually limited its interest to students of culture,it continues to be a useful technique, particularly in the analysis of

the symbolic products of culture.

Ethnoscience, which emerged in the 1950s, also examined the

mental categories underlying cultural products. Drawing heavily

on linguistic theory and methodology, ethnoscience tried to

develop fieldwork methods sufficiently rigorous to delineate the

mental models that generate words and behavior and, in its

emphasis on the emic approach, insisted on the necessity of fully

accessing the native understanding of cultural domains. As

ethnoscience faded in importance in the 1970s, it was succeeded

by cognitive anthropology, the cross-cultural study of cognition.

Structuralism, ethnoscience, and responses to materialist

neoevolutionist theory stimulated the emergence of symbolic

anthropology and cultural analysis in the 1960s and 1970s, and

this in turn led to the interpretive turn that has continued in

cultural anthropology through the rest of the century. Again,

linguistics proved influential, as David Schneider, Clifford Geertz,

and Victor Turner explored new ways to study the cultural

construction of meaning and the public representation of

meaning in cultural elements. Most symbolic anthropologists

focus on the description and interpretation of particular cultural

cases, emphasizing the ethnographers role in explicating cultural

events or products, though a few symbolic anthropologists, such

as Mary Douglas, have sought general models of symbol systems.

Symbolic anthropology shifted in the 1980s toward interpretive

anthropology, which in turn generated a decade of reflection on

the writing of ethnography, seeking modes of representation that

would represent the worldview, internal logic, and emotional

sensibility of a culture. Emerging from interpretive approacheshave been experiments in ethnography, renewed interest in life

histories, and extensive critiques of an etic-oriented ethnography

that relies on the authoritative voice of an outside observer and

author. The 1980s also saw a new interest in history, spurred in

part by the work of French scholars such as Braudel, Bourdieu,

and Foucault and also playing a part in drawing some sociocultural

anthropologists toward humanistic approaches.

American cultural anthropology has always taken an interest in

evolutionary questions, and in the 1970s, the biologist E. O.

Wilson used sociobiology to challenge social scientists to study

the role of natural selection in human behavior. Anthropologists

immediate response was to criticize sociobiology as sociologically

naive, culture-bound, and potentially racist and sexist. In the

longer term, however, this challenge renewed anthropologists

interest in the holistic approach to culture, stimulating new

approaches to the flexible and complex linkage of genetic

inheritance and cultural malleability. Archaeologists, physical

anthropologists, and cultural anthropologists share an interest inthese long-term questions, which now are studied as human

behavioral ecology.

ORGANIZATION

While anthropological theory has participated in many of the

trends in the social sciences in this century, anthropologists most

often speak of themselves in terms of the topics they study and

the geographic areas in which they are expert. A cultural

anthropologist might say that she studies gender issues in the

Middle East, political hierarchy in Polynesia, or hunter-

gatherer ecology in the Arctic, with the implication that her

theoretical school is a less useful category or that one might

include several different theoretical or methodological

approaches to ones topic.

A review of textbooks in anthropology and courses offered in

larger departments provides an indication of the overlap and the

difference in range between sociological and anthropological

topics. Traditional topics in anthropology include the categories of

sociopolitical life (political anthropology, the anthropology of

religion, social organization, patterns of subsistence, economic

anthropology), cross-cultural approaches to all social science

topics (ethnicity and identity, psychological anthropology, urban

anthropology, ethnohistory, gender), theoretical approaches

(symbolic anthropology, cultural ecology), applied topics (legal

anthropology, developmental anthropology, culture change,

medical anthropology, education and culture), and topics

reflecting the persistent holism of the anthropological enterprise

(language and culture, genetics and behavior).

Anthropologists regional focus traditionally has beensmall-scalenon-Western societies, but this has changed dramatically in the

last fifty years. While sociologists and other social scientists have

become more active in non-Western contexts (particularly

economic development and modernization), anthropologists have

become more active in studying Western societies, using their

traditional skills of small-community ethnography, cultural

models, and comparison in these situations. However, as part of

their postgraduate training, most American and European

anthropologists do a lengthy period of participant observation

research in a small-scale society, usually a foraging band or a

tribal or peasant society.

One stimulus to anthropologists willingness to become

wholeheartedly involved in the study of Western, industrialized,

and mass societies has been the growth in applied work. While

sociology was committed to researching public policy issues from

its beginning, anthropology has only intermittently taken on

research directed at social problems and policy issues. Beginning

with government work during World War II and the postwar Fox

and Vicos projects in applied anthropology and as a result of

globalization and limited aca-demicjob opportunities for

anthropologists, there has been an increase in putting

anthropological concepts and methods to the service of

immediate outcomes rather than academic research. The greatest

demand for applied anthropology is in economic and social

development, medical anthropology, the anthropology of

education, and international business.

METHODS

Anthropology was born in the theories of armchair

anthropologists who based their theories about the evolution ofhuman beliefs and societies on the reports of colonial officials,

missionaries, and merchants. Since that time, the commitment of

researchers such as Boas, Mead, and Malinowski to detailed, long-

term field studies has generated the impulse that has sustained

generations of anthropologists in an effort to produce detailed,

fine-grained, firsthand descriptions of the worlds cultures.

