Editorial

There is a great diversity of approaches to undertaking action research. This diversity reflects the variety of intentions, theories, processes, and outcomes that action research is designed to encompass and the multiplicity of people, places, and issues involved. Such diversity has in turn been cited both as a strength of action research, this being the very diversity that supports locally focused research for practical action, and as its Achilles heel, a perceived inability to clearly articulate the quality of the research in a world that still struggles to see beyond fixed norms and standards of some other research paradigms. The issue of quality for research that is personal, political and practical is well debated in the literature (Altricher 1999; Carr 1994, 2006; Greene 2009; Kemmis 1988; Somekh 2006; Springett, Wright, and Roche 2011). The following papers offer accounts of these dilemmas being actualised in practice. They exhibit both the multiplicity of topics that concern action researchers and the kinds of questions action researchers ask about the quality of their research. The authors ask questions about the way in which action research should or could be justified, the trustworthiness of action research, how action researchers demonstrate that value and impact of their work, and for whom does, or should, it have relevance and credence. The act of ‘troubling’ and ‘disrupting’ thinking is presented, both tacitly and explicitly, as a key quality of the action research process. In ‘Justifying Action Research’, drawing on the Norwegian experience, Helskog discusses the need for ‘taking a stand’ in relation to the different but important questions of validity and justification. Starting with the approaches of Dewey (1929) and Lewin (1946), Helskog leads us through some of the epistemological grounding of action research approaches (predominantly in the western tradition) using what she terms ‘a general philosophy of science perspective’. This fascinating paper argues the need for justifying the action research approach to a wider scientific population and offers insights into approaches to building a justification that values the differing epistemological underpinnings that shape action research in practice. The next paper, ‘Partial and Incomplete Voices’, set in the context of early childhood teachers’ learning, also works with data that are deeply personal. Challenged by the politics and ethics of being an insider researcher with multiple positionings, Henderson articulates questions about doing research on/for/with people raised by working as an ‘intimate insider’ researcher. At the core of this paper is her struggle to find ways of reaching into meaning beyond her own, to further trouble her own discourse, and to find a way of presenting discourse that respects other ways of seeing. Working with students studying outdoor environmental education, Nicol is also concerned with disrupting the taken for granted. His methodological approach combines theories of epistemological diversity and action research, and offers both a theoretical and practical presentation of the impact of a triple-loop learning process as a means of transforming strategies for action.