Series 1. Episode 6
Dr Joan Walton, Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at York St John University, talks to Professor Hilary Bradbury, Co-Editor of The Sage Handbook of Action Research, and founder of AR+, which has the aim of making global knowledge democracy more available by supporting inter/transdisciplinary dialogue for those practising at the developmental edge of action research worldwide. Hilary speaks about the work that she is doing to spread the practice of participatory action research, and actively encourage the involvement of marginal groups from both the global south and north.
Joan Walton
Hello, and welcome to this conversation in a series of podcasts being undertaken in the Institute for Social Justice at York St. John University. My name is Joan Walton, and I’m Senior Lecturer in the School of Education Languages and Psychology. I’m talking today with Professor Hilary Bradbury, who is based on the west coast of the United States, north of California. Hilary is a scholar practitioner focused on the human and organisational dimensions of creating healthy communities. She supports educators of all types as well as educational institutions in transforming in response to the socio-ecological crisis of our times. She emphasises the integration of research and practice as ‘action research for transformations’. And it is this interest in action research that we’re going to talk about today. I’ve known Hilary for a long time through her publications, and particularly through The Sage Handbook of Action Research, co edited with Professor Peter Reason, who formerly led the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice at the University of Bath. Hilary has since then founded AR+, with the aim of making Global Knowledge democracy more available by supporting inter transdisciplinary dialogue, for those practising at the developmental edge of action research worldwide.
Hilary, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with me today. I’m fascinated by the work that you’re doing with AR +. I would first like to ask you, in what ways do you consider action research as a participatory methodology that supports social justice?
Hilary Bradbury
First, a huge thank you to you, Joan, for such a lovely introduction. And also just for the invitation, I’m delighted that you and I in different ways go back so far, and connect right the way back to the work that Peter Reason was doing at the University of Bath. So it’s a pleasure to be with you and also getting to know your work with social justice. And, that might be the place that I could certainly start our conversation, because all those things come together. For me, when I think about action research, maybe the most important first thing to say is the sense that our educational system as a whole seems kind of desperate for a new way or a new understanding of what knowledge is even for. And so action research offers that; we have this heritage going back 70 years, some people say all the way back to Aristotle, which would allow students and faculty and stakeholders generally of so many practical issues to come together, with intention to make a practical difference in their own lives. And that knowledge happens in that very process, a kind of knowledge that feeds back into the groups themselves, into the researchers, into the stakeholders, and into society through our universities, through our peer reviewed journals. So it’s a more action oriented, as is in the term, a kind of a pragmatic constructivist approach that I think is very timely, given our eco-social crisis.
Joan Walton
We did speak a week ago, and we shared a lot about our mutual long histories in action research. And we also spoke a fair amount about the relationship between theory and practice, and how in the research that we did, we were each committed to research that made a practical positive difference in the world. And from what I understand of what you’re doing with AR plus, this is where your emphasis lies. So in promoting action research in relation to social justice, can you just say something about what you understand the relationship between theory and practice to be, and where you think the emphasis might lie?
Hilary Bradbury
Again, it’s another huge topic, isn’t it? But if we think about that triangular forms of organisation of education that we have inherited, and by triangular, I really mean feudal – some people would say supremacist – forms of organising that we’ve inherited; you know, they’ve been around for hundreds of years. And now we step into that as action researching people, people who are interested in social transformation, people who are interested in social justice, and we realise we need more circle rather than triangles. So a big part of the question for me and those that I love to work with are, you know, how do we circle these triangles and so immediately, in that is the sense that power is going to come up. You know, power is such a huge issue; those who’ve had power, is it a, an either or zero sum game? And how do we have relationships with people, so there isn’t a sense of us versus them. So that would be my first take on the social justice issue. It’s a question of power. And it’s a question of relationship. And often those two things are seen as a polarity, as an antithesis. You know, I think it was Carl Jung who said where love is, there is no power, where power is, there is no love. Martin Luther King was much wiser when he said, you know, power without love is too cruel, perhaps, sometimes? He said it much better, right. He’s a famous orator. Power without love is too insistent, it’s too cruel, but love without power is too saccharin, it’s too weak. And so what we need is a loving power, a powerful love. And I think that’s what action research is about, in a way with regard to social justice.
Joan Walton
That’s a very strong kind of value based theoretical grounding for this kind of work, isn’t it? I talked about AR plus, and you are the founder of AR plus. And I understand it’s been going for about 12 years now. Just a little bit about the work that you do, and some of the projects that you’ve been involved in, and how you think they relate to promoting the social justice agenda?