Cultural anthropology has long held that long-term participant

observation, including mastery of local languages, is the best way

to produce valid ethnographic description. Participant observation


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is the source of anthropologys ethnographic database and the

foundation on which controlled cross-cultural comparison is built.

The work of field research and the writing of ethnography have

received much attention in recent decades. Participant

observation is now an umbrella term for a research project that,

while it extends over the long term (usually at least a year) and

relies on the use of the local language, key informants, and living

close to the ground with the people being studied, is likely to

include a range of additional research techniques. Sociocultural

anthropologists also are trained in kinship analysis, unstructured

and structured interviews, questionnaires, scales, taxonomies,

and direct and unobtrusive observation. In the past decade, there

has been a growing expectation that researchers will combine

qualitative and quantitative research methods, increasing both

the validity and the reliability of ethnographic work. Applied

anthropology has generated its own methods, some of them

shaped by the time and cash restraints of nonacademic research,

such as rapid rural assessment, participatory appraisal, and

decision-tree modeling.

Cross-cultural comparison has been a goal of anthropology from

the start. The first armchair anthropologists used sometimes

unreliable secondhand information to generate categories andstages of social evolution, but researchers soon employed more

scientific methods. Archaeologists work on regional and

chronological linkages encouraged ethnologists to trace the

development, distribution, and diffusion of culture traits

(especially in the United States, with Boass encouragement).

British social anthropologists and the neoevolutionists urged the

use of regional and global comparisons to generate models of

structural stability and change. George P. Murdock greatly

facilitated large-scale comparison when he created the Human

Relations Area Files, the physical form of the great database of

human cultures anthropology had long sought. Cross-cultural

studies in anthropology have allowed anthropologists to generate

and test midlevel hypotheses about cultural patterns and allowed

social scientists to test the broader validity of hypotheses

generated in Western contexts.

CURRENT ISSUES

In surveying the history of anthropological theory, one often

notices the persistent tension between materialist and idealist

ways of studying culture. In the current environment, after a

decade of postmodern critiques, this tension has actually split a

few academic departments, severing archaeology and biological

anthropology from cultural anthropology, or scientific from

humanistic approaches. Research specialization and job-market

pressures also interfere with the holistic four-fields approach that

American anthropologists have long considered their hallmark. In

addition, socio-cultural anthropology has been pressed by the

inroads of literary criticism, cultural studies, ethnic studies, and

other related fields into its traditional preserve. Like other social

sciences, anthropology feels that it is living through a crisis that

represents both a point in a repeated cycle of theoretical change

and a response to national and global contexts.

However, the end of the twentieth century has seen a wider

range of research and applied work than had ever been done

previously (see recent issues of American Anthropologist,

American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, and Human

Organization). Current work in anthropology includes traditional

detailed ethnographies that aim to increase the descriptive

database of the worlds cultures, problem-focused fieldwork

aimed at elucidating theoretical puzzles, reflexive ethnography

that attempts to find a moral and artistic center from which to

write, analyses of organizations and evaluations of programs

intended to guide policy decisions, and hypothesis-testing data

crunching. The long-standing distinction between materialist and

idealist approaches continues as interpretive, postmodern

anthropology seeks new ways to do the job it has been critiquingfor a decade and as ecological, evolutionist, and materialist

approaches argue with renewed vigor for a scientific discipline.

Sociocultural anthropology and sociology share modern interests

in agency; power; the relative role of social structures and

individual action in culture change; the intersections of ethnicity,

class, and gender; and the historical shaping of modern

institutions and cultural representations. In all its interests,

ongoing input from archaeology, biological anthropology, and

linguistics has given so-ciocultural anthropology a uniquely broad

and deep perspective on the human condition, and its stream of

theory is fed from these other sources of knowledge about the

human condition. In describing the commonalities that unite

cultural anthropology, Rob Borofsky speaks of anthropologists

shared ethics: a desire to publicize human commonalities

(especially in countering racism), the valuing of cultural diversity,

and the use of cultural differences as a form of cultural critique

of the anthropologists home culture and in general of industrial

mass society. Despite an explosion of variation in whatsociocultural anthropologists do, anthropologists holistic and

comparative worldview remains distinctive.

Share This

Micro and Macro: The Economic Divide

FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT

G. Chris Rodrigo

Economics is split between analysis of how the overall economy

works and how single markets function

Micro and Macro: The Economic Divide

A question of scale (photo: Zack Seckler/Corbis)

Physicists look at the big world of planets, stars, galaxies, and

gravity. But they also study the minute world of atoms and the

tiny particles that comprise those atoms.

Economists also look at two realms. There is big-picturemacroeconomics, which is concerned with how the overall

economy works. It studies such things as employment, gross

domestic product, and inflationthe stuff of news stories and

government policy debates. Little-picture microeconomics is

concerned with how supply and demand interact in individual

markets for goods and services.

