IGomlnaz Ghahvei              age:

From Action Research to Action Learning:

How can film communicate

De la Investigación en Acción al Aprendizaje en Acción:

Cómo puede el Cine Comunicar

Abstract:

This article forms part of the emerging
issue of Learning
Alliances (LA), in the field of education
of vulnerable and disempowered children.
On a theoretical level, a rigorous application of participatory action research methodology is presented to tease out the potential
for knowledge exchange
through a Learning
Alliance approach in conjunction with best practices of film in this
field. LA on a theoretical level is readily conceivable based on communicative action in a Habermasian sense.

Keywords:

Learning Alliance; Participative Action
Research (PAR); Habermas;
communicative action; film

Resumen:

Este artículo
forma parte del tema emergente de Alianzas de Aprendizaje (LA), en el campo de la educación de niños vulnerables y desamparados. A
nivel teórico, se presenta una aplicación rigurosa de la metodología
de investigación- acción participativa
para descubrir el potencial del intercambio de conocimientos a través de un enfoque de Alianza de Aprendizaje junto con las mejores
prácticas cinematográficas
en este campo.
LA, en un nivel teórico
es fácilmente
concebible basada en la acción comunicativa en un sentido Habermasiano.

Palabras claves:

Alianza de aprendizaje; Investigación Acción Participativa (PAR); Habermas; acción comunicativa; película

Sumario. 1.
Introduction. 2. Philosophical Background of PAR: from Self-reflective Praxis
to Communicative Action. 3. Action
Research and Action Learning; Two Sides of the Same Coin? 4. Alliance for
Learning through New Modes of Action
for Knowledge Production. 5. Breaking the Monopoly of Knowledge through
Participation of the Oppressed. 6. Principle of PAR and Learning Alliance.
7. Action Learning
– A Self-reflective Praxis. 8. PAR and Praxis of Learning
Alliance through Films: Preliminary Findings.
9. Conclusion.

Como citar: Ghahvie, A. (2022). From Action Research to Action Learning: How can film communicate. Ñawi: arte diseño comunicación, Vol. 6, núm. 1, 215-225.

http://www.nawi.espol.edu.ec/ www.doi.org/10.37785/nw.v6n1.a11

This
work is under an international license Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial 4.0.

1.
Introduction

“You cannot understand a system until you try to
change it” (Lewin recited in MacDonald, 2012) Participative Action Research
(PAR) had no disciplinary or political orientation at the beginning,

but it is known mainly as a breakthrough among
empiricist approaches and positivism in social science.
Looking at it from a practice-oriented point of view, Rahman (1999) sees
the origin of PAR mostly in rural areas in the less privileged countries:

PAR has been initiated by so-called
“voluntary” bodies, variously called “social action
groups,” “non-governmental
organizations” or, to use a more recent nomenclature that is functionally
more communicative as well as challenging, “self-reliance-promoting organizations” or SPOs (p. 18).

“As with all great things, it
had no single inventor. Nobody discovered it, it was the result of an atmosphere by the clash between clear-cut
scientific explanations and rough reality”, stated Alfredo Molano in his opening speech at the World Congress
on Participatory Convergence Knowledge (1997). He believed PAR emerged to add an
ethical dimension to science and has done a good job in that respect. Two main reasons are behind this;
first, PAR had lived a life of two decades by 1990s and researchers had experienced to
walk beside the researched and not a step ahead; secondly, researchers had decided not to stay away and assist
the state than fighting it (Molano, 1997).

Back in 1977 in Cartagena World Symposium on Action Research and Scientific Analysis, one of the milestones
of PAR’s concept of participation was laid down. Going beyond development
issues and partnership with government in a representative democratic context, as
defined by Huntington (1976), participation
was conceptualized to break through the subject-object relationship of the
researcher and researched and their
union despite recognition of their otherness.

PAR was born from left traditions of
thought with roots in a new interpretation of historical materialism; however, Marxism’s anti-culture approaches and rigid principles were no longer helping to reconstruct the actual life of ordinary
people. At the beginning, PAR can be seen as the offspring
of nationalistic spirit to
build new nations’ voices criticizing colonial scholarship and struggling
against oppressive governments in many parts of the world. However,
it did not flourish on the same ground in the so-called global South. Unlike
Latin America in which it was understood in a post-colonial political context, initially criticizing
modernization and its implications, in Africa it was associated with a practical need to address the gap
between academia and actual reality concerning national development (Swantz, 2016).

