Co-operative inquiry was conceived as an authentic science of humans as self-determining persons. But what if we extend our definition of persons to include beings in the more-than-human world – and indeed the cosmos itself – as sentient and responsive? This paper gives some account of a series of co-operative inquiries with human and river persons worldwide, drawing on living cosmos panpsychism to address questions of the kind, What would it be like to live in a world of sentient beings rather than inert objects? The paper includes some narratives of encounters with animals who appear at our river encounters, and reflects on the veracity claims we are making.

Welcome to this Special Issue of River Research and Applications, entitled Voicing Rivers. As an editorial group, it has been a great privilege to read and consider responses to our call for contributions and share with readers, authors and reviewers involved in this journey. We invited proposals for articles and creative work to focus on stories of, by, from and for rivers, from a variety of perspectives. This Special Issue has been a collaborative project involving nearly 20 rivers and over 50 people. We thank contributors, reviewers and the River Research and Applications journal editorial and production team.

A co‐operative inquiry was established to explore the experience of a panpsychic world of sentient beings rather than inert objects, a world in which mind—sentience, subjectivity, and the will of self‐realization—is a fundamental aspect of matter, just as matter is a fundamental aspect of mind. The nature of worldviews, the fundamental basis of our perceiving, thinking, valuing, and acting, is addressed and a brief outline of living cosmos panpsychism offered. The inquiry asks, could we humans, through intentional engagement, relate to the rivers as beings, subjects, or other‐than‐human persons in their own right? How might we engage with the rivers through personal relationship, ceremony, and invocation? What are the possibilities for reciprocal communication? In short, how might rivers speak?

What kind of learning is required to bring us towards a more sustainable future? We argue that when behaviourally and technically complex issues intertwine, a collaborative social learning process that engages diverse actors in deep systems change is necessary. The learning required includes but overtakes debate, bringing organisations, individuals and communities into cycles of experiential, cumulative, ad hoc and opportunistic, yet systematic, learning. Current conceptualisations and approaches to learning have not been framed with the requisite level of integrated complexity given our sustainability challenges. This article introduces the action research approach of learning history in an open system' in the service of such learning. Updating the heretofore single-project focussed learning history, we present recent methodological developments for its use in open systems that support a joining up of projects and sites of endeavour to support deeper and accumulating systems' learning. We explore the links to learning literature drawing on developments in aesthetics and arts-based action research to suggest our approach is one useful way of responding to the more general challenge of scale that concerns action researchers.

The success or failure of an action research venture often depends on what happens at the beginning of the inquiry process: in the way access is established, and on how participants and co-researchers are engaged early on. ‘Opening communicative space’ is important because, however we base our theory and practice of action research, the first steps are fateful. We draw on Habermas’s theorizing of the boundary-crises between system and lifeworld to explore the theory behind the idea of communicative space. We attempt to bring these abstract concepts to life, and to illustrate key aspects of action research practice through a review of some of the key challenges, opportunities, and paradoxes which emerge in the early stages of action research projects. Drawing on the literature and on exemplars, we show how the process of opening communicative space can be mapped onto a theory of group development that suggests a progression through phases of inclusion, control, and intimacy. Furthermore, we review an example of third-person action research to illustrate some of the issues raised by the need for both external and internal validation. We conclude that the practices of opening communicative space are necessarily paradoxical, and put forward a list of paradoxes with which facilitators and initiators of action research may need to engage in the start-up phases of their work.