In macroeconomics, the subject is typically a nationhow all

markets interact to generate big phenomena that economists call

aggregate variables. In the realm of microeconomics, the object of

analysis is a single marketfor example, whether price rises in

the automobile or oil industries are driven by supply or demand

changes. The government is a major object of analysis in

macroeconomicsfor example, studying the role it plays in

contributing to overall economic growth or fighting inflation.

Macroeconomics often extends to the international sphere

because domestic markets are linked to foreign markets throughtrade, investment, and capital flows. But microeconomics can

have an international component as well. Single markets often are

not confined to single countries; the global market for petroleum

is an obvious example.

The macro/micro split is institutionalized in economics, from

beginning courses in principles of economics through to

postgraduate studies. Economists commonly consider themselves

microeconomists or macroeconomists. The American Economic

Association recently introduced several new academic journals.

One is called Microeconomics. Another, appropriately, is titled

Macroeconomics.

Why the divide?

It was not always this way. In fact, from the late 18th century until

the Great Depression of the 1930s, economics was economics

the study of how human societies organize the production,

distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The field

began with the observations of the earliest economists, such as

Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher popularly credited with

being the father of economicsalthough scholars were making

economic observations long before Smith authored The Wealth of

Nations in 1776. Smiths notion of an invisible hand that guides

someone seeking to maximize his or her own well-being to

provide the best overall result for society as a whole is one of the

most compelling notions in the social sciences. Smith and other

early economic thinkers such as David Hume gave birth to the

field at the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

Economic theory developed considerably between the

appearance of Smiths The Wealth of Nations and the Great

Depression, but there was no separation into microeconomics and

macroeconomics. Economists implicitly assumed that either

markets were in equilibriumsuch that prices would adjust toequalize supply and demandor that in the event of a transient

shock, such as a financial crisis or a famine, markets would quickly

return to equilibrium. In other words, economists believed that

the study of individual markets would adequately explain the

behavior of what we now call aggregate variables, such as

unemployment and output.

The severe and prolonged global collapse in economic activity

that occurred during the Great Depression changed that. It was

not that economists were unaware that aggregate variables could

be unstable. They studied business cyclesas economies


6/21

regularly changed from a condition of rising output and

employment to reduced or falling growth and rising

unemployment, frequently punctuated by severe changes or

economic crises. Economists also studied money and its role in

the economy. But the economics of the time could not explain the

Great Depression. Economists operating within the classical

paradigm of markets always being in equilibrium had no plausible

explanation for the extreme market failure of the 1930s.

If Adam Smith is the father of economics, John Maynard Keynes isthe founding father of macroeconomics. Although some of the

notions of modern macroeconomics are rooted in the work of

scholars such as Irving Fisher and Knut Wicksell in the late 19th

and early 20th centuries, macroeconomics as a distinct discipline

began with Keyness masterpiece, The General Theory of

Employment, Interest and Money, in 1936. Its main concern is the

instability of aggregate variables. Whereas early economics

concentrated on equilibrium in individual markets, Keynes

introduced the simultaneous consideration of equilibrium in three

interrelated sets of marketsfor goods, labor, and finance. He

also introduced disequilibrium economics, which is the explicit

study of departures from general equilibrium. His approach was

taken up by other leading economists and developed rapidly into

what is now known as macroeconomics.

Coexistence and complementarityMicroeconomics is based on models of consumers or firms (which

economists call agents) that make decisions about what to buy,

sell, or producewith the assumption that those decisions result

in perfect market clearing (demand equals supply) and other ideal

conditions. Macroeconomics, on the other hand, began from

observed divergences from what would have been anticipated

results under the classical tradition.

Today the two fields coexist and complement each other.

Microeconomics, in its examination of the behavior of individual

consumers and firms, is divided into consumer demand theory,

production theory (also called the theory of the firm), and related

topics such as the nature of market competition, economic

welfare, the role of imperfect information in economic outcomes,

and at the most abstract, general equilibrium, which deals

simultaneously with many markets. Much economic analysis is

microeconomic in nature. It concerns such issues as the effects ofminimum wages, taxes, price supports, or monopoly on individual

markets and is filled with concepts that are recognizable in the

real world. It has applications in trade, industrial organization and

market structure, labor economics, public finance, and welfare

economics. Microeconomic analysis offers insights into such

disparate efforts as making business decisions or formulating

public policies.

Macroeconomics is more abstruse. It describes relationships

among aggregates so big as to be hard to apprehendsuch as

national income, savings, and the overall price level. The field is

conventionally divided into the study of national economic growth

in the long run, the analysis of short-run departures from

equilibrium, and the formulation of policies to stabilize the

national economythat is, to minimize fluctuations in growth and

prices. Those policies can include spending and taxing actions by

the government or monetary policy actions by the central bank.

Bridging the micro/macro divide

Like physical scientists, economists develop theory to organize

and simplify knowledge about a field and to develop a conceptual

framework for adding new knowledge. Science begins with the

accretion of informal insights, particularly with observed regular

relationships between variables that are so stable they can be

codified into laws. Theory is developed by pinning down those

invariant relationships through both experimentation and formal

logical deductionscalled models.