Among other social sciences, Action
Anthropology was pioneer in challenging the concept of disinterested science in 1948. In 1960s universities in Africa
started AR on the ground that social science
did not produce “a high-quality ethnographic portrait” and the
social science tradition of thanking
the “informants” was inadequate. They called for equal share of knowledge
by the researcher and the researched. Introduction of PAR to politics resulted in a tendency
to give voice
to the voiceless (Swantz, 2016, pp. 31-32)

2.   Philosophical Background of PAR: from
Self-reflective Praxis to Communicative Action

From a philosophical point of view, PAR can be traced back to the Critical Theory
of the Frankfurt School,
especially to Jürgen Habermas’ views (Kemmis
et al., 2014). From the advent of the social
sciences, all studies/research have attempted to understand the ‘other’, be it social life, an object, or a person (Outhwait
recited in Kemmis, 2014). This attempt to understand
the other has given birth to
hermeneutics, the methodology of interpretations. The pioneer philosopher of
this school, Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method (1975) refuses to conceive this
interpretation as a scientific method.
Gadamer articulates what he calls ‘effective-historical
consciousness’, which implies that people including
historians are embedded in the culture and history that have shaped them. In his own words
“the historian’s (self) consciousness of how history is effective
in her or his own historicality, actively influencing her or his
interpretations (via ‘prejudices’ or taken-for-granted
assumptions)” (Gadamer recited
in Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 125). He is convinced that people are shaped more by the history
and culture of their community as by their own reasoning. Therefore, by
exploring the links between language
and thought, in a Foucauldian sense, and how they shape the way we see or not see certain things, which is bound to
ideology, he challenges the application of scientific methods to interpretation.

In another take on this, one of the
main founders of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer (1972) explains critical
theory as a theory to overcome social injustice (Kemmis, 2014). He challenges positivistic science, which always distinguishes between ‘value’ and ‘facts’ and emphasizes the concept of critique in exploring unjust
or inhumane structures and practices. In discovering unjust conditions, PAR has laid its foundation on a Habermasian notion
of self and an ‘extra-individual’ characteristic of ‘practice/praxis’ (Kemmis et al., 2014,
p. 126).

According to Schön (1993) a critical participatory action researcher is a ‘self-reflective practitioner’ whose self is shaped by a
‘plurality’. This self is “constructed through
developmental-historical, cultural-discursive, social
and material-economic interactions between people” (Habermas recited in Kemmis et al.,
2014, p. 126). As a result, there is no subjectivity and how the self
understands these unjust or inhumane
practices is subject to the contextual conditions enumerated by Habermas. What he suggests
is to study the practices
and structures with a type of communication which he calls
‘communicative action’. To do so there are four main conditions:
first, everybody who can contribute
to a ‘controversial validity claim’ should be included. Second, no
one should be deprived of an equal opportunity to express themselves and everybody should
enjoy the right
to be engaged in communications. Third, there is no place
for illusion or deception on the side of the participants. They should
genuinely mean what they do or say. Forth, communication should be free, with
all types of coercion excluded.
He suggests these four measures to be checked
at all stages to evaluate
the validity of the claims.

Habermas objects to Gadamer’s
concept of ‘understanding’ in linguistic context of practice by stating its occurrence in trans-individual
context of language. He believes that understanding and language happen in discourses
in which the relation of power has already been shaped and thus warns against solitary self-reflection:

The self-reflection of a lone subject… requires a quite paradoxical achievement: one part of the self must be split off from the other part in
such a manner that the subject can be in a position to
render aid to itself. …
[Furthermore], in the act of self-reflection the subject can deceive itself.
(Habermas recited in Kemmis, 2014, p. 127).

Habermas introduces the concept of ‘intersubjectivity’
in The Truth and Justification to face the challenge
exposed by self-reflective communicative action (Kemmis,
2014). There he argues that truth is
not understood in individuals’ consciousness but in an intersubjective
space where different life-worlds are
interwoven. Afterwards, he emphasizes that communicative action is different
from strategic action in that the former
does not look for pre-planned outcomes (Kemmis, 2014).

Based on this theoretical backbone, Kemmis and McTaggart (2014) defined participative action research
as:

A
form of collective self-reflective enquiry
undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and
justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices
and the situations in which these practices
are carried out. (Kemmis et al. recited in Kemmis, 2014, p. 122).

Therefore, there are two main focal
points in Kemmis definition of critical participative
action research: understanding of the
situation and self-reflective practices. By practice, he means a neo- Aristotelian definition of the word, which
is better known as praxis. He defines praxis as a “morally informed,
committed action, oriented
by tradition, that responds wisely
to the needs, circumstances and particulars of a practical
situation’’ (Kemmis, 2014, p. 135). Fals-Borda (1999) believes one of the first concepts
on which PAR has been founded is praxis. Tracing it back in Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach and Hegel’s dialectics, she shows
how praxis moved away from ‘social engineering of humans’ to be ‘the science of Proletariat’ (p. 156).