The success or failure of an action research venture often depends on what happens at the beginning of the inquiry process: in the way access is established, and on how participants and coresearchers are engaged early on. ‘Opening communicative space’ is important because, however we base our theory and practice of action research, the first steps are fateful. We draw on Habermas’s theorizing of the boundary-crises between system and lifeworld to explore the theory behind the idea of communicative space. We attempt to bring these abstract concepts to life, and to illustrate key aspects of action research practice through a review of some of the key challenges, opportunities, and paradoxes which emerge in the early stages of action research projects. Drawing on the literature and on exemplars, we show how the process of opening communicative space can be mapped onto a theory of group development that suggests a progression through phases of inclusion, control, and intimacy. Furthermore, we review an example of third-person action research to illustrate some of the issues raised by the need for both external and internal validation. We conclude that the practices of opening communicative space are necessarily paradoxical, and put forward a list of paradoxes with which facilitators and initiators of action research may need to engage in the start-up phases of their work. Action Research Volume 7(3): 243–262 Copyright© 2009 SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/1476750309336715

Introduction: How to Situate and Define Action Research - Hilary Bradbury PART ONE: PRACTICES Introduction to Practices - Alfredo Ortiz Aragon and Maria Teresa Castillo-Burguete The Practice of Learning History: Local and Open System Approaches - Hilary Bradbury, George Roth, Margaret Gearty PRA, PLA and Pluralism: Practice and Theory - Robert Chambers Developing the Practice of Leading Change through Insider Action Research: A Dynamic Capability Perspective - David Coghlan and A.B. Shani Innovations In Appreciative Inquiry: Critical Appreciative Inquiry With Excluded Pakistani Women - Graham Duncan Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry - Aftab Erfan and Bill Torbert Systematization of Experiences: A Practice of Participatory Research from Latin America - Elza Falkembach and Alfonso Torres Carillo Empowerment Evaluation and Action Research: A Convergence of Values, Principles, and Purpose - David M. Fetterman Action Evaluation: An Action Research Practice for the Participative Definition, Monitoring, and Assessment of Success in Social Innovation and Conflict Engagement - Victor J. Friedman and Jay Rothman Theatre in Participatory Action Research: Experiences from Bangladesh - Meghna Guhathakurta Using T-Groups to Develop Action Research Skills In Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous Environments - Michael Krot and Lisa Stefanac The Action Research Practice of Urban Planning - An Example from Hong Kong - Hok Bun Ku & Jackie Y. C. Kwok The artistry of emancipatory practice: Photovoice, creative techniques, and feminist anti-racist participatory action research - M. Brinton Lykes and Holly Scheib Action Science Revisited: Building Knowledge Out of Practice to Transform Practice - Diana McLain Smith Systemic Intervention - Gerald Midgley Community Based Participatory Research with communities defined by race, ethnicity, and disability: Translating theory to practice - Christina Nicolaidis and Dora Raymaker Action Learning - Mike Pedler and John Burgoyne The Network Leadership Innovation Lab: A Practice for Social Change - Elissa Perry, Robin Katcher, Mark Leach and Laurie Mazur Awareness-Based Action Research: Catching Social Reality Creation in Flight - Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer The World Cafe in Action Research Settings - Frederick Steier, Juanita Brown and Flavio Mesquita da Silva Ethnographic Action Research: Media, information and communicative ecologies for development initiatives - Jo Tacchi Re-Fashioning Citizens' Juries: Participatory Democracy In Action - Tom Wakeford, Michel Pimbert and Erin Walcon The practice of helping students to find their first person voice in creating living-theories for Education - Jack Whitehead The Practice of Teaching Co-operative Inquiry - Lyle Yorks PART TWO: EXEMPLARS Introduction to Exemplars - Svante Lifvergren and Kent Glenzer Symbiosis of Action Research and Deliberative Democracy in the Context of Participatory Constitution-Making - Oguz N. Baburoglu, Gulru Z. Goker, Emre Koyuncu Action Research in Universities and Higher Education Worldwide - Rebecca Boden, Davydd Greenwood, Budd Hall, Morten Levin, Judi Marshall, and Susan Wright 'I'm not afraid of him that dog barks but he don't bite'. PAR processes, gender equity and emancipation with women in Yucatan, Mexico - Maria Teresa Castillo-Burguete, Carmen Garcia-Gomez, Pedro Castro-Borges and Federico Dickinson Insurgent inquiry: Connecting action research, impact evaluation, and global strategy in a rights-based international development NGO - Kent Glenzer, Elisa Martinez, and Michael Drinkwater Action Research with Marginalized Immigrants' Coming to Voice: Twenty Years of Social Movement Support in Taiwan and Still Going - Hsiao-Chuan Hsia Improving health and well