Since the Keynesian revolution, the economics profession has had

essentially two theoretical systems, one to explain the small

picture, the other to explain the big picture (micro and macro are

the Greek words, respectively, for small and big). Following

the approach of physics, for the past quarter century or so, a

number of economists have made sustained efforts to mergemicroeconomics and macroeconomics. They have tried to develop

microeconomic foundations for macroeconomic models on the

grounds that valid economic analysis must begin with the

behavior of the elements of microeconomic analysis: individual

households and firms that seek to optimize their conditions.

There have also been attempts to use very fast computers to

simulate the behavior of economic aggregates by summing the

behavior of large numbers of households and firms. It is too early

to say anything about the likely outcome of this effort. But within

the field of macroeconomics there is continuing progress in

improving models, whose deficiencies were exposed by the

instabilities that occurred in world markets during the global

financial crisis that began in 2008.

How they differ

Contemporary microeconomic theory evolved steadily without

fanfare from the earliest theories of how prices are determined.

Macroeconomics, on the other hand, is rooted in empirical

observations that existing theory could not explain. How to

interpret those anomalies has always been controversial. Thereare no competing schools of thought in microeconomicswhich is

unified and has a common core among all economists. The same

cannot be said of macroeconomicswhere there are, and have

been, competing schools of thought about how to explain the

behavior of economic aggregates. Those schools go by such

names as New Keynesian or New Classical. But these divisions

have been narrowing over the past few decades (Blanchard,

DellAriccia, and Mauro, 2010).

Microeconomics and macroeconomics are not the only distinct

subfields in economics. Econometrics, which seeks to apply

statistical and mathematical methods to economic analysis, is

widely considered the third core area of economics. Without the

major advances in econometrics made over the past century or

so, much of the sophisticated analysis achieved in

microeconomics and macroeconomics would not have beenpossible.

An Overview of the

Methodological Approach of

Action Research

Rory OBrien

Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto

[email protected]

1998

Citation:

O'Brien, R. (2001). Um exame da abordagem metodolgica da

pesquisa ao [An Overview of the Methodological Approach of

Action Research]. In Roberto Richardson (Ed.), Teoria e Prtica da

Pesquisa Ao [Theory and Practice of Action Research]. Joo

Pessoa, Brazil: Universidade Federal da Paraba. (English version)

Available: http://www.web.ca/~robrien/papers/arfinal.html

(Accessed 20/1/2002)

Table of Contents

Introduction

What is Action Research?

Definition

The Action Research Process

Principles of Action Research

When is Action Research used?

Situating Action Research in a Research Paradigm

Positivist Paradigm

Interpretive Paradigm

Paradigm of Praxis

Evolution of Action Research

Origins in late 1940s

Current Types of Action Research

Traditional Action ResearchContextural Action Research (Action Learning)

Radical Action Research

Educational Action Research

Action Research Tools

The Search Conference

Role of the Action Researcher

Ethical Considerations

Examples of Action Research Projects

Case Study 1 - Development of nature tourism in the Windward

Islands


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Action Research and Information Technology

Case Study 2 - Internet-based collaborative work groups in

community health

Case Study 3 - Computer conferencing in a learning community

Commentary on the need for more research

Conclusion

Introduction

If you want it done right, you may as well do it yourself. This

aphorism may seem appropriate if you are a picky housekeeper,

but more and more people are beginning to realize it can also

apply to large corporations, community development projects,

and even national governments. Such entities exist increasingly in

an interdependent world, and are relying on Action Research as a

means of coming to grips with their constantly changing and

turbulent environments.

This paper will answer the question What is Action Research?,

giving an overview of its processes and principles, stating when it

is appropriate to use, and situating it within a praxis researchparadigm. The evolution of the approach will be described,

including the various kinds of action research being used today.

The role of the action researcher will be briefly mentioned, and

some ethical considerations discussed. The tools of the action

researcher, particularly that of the use of search conferences, will

be explained. Finally three case studies will be briefly described,

two of which pertain to action research projects involving

information technology, a promising area needing further

research.

What is Action Research?

Definition

Action research is known by many other names, includingparticipatory research, collaborative inquiry, emancipatory

research, action learning, and contextural action research, but all

are variations on a theme. Put simply, action research is learning

by doing - a group of people identify a problem, do something to

resolve it, see how successful their efforts were, and if not

satisfied, try again. While this is the essence of the approach,

there are other key attributes of action research that differentiate

it from common problem-solving activities that we all engage in

every day. A more succinct definition is,

"Action research...aims to contribute both to the practical

concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to

further the goals of social science simultaneously. Thus, there is a

dual commitment in action research to study a system and

concurrently to collaborate with members of the system in

changing it in what is together regarded as a desirable direction.

Accomplishing this twin goal requires the active collaboration of

researcher and client, and thus it stresses the importance of co-

learning as a primary aspect of the research process."[i]

What separates this type of research from general professional

practices, consulting, or daily problem-solving is the emphasis on

scientific study, which is to say the researcher studies the problem

systematically and ensures the intervention is informed by

theoretical considerations. Much of the researchers time is spent

on refining the methodological tools to suit the exigencies of the

situation, and on collecting, analyzing, and presenting data on an

ongoing, cyclical basis.

