Action Research
Harrison Owen
hhowen at verizon.net
Fri Jan 2 14:04:08 PST 2009
Tonnie – You said, “The research has the form of a field study on the
phenomenon LSI, its working elements and its effects. So, my focus is on
the philosophy for the change process, not on one specific method. However,
OST plays an important role in this research and I hope I am in the right
place here.” Be assured – you are definitely in the right place, for as we
all know, “Whoever come is the right people.” You’re here --- so you have to
be right!
And you may even have the right question. It is not about methods (OS, AI,
FS, etc, etc)—it is about what they do and why/how they do it. And the
answer is ???
Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland 20854
Phone 301-365-2093
Skype hhowen
Open Space Training <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute <http://www.openspaceworld.org/>
www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website <http://www.ho-image.com/> www.ho-image.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Tonnie van
der Zouwen
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 10:05 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: [OSLIST] Action Research
Hi everyone,
Finally found the time to participate on the OSList. Sorry for my late
response on the research topic. I am pleased to be connected to other
researchers in the field of OS and cooperative inquiry. Jamie, Christie,
Sirin thank you for your information. Did not know the term CI.
I am a self-employed consultant and connected to Tilburg University for my
PhD as an un-paid researcher (“buitenpromovendus” in Dutch). My main
questions are “What are the effects of Large Scale Interventions (LSI), when
is it worth the effort, what are the conditions for sustainable change?”. I
see LSI as an approach for change, defined by participation, systems
thinking, action learning and methods for working with “the whole system in
the room”, such as OST, World Café, Real Time Strategic Change and Future
Search. The research has the form of a field study on the phenomenon LSI,
its working elements and its effects. So, my focus is on the philosophy for
the change process, not on one specific method. However, OST plays an
important role in this research and I hope I am in the right place here.
My goal is, besides earning my degree somewhere in 2010 :-), to develop a
sort of “information leaflet” to get more grip on conditions for success and
what effects can be expected, especially sustainable (learning) effects in
institutions/organizations. I have used Open Space as a research method
during Global Conferences of the Future Search Network and of the Society
for Organizational Learning to explore what practioners think about
conditions, effects, and to gather information about research papers and
contacts. Combined with an extensive literature study on documented LSI
cases (of course also from Open Spaces) and some interviews, this resulted
in a first draft of an evaluation instrument for LSIs. Now I am refining
the instrument and preparing a case study with a reconstruction of 4
LSI-cases (performed more than a year ago, some successful, some not so
successful), to test the evaluation instrument and learn more about
observable effects.
If you are interested in the research design or what and how I have done so
far, please visit www.tonnievanderzouwen.nl/wiki. You are invited to
contribute to this research wiki, with comments, information, discussion
When the case study is completed I want to organize an Open Space
conference to discuss, verify and validate my findings, end of August 2009
(date is not set yet). With thanks to Gerard Muller who suggested this idea
during an OS on OS he organized in 2007. Possibly a life OS in combination
with an online OS. If you are interested to participate, please let me know.
For me there is no doubt if OS works, under the right conditions and well
performed, but what has to be done to bring sustainable change (a claim
often made in literature about LSI)? And what is sustainable change exactly?
What are people doing they could not do before? How can that be observed?
What do you think of this research?
Greetings and a very good 2009,
Tonnie
Van: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] Namens Chris Corrigan
Verzonden: zaterdag 6 december 2008 7:04
Aan: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Onderwerp: Re: [OSLIST] Action Research
Nice to see all of my British Columbian friends coming out of the wood work!
Chris
On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 8:16 PM, Diamond Christie <diamondc17 at mac.com> wrote:
Hi,
Just checking in on this topic. Sirin mentioned Cooperative Inquiry (CI),
and I had the opportunity to participate in a "bootstrap" CI (no one in the
group had any previous experience with CI) during my masters process, and I
would agree with Sirin's comments: there is no distinction necessary between
researchers and participants, and because it has action and reflection
stages as part of the process, it allows the inquiry to be fluid throughout
the research phase. (We met in person to begin with, but because our 'action
sites' spanned 2 countries & 4 time zones, we then used a combination of
conference calls, Skype, & on-line journalling to connect with each other
during the reflection phases.) Also, because there is space for the
findings to include both informative and transformative aspects, it suits
different peoples' preferences for reporting on the experience. In our
group, we were able to combine art, photography, and poetry with more
analytical writing. In the end, we realized that the informative summary
lead to transformation, and the transformative summary lead to new
information (go figure!). Four CI's were presented collectively at the
Fourth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry: (theme - Ethics,
Evidence & Social Justice) http://www.icqi.org/qi2008/ . Many of the
students did choose CI for the masters or doctoral work. Although I did not
use Open Space for my masters, I did use World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry &
Circle in an organization to explore leadership through hosting meaningful
conversations (thanks to discovering the Art of Hosting), and was pleased
with how the process worked - for the organization, me personally, and for
meeting my learning goals.
Jamie, I think there are fantastic options for your learning, community, and
projects - keep us posted on your progress!
Christie
PS - I found both The Change Handbook & the Handbook of Action Research to
be significantly helpful resources!
On 5-Dec-08, at 5:21 PM, Nancy McPhee wrote:
Hi everyone,
Jamie, I used os as the action research tool for my MALT thesis – Opening
Space for Community Conversations: Building for the Future. You can find it
online at the RRU library. I did one day, with no action day. The community
where I live is living with a difficult conflict situation and this research
was my attempt to give people a space to start talking. Curious thing is
that 3 years after I did the research, we may be actually able to start
doing circling again!