being: Researching alongside marginalized people across diverse domains - Tina Koch After a Decade of Action Research: Impactful Systems Improvement in Swedish Healthcare - Svante Lifvergren, Tony Huzzard and Andreas Hellstrom Action Research As A Transformative Force In Management Education: Introducing The Collaboratory - Katrin Muff Achieving Equity in Education - Ernie Stringer PART THREE: GROUNDINGS Introduction to Groundings - Hilary Bradbury Praxis - Retrieving the Roots of Action Research - Olav Eikeland Core Issues in Modern Epistemology for Action Researchers: dancing between knower and known - Gil Coleman Social Construction and Research as Action - Kenneth J. Gergen and Mary M. Gergen How to succeed in action research without really acting: Tracing the development of action research to constructivist practice in organizational worklife - Bjorn Gustavsen and Oyvind Palshaugen Organization Development: Action Research for Organizational Change - David Coghlan Evolutionary Systems Thinking: What Gregory Bateson, Kurt Lewin, and Jacob Moreno Offered to Action Research That Still Remains to be Learned - Davydd J. Greenwood How Change Happens: The implications of complexity and systems thinking for Action Research - Danny Burns Complex Systems and Emergence in Action Research - Benyamin Lichtenstein Critical theory and critical participatory action research - Stephen Kemmis, Robin McTaggart and Rhonda Nixon Power and Knowledge - John Gaventa and Andrea Cornwall Research, Participation and Social Transformation: Grounding Systematization of Experiences in Latin American Perspectives - Danilo R. Streck and Oscar Jara Holiday Knowledge Democracy, Community Based Action Research, The Global South And The Excluded North - George Ladaah Openjuru, Namrata Jaitli, Rajesh Tandon and Budd Hall Participatory Action Research: Its Origins and Future in Women's Ways - Marja-Liisa Swantz The Location of Race in Action Research - Erica Gabrielle Foldy Sex and Sensibilities: Doing Action Research while Respecting Even Inspiring Dignity - Lauren Martin Crowdsourcing and Action Research. Fostering people's participation in research through digital media - Chiara Certoma and Michel Pimbert Naturally emerging regulation and the danger of delegitimizing conventional leadership: Drawing on the example of Wikipedia - Dariusz Jemielniak Action Research in an Online World - Dusty Columbia Embury Large Scale Change Action Research - Steve Waddell, Milla McLachlan, Greta Meszoely and Sandra Waddock Companions to Action Research: Reaching beyond our networks to build alignments and a common repository of resources - Gabriele Bammer Action Research and Ecological Practice - Peter Reason and Susan Canney Ecofeminism and systems thinking: Shared ethics of care for action research - Anne Stephens The Integrating (Feminine) Reach Of Action Research: A Nonet For Epistemological Voice - Hilary Bradbury Expanding Reach and Justice with PAR: Working with More Than Humans - Debra Merskin and Debra Durham PART FOUR: SKILLS Introduction to Skills - Dusty Columbia Embury Widening the Circle: Ethical Reflection in Action Research and the Practice of Structured Ethical Reflection - Mary Brydon-Miller, Amy Rector Aranda, and Douglas M. Stevens The Skillful Means of Engaged Research - Jacques M. Chevalier, Daniel J. Buckles and Michelle Bourassa Feelings in first person action research - Hanne Heen Clearing Obstacles: An Exercise to Expand a Person's Repertoire of Action - Elaine Herdman-Barker and Aftab Erfan A cross-cultural approach with East-Asian epistemology: Developing soft skills in action research - Noriyuki Inoue Cultivating Intention (As we enter the fray): The Practice of Embodying Presence, Awareness, and Purpose as Action Researchers - David McCallum and Aliki Nicolaides Holding Theory Skillfully in Consulting Interventions - Grady McGonagill and Dana Carman You Better Check Your Method Before You Wreck Your Method: Challenging and Transforming Photovoice - Angie P. Mejia Discovering Philosophical Assumptions That Guide Action Research: The Reflexive Toolbox Approach - Michael O'Rourke, Chad Gonnerman, Stephen J. Crowley, and Troy E. Hall Radical epistemology as caffeine for social change - Alfredo Ortiz Aragon and Juan Carlos Giles Macedo Mediated dialogue in action research - Charles J. Palus and John B. McGuire Teaching The Heart of Action Research Skills: Breaking Free in the Classroom - Timothy Pyrch Practice of Mindful Intuition: Bi-Directional Openness: The Skill of Expressing And Sensing Leadership That Serves a Group - Yumi Sera Designerly Ways for Action Research - Howard Silverman Nurturing Creative Destruction: Bringing Management Mindsets and Influence Skillsets to Health Care - Nicole A. Steckler and James J. Huntzicker Teaching and Learning Reflective Practice in the Action Science/Action Inquiry Tradition - Steven S. Taylor, Jenny W. Rudolph, and Erica Gabrielle Foldy From Research On to Research With: Developing Skills for Research with Sex Workers - Emily van der Meulen Shared inquiry capabilities and differing inquiry preferences: Navigating 'full cycle' iterations of action research - Yoland Wadsworth Unlocking the Secrets of Personal and Systemic Power: The Power Lab and Action Inquiry in the Classroom - Nancy C. Wallis