Several attributes separate action research from other types of

research. Primary is its focus on turning the people involved intoresearchers, too - people learn best, and more willingly apply

what they have learned, when they do it themselves. It also has a

social dimension - the research takes place in real-world

situations, and aims to solve real problems. Finally, the initiating

researcher, unlike in other disciplines, makes no attempt to

remain objective, but openly acknowledges their bias to the other

participants.

The Action Research Process

Stephen Kemmis has developed a simple model of the cyclical

nature of the typical action research process (Figure 1). Each

cycle has four steps: plan, act, observe, reflect.

Figure 1 Simple Action Research Model

(from MacIsaac, 1995)[ii]

Gerald Susman (1983) gives a somewhat more elaborate listing.

He distinguishes five phases to be conducted within each research

cycle (Figure 2). Initially, a problem is identified and data is

collected for a more detailed diagnosis. This is followed by a

collective postulation of several possible solutions, from which a

single plan of action emerges and is implemented. Data on the

results of the intervention are collected and analyzed, and the

findings are interpreted in light of how successful the action has

been. At this point, the problem is re-assessed and the process

begins another cycle. This process continues until the problem is

resolved.

Figure 2 Detailed Action Research Model

(adapted from Susman 1983)[iii]

Principles of Action Research

What gives action research its unique flavour is the set of

principles that guide the research. Winter (1989) provides a

comprehensive overview of six key principles.[iv]

1) Reflexive critique

An account of a situation, such as notes, transcripts or official

documents, will make implicit claims to be authoritative, i.e., itimplies that it is factual and true. Truth in a social setting,

however, is relative to the teller. The principle of reflective

critique ensures people reflect on issues and processes and make

explicit the interpretations, biases, assumptions and concerns

upon which judgments are made. In this way, practical accounts

can give rise to theoretical considerations.

2) Dialectical critique

Reality, particularly social reality, is consensually validated, which

is to say it is shared through language. Phenomena are

conceptualized in dialogue, therefore a dialectical critique is

required to understand the set of relationships both between the

phenomenon and its context, and between the elements

constituting the phenomenon. The key elements to focus

attention on are those constituent elements that are unstable, or

in opposition to one another. These are the ones that are most

likely to create changes.

3) Collaborative Resource

Participants in an action research project are co-researchers. The

principle of collaborative resource presupposes that each persons

ideas are equally significant as potential resources for creating

interpretive categories of analysis, negotiated among the

participants. It strives to avoid the skewing of credibility

stemming from the prior status of an idea-holder. It especially

makes possible the insights gleaned from noting the

contradictions both between many viewpoints and within a single

viewpoint

4) Risk

The change process potentially threatens all previously

established ways of doing things, thus creating psychic fears

among the practitioners. One of the more prominent fears comes

from the risk to ego stemming from open discussion of ones

interpretations, ideas, and judgments. Initiators of action

research will use this principle to allay others fears and invite

participation by pointing out that they, too, will be subject to the


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same process, and that whatever the outcome, learning will take

place.

5) Plural Structure

The nature of the research embodies a multiplicity of views,

commentaries and critiques, leading to multiple possible actions

and interpretations. This plural structure of inquiry requires a

plural text for reporting. This means that there will be manyaccounts made explicit, with commentaries on their

contradictions, and a range of options for action presented. A

report, therefore, acts as a support for ongoing discussion among

collaborators, rather than a final conclusion of fact.

6) Theory, Practice, Transformation

For action researchers, theory informs practice, practice refines

theory, in a continuous transformation. In any setting, peoples

actions are based on implicitly held assumptions, theories and

hypotheses, and with every observed result, theoretical

knowledge is enhanced. The two are intertwined aspects of a

single change process. It is up to the researchers to make explicit

the theoretical justifications for the actions, and to question the

bases of those justifications. The ensuing practical applicationsthat follow are subjected to further analysis, in a transformative

cycle that continuously alternates emphasis between theory and

practice.

When is Action Research used?

Action research is used in real situations, rather than in contrived,

experimental studies, since its primary focus is on solving real

problems. It can, however, be used by social scientists for

preliminary or pilot research, especially when the situation is too

ambiguous to frame a precise research question. Mostly, though,

in accordance with its principles, it is chosen when circumstances

require flexibility, the involvement of the people in the research,

or change must take place quickly or holistically.

It is often the case that those who apply this approach arepractitioners who wish to improve understanding of their

practice, social change activists trying to mount an action

campaign, or, more likely, academics who have been invited into

an organization (or other domain) by decision-makers aware of a

problem requiring action research, but lacking the requisite

methodological knowledge to deal with it.

Situating Action Research in a Research Paradigm

Positivist Paradigm

The main research paradigm for the past several centuries has

been that of Logical Positivism. This paradigm is based on a

number of principles, including: a belief in an objective reality,

knowledge of which is only gained from sense data that can be

directly experienced and verified between independent

observers. Phenomena are subject to natural laws that humans

discover in a logical manner through empirical testing, using

inductive and deductive hypotheses derived from a body of

scientific theory. Its methods rely heavily on quantitative

measures, with relationships among variables commonly shown

by mathematical means. Positivism, used in scientific and applied

research, has been considered by many to be the antithesis of the

principles of action research (Susman and Evered 1978, Winter

1989).

