This paper is an account of feminist research influenced by Cooperative Inquiry (CI) described as Feminist Cooperative Inquiry. A team of grassroots women leaders-turned-co-researchers, from different marginalised social locations (on gender, caste, class, education, livelihood axes) in India, developed this methodology to collectively analyse their own empowering journeys to make meanings of empowerment. The diversity of co-researchers in this research led to making additions or deviations in the CI protocol. By bringing in nonliterate or low-literate women from marginalised groups as coresearchers, the research added political value by extending centre of collective knowledge building towards marginalised groups. The paper also discusses how the research processes further empowered the coresearchers for their own interpretations, abstractions and their selfdefined viewpoint in the domain of empowerment. Calling empowerment as primarily an ‘internal reflective process’ co-researchers defied oversimplified, quantifiable proxy indicators as any measure of empowerment.

This paper describes the processes involved in establishing a genuinely collaborative and participatory role for nine Aboriginal Elders in a five-year participatory action research project focused on early child development in the Perth metropolitan area of Western Australia. The project goals are to better inform and align policy and program design with Aboriginal values, world views and concepts of childhood. The Elder’s authority in the design, conduct and outputs of the research are intended to adhere to a decolonising approach, whereby Aboriginal people have power and voice in ways that are aligned to their values and beliefs. Requirements for research that is collaborative, relational, participatory and reflexive are not straightforward or easily achieved, and the process of working with the nine Elders in their roles as Co-researchers has not been without its challenges. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities of working with Aboriginal Elders as Co-researchers and seeks to enhance understanding of the necessity of incorporating an Aboriginal worldview and knowledge framework in this way.

Action research has approached conflict mainly through the concept of conflict resolution, where action researchers play a role as third parties acting as organizers, conveners, and facilitators. This paper proposes a complementary role as stakeholders in the conflicts of territorial development and thus, as one more part in conflict. This is done in the context of one specific approach to action research, namely, action research for territorial development and one specific project, the Territorial Development Laboratory initiated in 2009 in Gipuzkoa, Basque Country, Spain. The paper argues that the ideological and political positions of action researchers, legitimated by the other stakeholders through the action research process, give them a stake in territorial development conflicts. It also revisits the interpretation of participation in action research in order to conceptualize action researchers’ role as stakeholders in the conflicts of territorial development. These discussions are of interest for any action researcher wanting to explore her or his role as a part in conflict in action research processes and not exclusively as a third party facilitating the process.

Participatory action research is often informed by strength-based approaches such as appreciative inquiry. However, when social change and collective action appear to be difficult, feelings of powerlessness and suffering can arise. There is an ongoing debate on the place and importance of these so-called negative emotions within strength-based approaches. In a participatory action research project on citizen participation in the Netherlands we encountered a social and political context that was beyond our ability to change. We came to realize that change or action is not always possible in participatory action research and that ‘pushing’ for action can become a disempowering experience for those involved. In this article we share the moral dilemmas that we encountered and reflect on our own learning experiences as academic researchers. We argue that researchers need to anticipate upon these moral challenges by reflecting upon their personal position towards powerlessness and suffering. Nussbaum’s notion of compassion can help researchers to create space for these experiences and to acknowledge these experiences as sources of generative knowledge. Researchers should carefully navigate between fostering action and expressing compassion in participatory action research. With this article we aim to contribute to a care ethical perspective on participatory action research that acknowledges vulnerabilities and precariousness in research practices.

As an emerging movement in participatory inquiry, citizen science presents an opportunity for advancing the disciplinary reach and usefulness of action research. In this article, we explore this opportunity by considering a case study involving youth-driven air sampling, photovoice, and environmental justice in the Pacific Northwest. When combined with photovoice as an action research method, citizen scientists can be empowered through collective learning to transform themselves from data collectors into builders of community knowledge and generators of policy change.

Teachers face a dilemma in setting limits and establishing boundaries with excluded students, who often exhibit extremely disruptive behavior that cannot be ignored or condoned. Since limit-setting through threats, sanctions, punishment, or expulsion simply reinforces the cycle of exclusion, the alternative approach presented here is to treat the breaching of boundaries as a developmental rather than a moral issue. Benevolent authority and empathic limit-setting, which lie at the core of this method, involve understanding and tending to the needs of the young person while at the same time clearly defining the necessary boundaries and positively reinforcing students for maintaining them. The transition from power struggle to empathic limit-setting entails both a turning point in which problematic incidents are essentially reframed, and emotional awareness on the part of teachers of their own inner turmoil in response to such situations. To the extent that teachers can exercise their authority without punishing or humiliating their students, they provide a holding environment in which excluded students feel stable and secure enough to develop their own internal authority. This paper is based on action research carried out with teachers in an MEd program in inclusive education at the Oranim Academic College of Education in Israel.

Eight Guyanese expatriate women, who had been living in and around London for decades, came together driven by a participatory inquiry approach. Do we just have ‘a touch of sugar’ or is diabetes a serious affliction were questions asked. The study’s objective was to find answers to these questions. Three nurse academics, one a Guyanese/English woman herself, researched alongside participants. After several years of storytelling and group discussion (2010–2015), the women recognised that when they connected socially, the practical effect of togetherness was empowerment. Researching with participants fostered new understandings of diabetes and improved self-management of this chronic condition. This was achieved through the collaborative character of the inquiry and as a practical response to the problems women were facing. They continue to engage with each other and are reaching out to the wider UK Guyanese community. They have a strong voice about living well with diabetes and strongly reject the myth that diabetes is only ‘a touch of sugar’.

The theory and practice of communicative space is explored through three select action research studies from a past edition of Action Research, that focus on the practice of “opening communicative space” in action research. In an examination of these studies, a story is told of how the emancipatory interests of the marginalized (i.e. African-American students in public schools, the Aged in healthcare, and the Roma people of northeastern Hungary) can be realized through the opening and emergence of communicative spaces throughout the action research process. This story is told through successive themes that include the expectations and interests of action researchers, the challenges that they encountered once the action research process was underway, and finally, their reflective observations upon new communicative spaces that had emerged. While theoretical perspectives on communicative space are considered, such as the social theory of Jürgen Habermas, this article looks especially to the practical framework of William Isaacs on “Fields of Conversation” to understand how the opening of communicative spaces contributes to the emancipatory interests of action research.

Different initiatives have promoted the use of improved cook stoves around the world. Their goal has been to eradicate cooking over open flame inside dwellings because it is associated with health problems, inefficient resource use and greenhouse gas emissions. Most of these improved cook stoves initiatives depend heavily on expert-generated solutions, treating users as mere recipients. However, they have had little success in terms of adoption rates. Their failures are due to myriad factors, highlighting the complexity of this problem. In the rural community of Yaxcabá, Mexico, most households use wood as a cooking fuel in small fire pits. As an alternative approach to this problem, we proposed a project to create an improved cook stoves based on dialogue with community members. We used a systems approach to analyze the large number of variables involved in the problem. Following participatory action research approach, we worked with 17 participants forming two groups in a process of self-diagnosis, design, construction and evaluation of two improved cook stoves models. The participants stated that the resulting improved cook stoves offered multiple advantages over previous devices, particularly in sociocultural, environmental and comfort aspects.