This chapter offers the notion of 'taking an attitude of inquiry' as a quality process in action research, enabling researchers to be aware of and articulate the complex processes of interpretation, reflection and action they engage in. This is considered as a complement to more procedural quality approaches. We draw on 25 years experience in an action research community to articulate and illustrate what 'taking an attitude of inquiry' can mean. Action research is depicted as both disciplined and alive.

PurposeThe paper aims to offer the notion of “taking an attitude of inquiry” as a quality process in research, enabling researchers to be aware of and articulate the complex processes of interpretation, reflection and action they engage in. The purpose is to consider this as a quality process that complements more procedural approaches.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on 25 years experience in an action research community – in which the authors have developed theory and practice in the company of colleagues – to articulate and illustrate what “taking an attitude of inquiry” can mean. The paper seeks to make quality practices thus developed available to a wider community of researchers.FindingsTwo schema with illustrations are offered. Qualities that enable taking an attitude of inquiry are suggested: curiosity, willingness to articulate and explore purposes, humility, participation and radical empiricism. Disciplines of inquiring practice are identified as: paying attention to framing and its pliability; enabling participation to generate high quality knowing, appreciating issues of power; working with multiple ways of knowing; and engaging in, and explicating, research as an emergent process.Research limitations/implicationsResearch is depicted as both disciplined and alive. Researchers are invited to engage fully in self‐reflective practice to enhance quality and validity.Originality/valueAn articulation of a depth view of quality in self‐reflective research practice which has been developed in an action research context and can be applied to research more generally.

