The COVID-19 pandemic heightened human pressures on the Magaliesberg Biosphere Reserve (MBR), harming biodiversity and polluting water sources. In response, two community-led initiatives, the Save Our Species Eco-Rangers and the Majakaneng hiking trail, catalysed environmental stewardship. Building on these, a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project engaged traditional health practitioners and churches using natural spaces for spiritual practices. The overall objective of this article is to demonstrate how PAR can facilitate context-sensitive, transformative environmental management in culturally and spiritually significant landscapes. A key stakeholder matrix, the Nominal Group Technique, photo-elicitation and participatory mapping were used to identify role players, sacred natural sites and determine collective priorities for community-led environmental stewardship. A key theme emerging was access control, implemented through permits, fees, and protocols. At one site introducing bookings and fees for clean-ups and guided hikes improved socio-ecological conditions. Eco-literacy, feedback and engagement were initiated through signage, flyers and sharing on social media but needs to continue and spread to other sites. This iterative, collaborative approach shows how participatory methods can turn environmental threats into opportunities, advancing both environmental sustainability and post-apartheid transformation.

Reflexivity is an integral part of action research and is recognized as an important and necessary indicator of study rigour. A key goal of reflexivity is to ensure that research decisions do not replicate existing (or add new) harm to those whom the research describes or involves, however less attention has been paid to potential harms that researchers themselves may face. This paper brings attention to the vulnerabilities of researchers with lived experiences of trauma and structural violence and explicitly integrates Trauma- and Violence-Informed (TVI) principles into the reflexive process. A case example and “how to” guide are provided to assist researchers in creating safe environments not only for their study participants, but also for the researchers and community co-researchers involved, with particular focus on those conducting sensitive studies in highly (re)traumatizing topic areas.

This paper focuses on an eight-week discussion about the formation of an intergenerational and intercultural Advisory Group for Poetry for Planet. Poetry for Planet is a global, youth-led, creative climate change movement rooted in poetry, aimed at giving voice to poets from the Global South and other indigenous voices. We report our experience of using a shared journal to capture the shadow board members’ thoughts and feelings during the eight-weeks. We observed shifts of perception that transcended our original assumptions, and we describe some potential causal mechanisms. These findings are important for similar, dispersed, intergenerational and intercultural global movements. We offer a guide devised across cultures and between generations for ‘movement building’ with joy, mutual respect and lasting impact. We explore the appearance of ‘the voice of the journal’, a creaturely, compassionate extra dimension to our writing rising from under the surface of our own words. The phenomena is similar to what Otto Scharmer and Eva Pomeroy (2024) describes as ‘fourth person knowing’ and we suggest two potential extensions of this idea: ‘fourth person healing’ and ‘fourth person climate consciousness’. Finally, we outline practical steps for setting up and running a shared journal.

Reflexivity is the creative, transformative engine for the decade long research journey described in this paper. It has refined and grown my theory from viewing stuckness as a degenerative cycle towards one that is life-affirming, regenerative, and useful. I describe how developmental reflexivity unblocked my thinking and research processes, as well as actively shaped the emerging theory through five cycles of learning. This review demonstrates how shifts in my inner world created shifts in my emergent theory and practice. For each learning cycle, I reflect on the role of my many co-researchers including academic professionals, coaches, readers, and organisational development practitioners. I note how their influence is apparent not just in my inner world but also in the emergent theory. This suggests that transformation, itself a product of mindset shift, is a process of learning overtime with self and others.

This paper outlines several cycles of first- and second-person inquiry that explore how two doctoral candidates developed reflexive capacity-in-action. We illustrate the essential developmental shifts we experienced while facilitating research co-inquiry groups, offering a joint reflection through the theoretical lens of shifting and loosening habitual patterns. We explore how habitus and implicit relational patterns serve as blueprints for how we engage with and co-construct our social and organisational realities. Building on Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry practices, we exemplify how research-practitioners can become aware of personal and cultural habituations that shape and constrain what we can hold in our awareness at any given moment. We present several cycles of reflection both in, and on action, beginning with our experiences as initiators of an Action Inquiry Group during our doctoral programme and the challenges we faced in extending this quality of inquiry beyond the research paradigm. Ultimately, we found that as action researchers, the specific practices described in this paper equipped us to better uphold the qualities of mutuality, integrity, and sustainability in collaborative projects within conventional contexts.