Interpretive Paradigm

Over the last half century, a new research paradigm has emerged

in the social sciences to break out of the constraints imposed by

positivism. With its emphasis on the relationship betweensocially-engendered concept formation and language, it can be

referred to as the Interpretive paradigm. Containing such

qualitative methodological approaches as phenomenology,

ethnography, and hermeneutics, it is characterized by a belief in a

socially constructed, subjectively-based reality, one that is

influenced by culture and history. Nonetheless it still retains the

ideals of researcher objectivity, and researcher as passive

collector and expert interpreter of data.

Paradigm of Praxis

Though sharing a number of perspectives with the interpretive

paradigm, and making considerable use of its related qualitative

methodologies, there are some researchers who feel that neither

it nor the positivist paradigms are sufficient epistemological

structures under which to place action research (Lather 1986,

Morley 1991). Rather, a paradigm of Praxis is seen as where the

main affinities lie. Praxis, a term used by Aristotle, is the art of

acting upon the conditions one faces in order to change them. Itdeals with the disciplines and activities predominant in the ethical

and political lives of people. Aristotle contrasted this with Theoria

- those sciences and activities that are concerned with knowing

for its own sake. Both are equally needed he thought. That

knowledge is derived from practice, and practice informed by

knowledge, in an ongoing process, is a cornerstone of action

research. Action researchers also reject the notion of researcher

neutrality, understanding that the most active researcher is often

one who has most at stake in resolving a problematic situation.

Evolution of Action Research

Origins in late 1940s

Kurt Lewin is generally considered the father of action research.

A German social and experimental psychologist, and one of thefounders of the Gestalt school, he was concerned with social

problems, and focused on participative group processes for

addressing conflict, crises, and change, generally within

organizations. Initially, he was associated with the Center for

Group Dynamics at MIT in Boston, but soon went on to establish

his own National Training Laboratories.

Lewin first coined the term action research in his 1946 paper

Action Research and Minority Problems,*v+ characterizing

Action Research as a comparative research on the conditions and

effects of various forms of social action and research leading to

social action, using a process of a spiralof steps, each of which

is composed of a circle of planning, action, and fact-finding about

the result of the action.

Eric Trist, another major contributor to the field from thatimmediate post-war era, was a social psychiatrist whose group at

the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London engaged in

applied social research, initially for the civil repatriation of

German prisoners of war. He and his colleagues tended to focus

more on large-scale, multi-organizational problems.

Both Lewin and Trist applied their research to systemic change in

and between organizations. They emphasized direct professional

- client collaboration and affirmed the role of group relations as

basis for problem-solving. Both were avid proponents of the

principle that decisions are best implemented by those who help

make them.

Current Types of Action Research

By the mid-1970s, the field had evolved, revealing 4 main

streams that had emerged: traditional, contextural (action

learning), radical, and educational action research.

Traditional Action Research

Traditional Action Research stemmed from Lewins work within

organizations and encompasses the concepts and practices of

Field Theory, Group Dynamics, T-Groups, and the Clinical Model.

The growing importance of labour-management relations led to

the application of action research in the areas of Organization

Development, Quality of Working Life (QWL), Socio-technical

systems (e.g., Information Systems), and Organizational

Democracy. This traditional approach tends toward the

conservative, generally maintaining the status quo with regards to

organizational power structures.

Contextural Action Research (Action Learning)

Contextural Action Research, also sometimes referred to as Action

Learning, is an approach derived from Trists work on relations

between organizations. It is contextural, insofar as it entails

reconstituting the structural relations among actors in a social

environment; domain-based, in that it tries to involve all affected

parties and stakeholders; holographic, as each participant

understands the working of the whole; and it stresses that


9/21

participants act as project designers and co-researchers. The

concept of organizational ecology, and the use of search

conferences come out of contextural action research, which is

more of a liberal philosophy, with social transformation occurring

by consensus and normative incrementalism.

Radical Action Research

The Radical stream, which has its roots in Marxian dialectical

materialism and the praxis orientations of Antonio Gramsci, has a

strong focus on emancipation and the overcoming of power

imbalances. Participatory Action Research, often found in

liberationist movements and international development circles,

and Feminist Action Research both strive for social transformation

via an advocacy process to strengthen peripheral groups in

society.

Educational Action Research

A fourth stream, that of Educational Action Research, has its

foundations in the writings of John Dewey, the great American

educational philosopher of the 1920s and 30s, who believed that

professional educators should become involved in community

problem-solving. Its practitioners, not surprisingly, operatemainly out of educational institutions, and focus on development

of curriculum, professional development, and applying learning in

a social context. It is often the case that university-based action

researchers work with primary and secondary school teachers and

students on community projects.

Action Research Tools

Action Research is more of a holistic approach to problem-solving,

rather than a single method for collecting and analyzing data.

Thus, it allows for several different research tools to be used as

the project is conducted. These various methods, which are

generally common to the qualitative research paradigm, include:

keeping a research journal, document collection and analysis,

participant observation recordings, questionnaire surveys,

structured and unstructured interviews, and case studies.