In
conclusion, in Kemmis’ pioneering undertaking in formulating the philosophical aspect
of PAR, he emphasized that it often emerges in the context
of social movements
as an ‘engaged research’ to find ways to change the situation. People feel they are alive in a ‘universalistic’ way to make changes in their own history, and therefore, it
is ‘emancipatory’ (Kemmis, 2014, p.135).
Having roots in the thoughts of
Antonio Gramsci in turning common sense to “good sense”, an
emancipatory phase initiated through
which knowledge becomes
a tool to request social justice by asking “knowledge for whom or what?” (Fals-Borda, 1999).

3.
Action Research and Action Learning; Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Mike Pedler and John Burgoyne
(2016) distinguish Action Learning (AL) from other types of action research by the priority it allots to
action and to the learning of the people who are concerned with the problem in question. It is highly skeptical of the approaches and solutions offered
by experts and is more generally understood as
‘ethos’ or broad approach rather than a set of techniques for learning
(Pedler & Burgoyne, 2016). With political
and personal drive to criticize the current situation and change it for better, action learning is a process of
self-development for the researcher herself/
himself.

“Action Learning originates
with Reginald Revans (1907–2003), who was
variously an Olympic athlete, a student of nuclear physics,
an educational administrator, and a professor
of management.” (Pedler & Burgoyne, 2016, p. 319). He believed that
systems, which are designed for humans, should be developed in a way that benefit people depending on them the
most. In order to do so, he emphasized one should not only look for
solution in libraries and academia but also in social laboratories and fieldworks. In 1920s and 1930s, Marry Parker Follett
stated that knowledge
should be sought wherever it
might be found
despite any hierarchical tendency for classification of it (Pedler & Burgoyne, 2016).

Action Learning is different from Action Research
emerging more as a resistance to the domination of the “expert over learner” or the so-called
‘book culture’ rather than as general reaction against positivism (Pedler
& Burgoyne, 2016, p. 320). It addressed a biased cultural misconception
making people believe by
talking/writing about a problem, they are actually doing
something about it. AL’s main
undertaking is to assist people to “learn how to solve a problem” (Pedler recited in Pedler & Burgoyne,
2016, p. 320).

However, like AR, AL resists
accepting one single definition. Revans (1966)
maintains there are three main
components for Al; first, people who are concerned about the problem and are
ready to take on the responsibility for that. Second,
(the) problem(s) to be addressed
and acted upon. Thirdly, a group of colleagues (he mentions six or more), who meet regularly to tackle the problem. However,
Pedler (2016) challenges this definition as he believes it
is not comprehensive enough and meant more for an organizational context.

4.
Alliance for Learning through
New Modes of Action for Knowledge Production

Gibbons
(2012) discussed the emergence of new mode of production of knowledge, which he
called mode 2, side by side the
traditional mode 1. This heuristic mode rebels against the Western culture of scientific versus non-scientific, where science was synonymous with knowledge (Gibbons,
2012). Mode 1 generally
refers to “a
complex of ideas,
methods [and] norms
… [in which] the problems
are set and solved
in a context governed by the largely interests of a specific community” (Gibbons,
2012, pp. 2-3). It tends to be disciplinary, homogenous, and hierarchical. By contrast, in mode 2, “Knowledge is always produced
under an aspect
of continuous negotiation, and it will not be produced unless and until the interests of various actors
are included” (Gibbons,
2012, p.4).

The difference between mode 1 and 2
does not only lie in its sources for and approach towards knowledge
production, but in communication of the results.
Unlike reporting in academic journals,
in mode 2 everything is
communicated with those who had participated in production and diffusion of the knowledge
(Gibbons, 2012). On the other hand, the particular result achieved might or not become a “cognitive site” for
further/future problems, and however, remain particularly open to for
“closer interaction of knowledge
production with a succession of problem contexts” (Gibbons, 2012, p.5).

Mode 2 is not a planned
central body; therefore, it is organizationally diverse and heterogeneous. It is decentralized in the sense that, knowledge
production is encouraged from miscellaneous sources including non-academia,
non-governmental, governmental, think-tanks, laboratories, etc. Moreover, ways of communications are also
as diverse as the modes of knowledge production, for example electronic, informal, and social interactions, etc.
(Gibbons, 2012). And finally, because of transdisciplinary
approach of this mode, more subfields are being born out of disciplines and in
long term it will result
in the glorification of more expertise with ‘finer specialty’ (Gibbons, 2012, p.6).

When it comes to quality control,
Gibbons suggests peer reviews through which control and quality reinforce each other mutually. These reviews are done by
people who have been working on the
problems, and quality is no longer a set of pre-determined criteria. Representing
a wider social composition, quality is not restricted to the views and judgements of disciplinary peers with the same intellectual interests, who consider
themselves as the gatekeeper of that specific
discipline (Gibbons, 2012).