Hilary Bradbury
AR plus was founded using the royalties of the handbooks of action research. You know, there was a sense that these handbooks that I first undertook with the marvellous Peter Reason, these handbooks were great for bringing the community of action researchers around the world into being able to at least see one another, you know, we could read one another’s work, and they’re pretty popular. And so the royalties then created the Action Research Plus Foundation. It wasn’t called that in the beginning, a longer more awkward term. So in founding that, actually, in California, I was a professor at the University of Southern California at the time, we simply used to give little grants to people who were involved in what we thought of as sustainable enterprise. You know, there was the woman who was turning her garden into a place where the local school kids could come and see about urban gardening, and so on. So these little projects, we loved them, but we didn’t see any learning happening. We saw lovely projects, and you know, a lot of do do do, action, action action, but we didn’t see a whole lot of learning. And so, as a not for profit in California, there’s a Board. And so the Board gathered, and we each were involved in our own self development. And over the year, it turned more into what it is today, which I would say is a mix of inviting those who do this work action research for transformations, ie people who do action research for a more just world, a more sustainable world, right? It’s not just action research, so that your car company is a better car company, although it certainly can be; its action research that is concerning itself with transformation. So it would be for car companies who want to do electric or something like that. But it’s also for small groups as well. And the sense that if we want to get beyond just the little oases that many of the action researchers live in – I certainly did for a long time – then we could maybe accomplish more together if we saw ourselves as an evolutionary cluster. And so the invitation is to those who join in, but the invitation is to see each other as support, you know, to see ourselves as a loosely tied global network, who also practises together, you know, we have gatherings, we have co labs, where we actually deal with these issues of power and what’s up for us in our work, and bring it back into our classrooms or back to our clients. So maybe that’s kind of the bottom line, we’re an evolutionary cluster, who helps one another, do more and accomplish more, my biggest dream would be that all graduate schools, all professional schools would offer action research, so that people know that they can do work that is both action oriented relevant to their stakeholders, as well as deeply relevant to themselves. I’d love more people to be able to do it.
Joan Walton
Right. So what kind of global spread do you have for people signing up to AR plus? Because I see you have an event in March in which you’re inviting people, I think, across the globe International I think, to join you for three days. Could you just say a little bit about that and how you’re expecting that to unfold?
Hilary Bradbury
Well, we’re essentially a membership organisation and the original set of organisational members were universities and to some degree still are. So we have seven to 10 every year that we try to work closely with and they are all over the world. They’re on all continents currently except Africa. We did have a group in South Africa; so we have folks in Australia we have folks in Philippines, in Turkey in Sweden, in Spain in North America. In Chile, in Puerto Rico. So those are the organisations that sponsor some of their people to come into relationship through AR plus. And so we try to cook things together. We also have a group of personal members. And they tend to be scholar practitioners, they can be leading their own individual consultancy, or there’s many ways in which people are individual members. And we have about 20 or so of them. And our gatherings are primarily for these people who are already members so that we can kind of show up, say here’s what I’m up to. And we have fun, it’s an extremely creative group, as you might imagine. And then around us, we invite in an additional group, especially those who might be interested in joining us. So that’s why actually, we’re giving our time now in Universal Time Clock time at 20 hours, which I think is eight o’clock in the UK, eight o’clock in the evening when we meet, because this allows most time zones. Unfortunately, it’s hard for Asia, but this allows for most time zones to join. And, you know, fundamentally it’s a little bit show and tell right, here’s what we’re doing at in my consultancy, or here’s how we’re working with power and love in this project, and some developmental edgy work. We’re all very interested these days in the arts in embodied practice, it’s a mix. And we have some yoga sessions that also have fun, right? Because it’s just a few hours every day over four days ending on women’s day, which I think has some symbolic value to all of us.
Joan Walton
So it really is you are using it as a participatory methodology and bringing people across the globe, and they are participating, you know, quite creatively online. I love the yoga. I think that’s really important. And you mentioned women, I do think that actually in action research, there does tend to be more women involved. I mean, would you agree with that? Is that your experience?
Hilary Bradbury
Yes, Joan, look at two women talking to each other about action research. Yeah, very much. So Joan, I see that both in the practical, you know, form of the bodies who show up, I think also in the desire for more feminine ways of organising ourselves, I think the feminine has been more of a host for participative methodologies. And of course, many men have a beautiful feminine side and are great allies in this work. I don’t see it as 50/50 yet, I’ve tended to see it as like 70% women and 30% men, that’s basically what I see in the classes that I teach in the gathering. I think it’s true, even of the personal members. And I think that’s a lovely thing from a more mystical perspective. You know, we’re talking to each other just after what in Ireland is called St. Bridget’s day, the Celtic goddess. I think many of us see that the feminine has been too shut away. It’s one of the reasons why the academy can strike us as so arid and sterile. You know, it’s so brilliantly precise, and extremely important and modern is science has been very, very powerful. But there is the sense that it needs to partner. And so this more feminine, this more partnering orientation of action research is superduper important. And yet your original insight or commentary, I was very pleased that you could see, of course, we try to walk the talk, right. And actually, it was one of our personal members Petra, who said, you know, wouldn’t it be great if our gatherings could be like a mix between a yoga retreat and an academic conference or more scholarly conference, erring on the side of the yoga part. That was just really inspirational, I think for all of us. Our first retreat, by the way, was in Chalmers University two years ago over Women’s Day. Chalmers is in Gothenburg in Sweden. And you know, we managed to do it in person, with a little bit online, little knowing that two years later – we want to have them every two years – little knowing that nowadays, this is how we’re all meeting. So yeah, doing yoga online. That’s a thing, right?
