Bridging between Action Research Communities: A Pathway to Connectivity

Abstract

The dialogic essence of Action Research (AR) poses a challenge of scope when attempting to achieve large-scale change. One way of addressing said challenge is through connectivity, an approach to the external validity of action research that focuses on the workability of new knowledge in other contexts. In this paper we propose bridging between different action research (AR) communities as a pathway to connectivity. We identify the conditions that facilitate connectivity in bridging spaces between different AR communities, and show that change can ripple beyond the group where AR takes place, maintaining its contextual nature. Our research method is comparative case studies based on semi-structured interviews with two AR communities: one in Europe and the other in Latin America.