Student parents are often marginalized and/or rendered invisible by academic systems that view their dual role as incompatible with the idealized student (Moreau & Kerner, 2015; Sallee & Cox, 2019; Springer et al., 2009). As a result, these students are often offered limited resources and passed over for opportunities, leading to a lesser academic experience than that of their childless peers. In this article, we argue that eliminating barriers for student parents is largely a reproductive justice issue, and we offer comadrisma as a remedy. Comadrisma is an approach to friendship rooted in Latinidad involving a high degree of support and camaraderie, and this framework has been utilized to embody academic survival by creating inclusive practices of communal care, peer mentorship, and scholarship in academic spaces and beyond (De Los Santos Upton & Hernández, 2023). In what follows, we develop comadrisma as an approach to community based participatory action research framed within the tenets of reproductive justice and demonstrate how we have used this method in our own research with student parents at an R1 university on the Mexico/U.S. border.

This article explores how action research can facilitate social innovation within rigid bureaucratic systems by combining puzzling, powering, and pragmatic problem-solving. Drawing on over fifteen years of practitioner experience, we introduce the Breakthrough Method - a structured, iterative approach that enables citizens and professionals to collaboratively navigate legal, financial, and organizational barriers. Through case studies on debt relief and energy renovation for homeowner associations, we illustrate how asking for small, concrete changes can reveal deeper systemic resistance, offering a unique entry point for reflexive practice and institutional learning. Our findings suggest that breakthroughs - real, lived interventions - are necessary precursors to reflection and scaling. We argue that action researchers must not only inquire and reflect but also engage strategically with institutional power to create space for change. This contribution situates action research as a methodology of both critique and construction - offering a grounded, practice-based framework for transformative collaboration in defensive public sectors.

This paper presents restorative action research - a relational, collective, vital approach to fostering wellbeing. It is based on cooperative inquiry carried out by six academics over three years, for the purpose of enhancing their own wellbeing in the increasingly precarious world of higher education, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the concept of “vital assemblages” as an analytical tool, the paper illustrates how restorative action research enhanced the participants’ sense of feeling alive, active, and joyful at a time of great stress. This relational, collective, vital approach to wellbeing offers an alternative to the dominant individualistic, internal framing of wellbeing. It is relevant to organizations outside of academia, as echoed in the idea of “networked wellbeing” emerging from the Global South. Restorative action research is also a political act with transformational potential, because it creates social spaces that enable people to free themselves and resist, if only a little, the influence of organizations and other dominant fields that cause illbeing and threaten human society.

Immigrant workers are a growing segment of Canada’s labour force, essential to its economy and society. Yet, they face occupational health and safety (OHS) challenges due to communication barriers, limited training, scarce resources, and workplace discrimination. This study sought to design learning resources to enhance the understanding of OHS in Canadian workplaces among new immigrant workers, drawing from their personal experiences. Through participatory action research, nine immigrant workers took part in six online sessions over three months, where they identified problems, discussed education, reflected, and decided on actions. Key issues raised included inadequate training, unawareness of OHS rights, hesitation in reporting safety concerns due to fear of backlash, and facing psychological threats like discrimination. This research illuminated the complex interplay of cultural and communication differences in OHS. Consequently, five education modules, rooted in real-world insights, were developed, emphasizing the significance of OHS, psychological risks, Canadian workplace norms, communication, and vital resources. This PAR successfully developed OHS learning modules, which not only tackle challenges and provide solutions for new immigrant workers but also craft with cultural sensitivity and lived expertise. These tools are tailored to equip new immigrant workers with the knowledge and confidence needed to enhance their OHS practices.