74: Self-Improvement or Lived Practice: The Divergent Cultures of Action Research

From its inception, action research has been primarily characterized by a culture of self improvement founded in the Enlightenment Project and directed towards increasing the degree of control its practitioners have over their working environments. Recently, using post-structuralist frames of reference, Carson and Sumara (1997) have been instrumental in re-conceptualizing action research as a lived practice in which personal and professional identities are bound together in a complex web of social relations. In this article we take up the issue of the divergent cultures of action research and ask whether they may be seen as complementary or mutually exclusive research traditions.