Nancy
_____
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris
Corrigan
Sent: 05 December 2008 15:10
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: [OSLIST] Action Research
All you folks doing academic research on OS...we've been chasing this for a
few years now and trying to get bits and pieces of research organized and in
some cases even conducted on OST. I know there is lots of it happening and
in my fantasy world it would be gathered and linked in one place.
So we have that place, at openspaceworld.org:
http://openspaceworld.org/cgi/wiki.cgi?ResearchActivities where some
research has alrady been collected. A few years ago Larry Peterson, Peggy
Holman and I tried to do some research but it never really caught on.
Bottom line is that if you guys - Jamie, Sirin and others - start talking
and discovering other research that is done, or somehow you begin a series
of conversations about this topic, it would be great if you could share the
results and buttress the OST academic research component in the world.
Also Jamie, I'm in BC and most of my work is with Aboriginal communities in
Canada, and I'd be very interested to talk to you about a few initiatives
that I have going on that needs someone who can lend a research eye to using
Open Space for community governance. We even have some SSHRC money
available for someone who would help us look at action based governance
models for urban Aboriginal communities, stemming out of work we did in
Prince George BC four years ago. There is a post at my blog which is an
invitation to academic
researchers:http://chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/?p=1796
Let's talk!
Chris
On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Sirin Bernshausen <Sirin.Bernshausen at web.de>
wrote:
Hello Jamie,
I am sorry for the delayed reply, but I really wanted to add my perspective
to the discussion on Open Space and action research.
For my PhD I am using a systemic action research (SAR) approach which I am
particularly fond of because emergence and intuition are built into the
research process. Several strands of inquiry are pursued alongside.
Different kinds of knowledge experiential, analytical, etc. are
co-generated among researcher and research participants. Evidence can come
in various forms, including maps, stories, statistics, images, film or
questionnaires. It just makes so much sense to combine systemic thinking
with action research. Similarly, I am not interested in doing research just
for its own sake. I prefer to conduct a form of research that contributes to
increased knowledge and understanding of an issue while enhancing social
transformation and whole system change.
Since my research still is in its early stages and because of its emergent
nature I cannot say an awful lot about the details yet. However, in a
nutshell, I explore ways of enhancing attitude/behaviour change and
facilitating resilience management in the context of climate change/peak
oil. Initiatives like Transition Towns are use Open Space in order to engage
people and plan for local resilience and energy descent. Danny Burns,
author of Systemic Action Research, explicitly mentions Open Space, World
Café and similar large-scale events for developing action inquiry strands
that may run alongside or even develop into major inquiry streams.
Large-scale events are particularly useful for opening up new inquiry
questions, testing resonance of issues (whether they are sufficiently
relevant to deserve further investigation), to generate a systemic (i.e.
diverse, multi-faceted) picture of views and opinions and to tap the
collective wisdom present within a system.
For my own research, I plan to use Open Space mainly for generating new
issues and for resonance testing. In addition to Open Space I carry out
semi-structured in-depth interviews with change agents , explore public
perceptions of global uncertainties and experiment with different workshop
designs.
Besides my PhD research I am also involved in a cooperative inquiry process
a variant of action research where we map and reflect on the scope, nature
and impact of conversations people have about vulnerability and
resilience . What I like about cooperative inquiry (and action research in
general) is that it is a participatory methodology which respects the agency
and intelligence of individuals as capable researchers rather than viewing
research as the preserve of trained professionals. In my opinion, this
corresponds very much with the basic premises underlying Open Space and
similar methods. This type of inquiry can at times be rather cumbersome and
it may not produce the type of hard factual knowledge that conventional
(positivist) researchers like to see. Yet this isn t necessarily a bad thing
- findings may be more ambiguous but they are very rich and (in my view)
much more in line with reality and how people make sense of the world.
Plus, doing an Open Spac!
e on, say, energy descent may generate valuable insights into people s
thoughts and degree of awareness, while simultaneously changing people s
views and attitudes. I thus hope to both enhance and document positive
social change.
For my MA thesis I have explored Open Space as a form of conflict resolution
(i.e. I just wrote about Open Space but I did not put it into practice -
something I'd certainly do differently today!). Jamie - I'd be very
interested to learn more about your ideas and the evolution of your research
...
Cheers, Sirin
-------------------------
Betreff: [OSLIST] Action Research Von: Jamie Snook <jamiesnook at YAHOO.COM>
An: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU Datum: 28.11.08 14:27:28 Uhr
Hi Everyone,
I am new to this list. I am a MA candidate from Royal Roads University in
Conflict Analysis and Management. The ideas of systems thinking are less
that 6 months old to me and recently I took the step of hosting a staff
systems retreat for 25 staff members of the Labrador Metis Nation where I
am the General Manager.
We used Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe and of course Open Space. The
results were great and outside the scope of this email. I am just curious
to see how well this Listserv works.
I'd be interested to hear views from people on the use of Open Space to
conduct thesis and or PHD research. I have ideas for my MA thesis and
thinking Open Space might be a fun way to do the research.
I am also wondering if anyone is conducting Open Space sessions or events
online using forums or other technology?
Thank you :-)
Jamie
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CHRIS CORRIGAN
Facilitation - Training - Process Design
Open Space Technology
Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
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Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd.
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Facilitation - Training - Process Design
Open Space Technology
Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd.
http://www.harvestmoonconsultants.com
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