Abstract
Given the simultaneous emergence of action research on several continents and in several disciplines, it could be said that there are at least three strands of Participatory Action Research (PAR)—originating in the international development field, the education field, and the community development field. In each case, the purpose of PAR has been one of disrupting hegemony, whether the hegemony of positivist social science over popular knowledge, the hegemony of social engineering projects over community participation, or the hegemony of academic knowledge over professional practice. However, in considering how to engage PAR as a process for educating Canadian adults about sustainability, no existing PAR approach coheres well with sustainability theory. Therefore, this chapter details a theoretical reconceptualization of PAR by first illustrating the integration of these three strands of PAR with sustainability theory. Second, new ontological, epistemological, pedagogical, and social change assumptions emanating from sustainability theory are described, as part of this reconceptualization. Third, the chapter details how this reconceptualization of PAR can be enacted as part of sustainability education, including the impact in terms of socioecological change. Overall, this chapter attempts to disrupt the modernist fragmentary thought forms within existing action research theory and proposes a reconceptualization of PAR as a critical living practice—no longer as a tool but rather as a “set of relations among persons, their histories, their current situations, their dreams, their fantasies, their desires” (Carson & Sumara, 1997, p. xx).
True unity in the individual and between [humans] and nature, as well as between [human] and [human], can arise only in a form of action that does not attempt to fragment the whole of reality ... To be confused about what is different and what is not, is to be confused about everything. Thus, it is not an accident that our fragmentary form of thought is leading to such a widespread range of crises, social, political, economic, ecological, psychological, etc., in the individual and in society as a whole.
—Bohm, 1980, p. 16; emphasis in original; inclusive language added.
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© 2009 Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan
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Lange, E.A. (2009). Reconceptualizing Participatory Action Research for Sustainability Education. In: Kapoor, D., Jordan, S. (eds) Education, Participatory Action Research, and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230100640_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230100640_9
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