Joan Walton
I think it’s kind of a feminine approach. Certainly my experience my own PhD going back about 10 years now, I did a cooperative inquiry. It was an open invitation. We had seven women and three men. So that kind of reflects the proportion that you were saying that you have as an experience. I think there does tend to be more women who are interested in this kind of collaborative participatory methodology. And I asked you right at the beginning, about the relationship, what you felt to be the relationship between theory and practice. I think we’re living in a world and this all these many crises, the ecological crisis, we’ve now got the pandemic and the health crisis. It’s what comes first really, and are we going to try and find collaborative ways to address these crises and then theorise about what we’ve done, or do we look at that in the opposite direction and start with the theories. So I think this makes for some kind of interesting conversations in the academic world. But I see very clearly from the work that you’re doing, that you start with the practice, you start with the projects, you start with the issues that you want to address, and what you see as the kind of political ecological crisis that we’re facing at the moment.
Hilary Bradbury
If I had to use a big mouthful of theoretical words, I would describe myself as a pragmatist, as social constructivist and a developmentalist. So putting those three things together, the pragmatist, a la, say, William James, you know, starts with experience, right, the booming, buzzing world; I think was James, I always loved his term, what’s the cash value, right? So we start with this booming, buzzing experience that we have. And inside of that, there’s joy. And there’s also our attention is called to this and to that, and attention is often called to problems. And that’s where I think the practical orientation comes up. One of my first biggest pieces of work that in some ways continues to inform me was when I was down in Los Angeles at University of Southern California, I was director at the Centre for Sustainable Cities. And so part of the experience and I was a young mom, well I was kind of old, but my child was very young. And part of the experience of living, there was a pollution that is attributed to the port, and I just really wanted to do something about it. It’s not just practice oriented, I think it’s also agency and then moving into relationships. So the agency, I think, has to do with this constructivist orientation, the sense that, yes, we’ve inherited social systems, but social systems are co-created, they’re structure-ated, if you will, in relationship with one another, it doesn’t mean like, poof, we can just remake it. But we can sure as hell try to live inside the new creations, to live inside the worlds that we want to be the change as something this person once said, that’s what brings the practical orientation. And then the relational orientation, I think, is also developmental, it’s the sense that with the case of the port to get anywhere, no one person is of much good, but we can see ourselves relationally as a system, you know, we can even literally map ourselves as a system and then reach out to those stakeholders, knowing and trusting that people are in different places, they’re in different parts of the system. And together, we can do something more. So in that work, literally, it was bringing together the port and the stakeholders in the cargo transshipment system, which included Mattel, the doll, the doll manufacturers, you know, Volvo, the truckers, the shippers and why YK was with us, Walmart, the big supermarkets that sell things. So bringing these people together as faces of the system, who are creative beings, and how do we develop this system together, each of us an expert in our own part of the system, and then with me and my colleagues at the Centre for sustainable cities, being a facilitator and sometimes a protagonist, you know, we were pushing people along a certain path towards a more sustainable system. And our research there, our methods were qualitative and quantitative, we developed a carbon calculator and wrote about this work in different ways for geography journals, for organisational development journals. So I’m trying to give that as an example of starting from experience, understanding that we co create these systems together, and then creating a relational space where people can actually make a difference by truly understanding, enacting the very system that we make up, but to do so in a developmental way.
Joan Walton
I think that’s a really nice example, Hilary, so thank you very much. I’m going to ask you quite a big question here. I mean, last week, when we spoke, I shared with you a quotation from PW Martin, when he was writing in 1955, in his book An Experiment in Depth, and he thought all professionals should be action researchers, if we were going to address the challenges that face us in the world. And at that point, it was actually the Cold War. So he was talking about the Cold War, but that’s over half a century ago. And action research is still really a kind of marginal approach to research. So I’d just like to ask you, in your experience, from what you’re learning through leading AR plus, firstly, are you optimistic about achieving forms of social justice in this world of ours? And secondly, what do you think the role of action research can and should be in achieving that?