The Search Conference

Of all of the tools utilized by action researchers, the one that has

been developed exclusively to suit the needs of the action

research approach is that of the search conference, initially

developed by Eric Trist and Fred Emery at the Tavistock Institute

in 1959, and first implemented for the merger of Bristol-Siddley

Aircraft Engines in 1960.

The search conference format has seen widespread development

since that time, with variations on Trist and Emerys theme

becoming known under other names due to their promotion by

individual academics and consultants. These include Dannemiller-

Tysons Interactive Strategic Planning, Marvin Weisbord's Future

Search Conference, Dick Axelrod's Conference Model Redesign,

Harrison Owens Open Space, and ICAs Strategic Planning (Rouda

1995).

Search conferences also have been conducted for many different

circumstances and participants, including: decision-makers from

several countries visioning the Future of Participative Democracy

in the Americas;*vi+ practitioners and policymakers in the field of

health promotion in Ontario taking charge in an era of

cutbacks;[vii] and Xerox employees sorting out enterprise re-

organization.[viii]

Eric Trist sums up the process quite nicely -

"Searching...is carried out in groups which are composed of the

relevant stakeholders. The group meets under social islandconditions for 2-3 days, sometimes as long as five. The opening

sessions are concerned with elucidating the factors operating in

the wider contextual environment - those producing the meta-

problems and likely to affect the future. The content is

contributed entirely by the members. The staff are facilitators

only. Items are listed in the first instance without criticism in the

plenary session and displayed on flip charts which surround the

room. The material is discussed in greater depth in small groups

and the composite picture checked out in plenary. The group

next examines its own organizational setting or settings against

this wider background and then proceeds to construct a picture of

a desirable future. It is surprising how much agreement there

often is. Only when all this has been done is consideration given

to action steps..."[ix]

Figure 3 provides a schematic of a typical search conference.

Pre-conference process

set up Advisory Group of local representatives

agree on process design and participants

use focus groups for preparation

invitations, distribution of introductory materials

Introductory plenary

introductions, review objectives, outline process, introduce first

stage

Small group session 1SCANNING THE ISSUE

past and present context

assess current situation

outline probable futures

Presentation plenary

reports from small groups, discuss directions, introduce second

stage

Small group session 2

DESIRED FUTURES

long-range visions alternative / preferred futures


reports, review progress, introduction to third stage

Small group session 3

OPTIONS FOR CHANGE

constraints and opportunities

possible futures


reports, define strategic tasks / actions, select key tasks, form task

groups

Task Group sessions

TASK GROUP MEETINGS

Final plenary

Task Group reports, discuss future contacts, create new Advisory

Group

Post-conference process report distributed

follow-up contacts

Advisory Group facilitates meetings of Task Groups

feedback on proposed actions

further search conferences

widen network

continuing evaluation of outcomes


10/21

Figure 3 - Search Conference

(adapted from The ABL Group, 1997)[x]

Role of the Action Researcher

Upon invitation into a domain, the outside researchers role is to

implement the Action Research method in such a manner as to

produce a mutually agreeable outcome for all participants, with

the process being maintained by them afterwards. To accomplishthis, it may necessitate the adoption of many different roles at

various stages of the process, including those of

planner leader

catalyzer facilitator

teacher designer

listener observer

synthesizer reporter

The main role, however, is to nurture local leaders to the point

where they can take responsibility for the process. This point is

reached they understand the methods and are able to carry on

when the initiating researcher leaves.

In many Action Research situations, the hired researchers role isprimarily to take the time to facilitate dialogue and foster

reflective analysis among the participants, provide them with

periodic reports, and write a final report when the researchers

involvement has ended.

Ethical Considerations

Because action research is carried out in real-world

circumstances, and involves close and open communication

among the people involved, the researchers must pay close

attention to ethical considerations in the conduct of their work.

Richard Winter (1996) lists a number of principles:

Make sure that the relevant persons, committees and

authorities have been consulted, and that the principles guiding

the work are accepted in advance by all. All participants must be allowed to influence the work, and

the wishes of those who do not wish to participate must be

respected.

The development of the work must remain visible and open to

suggestions from others.

Permission must be obtained before making observations or

examining documents produced for other purposes.

Descriptions of others work and points of view must be

negotiated with those concerned before being published.

The researcher must accept responsibility for maintaining

confidentiality.*xi+

To this might be added several more points:

Decisions made about the direction of the research and the

probable outcomes are collective

Researchers are explicit about the nature of the research

process from the beginning, including all personal biases and

interests

There is equal access to information generated by the process

for all participants

The outside researcher and the initial design team must

create a process that maximizes the opportunities for

involvement of all participants.

Examples of Action Research Projects

To better illustrate how action research can proceed, three case

studies are presented. Action research projects are generallysituationally unique, but there are elements in the methods that

can be used by other researchers in different circumstances. The

first case study, an account taken from the writings of one of the

researchers involved (Franklin 1994), involves a research project

to stimulate the development of nature tourism services in the

Caribbean. It represents a fairly typical example of an action

research initiative. The second and third case studies centre

around the use of computer communications, and therefore

illustrate a departure from the norm in this regard. They are

presented following a brief overview of this potentially promising

technical innovation.