Introduction - Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury Inquiry and Participation in Search of a World Worthy of Human Aspiration Theory and Practice - Bj[sl]orn Gustavsen The Mediating Discourse Participatory (Action) Research in Social Theory - Orlando Fals Borda Origins and Challenges Action Research in the Workplace - William Pasmore The Socio-Technical Perspective The Infusion of Race into the US Discourse on Action Research - Ella Edmondson Bell Uneven Ground - Patricia Maguire Feminimisms and Action Research Power and Knowledge - John Gaventa and Andrea Cornwall Knowledge in Participatory Research - Peter Park Exploring the Relevance of Critical Theory for Action Research - Stephen Kemmis Humanistic Action Research - John Rowan The Relationship of `Systems Thinking' to Action Research - Robert Louis Flood PRACTICES Action Science - Victor J Friedman Creating Communities of Inquiry in Communities of Practice The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry - John Heron and Peter Reason Research with Rather Than on People Appreciative Inquiry - James D Ludema, David L Cooperrider and Frank J Barrett The Power of the Unconditional Positive Question Large Group Processes as Action Research - Ann W Martin Ethnodrama - Jim Mienczakowski and Stephen Morgan Constructing Participatory, Experiential and Compelling Action Research through Performance Clinical Inquiry/Research - Edgar H Schein Community Action Research - Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer The Practice of Action Inquiry - William R Torbert EXEMPLARS Working Together, Learning Together - Mark Baldwin Co-operative Inquiry in the Development of Complex Practice by Teams of Social Workers The Early Mothering Project - Penny A Barrett What Happened When the Words `Action Research' Came to Life for a Group of Midwives Learing with the Natural Step - Hilary Bradbury Action Research to Promote Conversations for Sustainable Development Transforming Lives - Gloria Bravette Towards Bicultural Competence Action Research To Develop an Interorganizational Network - Rupert F Chisholm Participatory Research and Education for Social Change - Helen M Lewis Highlander Research and Education Center Creative Arts and Photography in Participatory Action Research in Guatemala - M Brinton Lykes The Art of Clinical Inquiry in Information Technology Related Change - Joe McDonagh and David Coghlan Participatory Action Research in Southern Tanzania, with Special Reference to Women - Marja-Liisa Swantz, Elizabeth Ndedya and Mwajuma Saiddy Masaiganah Six Street Youth Who Could... - Bessa Whitmore and Colette McKee SKILLS Collaborative Off-Line Reflection - Jenny W Rudolph, Steven S Taylor and Erica Gabrielle Foldy A Way To Develop Skill in Action Science and Action Inquiry On Supervising Graduate Research Students - Peter Reason and Judi Marshall The Mirror, The Magnifying Glass, The Compass and the Map - Yoland Wadsworth Facilitating Participatory Action Research Self Reflective Inquiry Practices - Judi Marshall Conclusion - Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury Broadening the Bandwidth of Validity: Issues as Choice-Points to Ensure Quality in Action Research

While the economic and technical dimensions of this crisis are important, I join the environmental educator David Orr in believing that current educational forms are at the centre of our ecological problems. Orr argues that they tend to divide the world by academic discipline, advocate domination over nature, promote individualism and rights over citizenship and responsibility and separate rationality from feeling and valuing:

“Critical Design Ethnography: Designing for Change” is reviewed in terms of action research under five dimensions: knowledge in practice, participation and democracy, many ways of knowing, emergence, and worthwhile purposes. Particular attention is paid to the tensions between the design agenda and the empowerment agenda.

In this overview the authors describe the underlying principles of action research as: (1) grounded in lived experience, (2) developed in partnership, (3) addressing significant problems, (4) working with, rather than simply studying, people, (5) developing new ways of seeing/theorizing the world, and (6) leaving infrastructure in its wake. We refer to the role of social workers as frontline implementers of important social policies and suggest how action research can be used to both implement and also influence the creation of such policies. We offer examples of action research efforts that can be applied to the social worker's practice-scholarship repertoire.

Richard Rorty's distinct brand of positivism is explored in relation to action research. Rorty's opposition toward the dualisms which haunt western philosophy is briefly described, his nonfoundationalist, anti-metaphysical pragmatics and his views on the contingency of the language that we use outlined. Since we can neither appeal to universal reason nor to an external reality as foundations for our claims, argument must move through a process of redescription. It is argued that just as Rorty is redescribing philosophy, so action researchers are redescribing inquiry. Rorty's ideas are compared with five basic characteristics of action research: practical knowing, democracy and participation; ways of knowing; human and ecological flourishing; and emergent form. Finally, Rorty's notion of the ironist is compared with the action researchers as reflective practitioner. The stimulating quality of Rorty's thought suggests that action researchers must find new language to describe their work, rather than be caught in the old academic metaphors of research.