Hilary Bradbury
Well, I’m a big Yes, on the first question, because I already see it, we all see it. It doesn’t mean that we don’t go two steps forward and one step back, or sometimes just one step forward and two steps back, but coming back to the issues of power, I wrote a book with a mentor Bill Torbert about gendered power and how each of us is socialised. And the male -female dance, we wrote that book just as Me Too was coming into being. And so I stand here on the other side of that and go, Wow, the world truly changed, at least in the world that I live in. It’s not to say we didn’t go two steps back, you know, we, we just got rid of a president who had claimed openly to have sexually assaulted women and still got, not only did it not matter, but he was in part voted in because he was that kind of person. So there’s multiple worlds going on at the same time, it seems to me at this point. So then the second piece, maybe fits in there. So why action research? Or how is action research useful? I’ve said, I want to see much more of it. I love the quote, you know, I remember writing it down when you first said it to me, I thought, Man, this guy is writing that in the 50s. And I believe his book got republished but I thought, yes. I mean, we’re just kind of piggybacking on this. And action research, of course, has different labels, and many siblings nowadays, and I’m even remembering back into conversations with Peter Reason, none of us particularly love the term action research. But yeah, it’s a good keyword, it’s a good signal, we can find each other through it; in its different iterations, I’m seeing that it has risen in popularity exponentially, I have some colleagues who’ve been mapping this sometimes with simple things like Google words, over time, much bigger than say, words like systems thinking, and so on. So action research is getting very, very popular and I understand why, I think we would both agree because, you know, the world is needing something different. And the doors and the windows of the academy are opening. We are running into this obstacle, which is academia itself is a feudal system. And I’ve enjoyed being part of that, I was a full professor, you know, you’re kind of up there near the top of hierarchy. It’s very nice, but it’s not responsive to what the younger scholars, younger students are wanting. And that’s just an obstacle. And I would say, I often talk with Deans and Provost, I would say that many of them are getting pretty bloody nervous about the fact that something new is being called for, especially at a time when classes are meeting over zoom, right? It’s like, well, why are we paying all this money. And so there is this great desire from the university stakeholders to do something different. And all of that together, adds up to the academy itself as its own transformative project, often without the tools they need for transformation. And so it’s- being left in the hands of those who are more revolutionary. As an action researcher, I would say, you know, revolutions to be proper revolutions, they need to be inclusive, they can’t be violent, but they will be if people don’t see that there’s an opportunity for change here. So you know, it’s a bit of a seesaw and an exciting time.
Joan Walton
Yes. And you mentioned HE, and actually a part of what we’re exploring in these podcasts is the role of HE in promoting social justice. And, of course, this podcast is taking part from the Institute for Social Justice at York St. John University. So perhaps there’s hope within HE yet because within its walls, there is an awareness of the kind of limitations and the difficulties. So you know, hopefully, HE can play a role in the change that we want to see in the world, basically.
Hilary Bradbury
Yeah, I mean, you’re an example of it. And I see higher education as quite an ambiguous space. On some level, it’s a lot of obstacles to change. But on other levels, it is a gathering space, it is a cluster and oasis for very intelligent people, people who are wanting to grow, who want to be at their own growth edge, not everybody, I just think that percentage of those who wish that is higher in a higher education type situation. And especially in the developing economies, the developing world, I think there’s a lot of openness to leapfrog beyond the kind of more stultifying ivory tower type things, you know, how do you take the good from that, the precision of science, the disciplines, the disciplinedness of doing disciplines, but get beyond disciplines, right? The world is not fragmented, and how do we overcome these power relationships that essentially lock out a lot of collective intelligence. So fundamentally, I think this need to bring in more creativity, this need for more collective intelligence will itself kind of knock down the walls. If a hurricane is happening, and you don’t want your walls to be knocked down, sometimes it’s helpful to just open the windows.
Joan Walton
Well, actually, our time is getting near the end. And where I started at the beginning here was just to ask you, in what ways you consider action research as a participatory methodology to support social justice; is there any anything else you want to say that you feel is important at this stage?
Hilary Bradbury
Well the most important thing to say is thank you, what an important conversation and I’d love to see it ripple out. Because we’ve been focusing on Higher Ed, of course, we’ve been talking about higher ed and academia, probably the thing on my mind as I leave the conversation is to also give a shout out to, or to really respect the fact, that a lot of knowledge creation is happening outside of the Academy at this point, which I think is really, really important. And so to create a bridging, I think of it as a repairian rian zone, right between the academy and then the knowledge wilderness, but there’s a repairian zone where knowledge creation can happen beyond, but still using the good of the academic models that we’ve inherited.
Joan Walton
Well, thank you so much for giving your time this evening, Hilary. It’s been a fascinating conversation. I look forward to keeping in contact and speaking again.
Hilary Bradbury
Thank you so much. See you soon.