Case Study 1 - Development of nature tourism in the Windward

Islands

In 1991, an action research process was initiated to explore how

nature tourism could be instituted on each of the four Windward

Islands in the Caribbean - St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, and St.Vincent. The government took the lead, for environmental

conservation, community-based development, and national

economic development purposes. Realizing that the consultation

process had to involve many stakeholders, including

representatives of several government ministries, environmental

and heritage groups, community organizations, womens and

youth groups, farmers cooperatives, and private business, an

action research approach was seen as appropriate.

Two action researchers from York University in Toronto, with prior

experience in the region, were hired to implement the project,

with a majority of the funding coming from the Canadian

International Development Agency. Multi-stakeholder national

advisory councils were formed, and national project coordinators

selected as local project liaisons. Their first main task was toorganize a search conference on each island.

The search conferences took place, the outcome of which was a

set of recommendations and/or action plans for the carrying out

of a number of nature tourism-oriented sub-projects at the local

community level. At this point, extended advisory groups were

formed on several of the islands, and national awareness activities

and community sub-projects were implemented in some cases.

To maintain the process, regional project meetings were held,

where project coordinators and key advisory members shared

experiences, conducted self-evaluations and developed plans for

maintaining the process (e.g., fundraising). One of the more

valuable tools for building a sense of community was the use of a

videocamera to create a documentary video of a local project.

The outcomes varied.[xii] In St. Vincent the research project was

highly successful, with several viable local developments

instituted. Grenada and St. Lucia showed mixed outcomes, and

Dominica was the least successful, the process curtailed by the

government soon after the search conference took place. The

main difference in the outcomes, it was felt, was in the willingness

of the key government personnel to let go and allow the

process to be jointly controlled by all participants. There is always

a risk that this kind of research will empower stakeholders, and

change existing power relations, the threat of which is too much

for some decision-makers, but if given the opportunity, there are

many things that a collaborative group of citizens can accomplish

that might not be possible otherwise.

Action Research and Information Technology

In the past ten years or so, there has been a marked increase in

the number of organizations that are making use of information

technology and computer mediated communications. This has led

to a number of convergences between information systems and

action research. In some cases, it has been a matter of managers

of corporate networks employing action research techniques to

facilitate large-scale changes to their information systems. In

others, it has been a question of community-based action

research projects making use of computer communications to

broaden participation.

Much of the action research carried out over the past 40 years has

been conducted in local settings with the participants meeting

face-to-face with real-time dialogue. The emergence of the

Internet has led to an explosion of asynchronous and aspatialgroup communication in the form of e-mail and computer

conferences, and recently, v-mail and video conferencing. While

there have been numerous attempts to use this new technology

in assisting group learning, both within organizations and among

groups in the community [this author has been involved with a

dozen or more projects of this kind in the nonprofit sector in

Canada alone], there is a dearth of published studies on the use of

action research methods in such projects Lau and Hayward

(1997), in a recent review of the literature, found that most

research on group support systems to date has been in short-


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term, experimental situations using quantitative methods.. There

are a few examples, though, of longitudinal studies in naturalistic

settings using qualitative methods; of those that did use action

research, none studied the use and effects of communication

systems in groups and organizations.

We can now to turn to the case studies, both of which are

situated in an area in need of more research - that of the use of

information technology as a potentially powerful adjunct to actionresearch processes.

Case Study 2 - Internet-based collaborative work groups in

community health

Lau and Hayward (1997) used an action research approach in a

study of their own to explore the structuration of Internet-based

collaborative work groups. Over a two-year period, the

researchers participated as facilitators in three action research

cycles of problem-solving among approximately 15 instructors

and project staff, and 25 health professionals from various regions

striving to make a transition to a more community-based health

program. The aim was to explore how Internet-based

communications would influence their evolution into a virtual

collaborative workgroup.

The first phase was taken up with defining expectations, providing

the technology and developing the customized workgroup

system. Feedback from participants noted that shorter and more

spaced training sessions, with instructions more focused on

specific projects would have been more helpful. The next phase

saw the full deployment of the system, and the main lesson

learned was that the steepness of the learning curve was severely

underestimated, with frustrations only minimally satisfied by a

great deal of technical support provided by telephone. The final

cycle saw the stabilization of the system and the emergence of

the virtual groups

The researchers found that those who used the system

interactively were more likely to establish projects that were

collaborative in nature, and that the lack of high qualityinformation on community healthcare online was a drawback.

The participants reported learning a great deal from the initiative.

The interpretations of the study suggest that role clarity,

relationship building, information sharing, resource support, and

experiential learning are important aspects in virtual group

development. There was also a sense that more research was

needed on how group support systems can help groups interact

with their external environment, as well as on how to enhance

the process of learning by group members.

Case Study 3 - Computer conferencing in a learning community

Comstock and Fox (1995) have written about their experiences in

integrating computer conferencing into a learning community for

mid-career working adults attending a Graduate Ma

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