Concluding his argument by methods of producing knowledge
in mode 2, Gibbons (2012)
emphasizes that “communications are crucial. At present this
maintained partly through formal collaborative
agreements and strategic alliances and partly through informal networks backed up
by rapid transportations and
electronic communications… it is one of the imperatives of Mode 2, that exploitation of knowledge requires
participation in its generation.” (p. 15, emphasis
added).

5.
Breaking the Monopoly of Knowledge through Participation of the Oppressed

As we discussed earlier, one of the main preoccupations of PAR is to establish social justice. In that sense, PAR has been inspired by
‘class struggle’ rooted in historical materialism. However, it
stands against the elite interpretation
that put much of the responsibility of social change on the shoulders of the “vanguard” with a more
“advanced consciousness” than that of the masses’ (Rahman,
1999, p.3). PAR maintains the only
way to liberate people is through their own consciousness. Otherwise
stating, PAR is not only seen as a break-up with the right but as a
reaction to the crisis of the left as well.
The oppressed groups identify themselves with the PAR process and take lead by
participating authentically through vivencia, Spanish
word for “inner life-experience” or living actually through something
very close to Habermasian “life-world” concept,
and transform their situation (Fals-Borda, 1999,
p.11).

Consequently, Fals-Borda
(1999) argues for a PAR to succeed, there should be shared codes of communication between internal and
external components of change. These codes which are acting as animators should marry the external
or Cartesian academic elements with experiential practices or combine elite and popular knowledge.
Rahman (1999) states while combining knowledge and practice, PAR should
beware of creating
a new jargon as its ultimate goal is to return
the legitimacy of knowledge production to the people.

The first step to make the scene
ready for the participation of the oppressed is to raise the people’s awareness through
“conscientization” in the words of Paulo Freire (Rahman, 1999). He believes “conscientization is a
process of “self-awareness-raising through collective self-inquiry and reflection” which is reminiscent of
Habermas’ intersubjectivity and communicative action (Rahman, 1999, p.17). To Freire, however, the researcher should be fully aware not to reduce the whole process to merely transfer of the knowledge but to build
the capacity and confidence to produce it. Moreover, to establish a real subject-to-subject
relation between the researcher and the researched will not be an easy task as the people have always
been subjugated to traditional up-down structures and they might lack the self-image and confidence
to be put in decision-making positions. On the other hand, to put the self-image aside might not be an easy task on the side of the researcher, that is why a PAR should develop
research initiated and monitored by people in different stages
of its implementation. Therefore,
as Foucault (1980) has put it, we must be content to “develop a more
modest conceptual systematization of heretofore ‘subjugated knowledges’ as a more stimulating and creative task” (Fals- Borda, 1999, p.162).

6.
Principle of PAR and Learning Alliance

Despite the vast inclusive range of
characteristics and philosophical backgrounds mentioned for PAR, Swantz
(2014) believes that there are some principles for it. First, in PAR the
starting point is always a practical
situation, and the researcher should have a systematic participation by which
he/ she can put himself/herself in
the place of the researched and appear as a partner but be aware of the fact he/she represents a different
class or social group. Among other types of PAR, three
types of empirical-analytical,
hermeneutic (interpretational), and critical participative action research are more well-known according to Stephan Kemmis. However,
irrespective of its type,
there seems to be a consensus
on these criteria for PAR: it should always be transparent, carried
out with a researcher with good research
skills, and with compatible objectives and means of research (Swantz, 2014).

According to Fals-Borda (1999) at least thirty-two schools have been found related
to the concept of participation in social, economic,
and political research.

7.
Action Learning
– A Self-reflective Praxis

As an educator, researcher, and NGO
coordinator for over eight years, I continuously undertook research into the significance of quality education by NGOs working
with refugees and underprivileged children. My work entailed
carrying out field research and since April 2016 when I joined

LearningAlliance: Sharing Knowledge across Borders NGO in Geneva as a voluntary
researcher, most of my research has
focused on qualitative education and the establishment of knowledge sharing networks. As an NGO person I was aware of
the importance nongovernmental organizations afford to those marginalized groups. As I am a firm believer that
sustainable access to education can only materialize through
participation on all levels, I felt compelled
to apply Participative Action Research rigorously this study, as an underlying paradigm, to hear those whose
voices are not readily heard.

Ever since engaging in discourse about PAR and LA, I found out using short films and videos as a
case study both in academic set-ups and in workshops with humanitarian
practitioners can have significant
pedagogical impact. Given the researcher background, speaking “A Learning
Alliance (LA) in Education
for Vulnerable Children; NGOs Across Borders”. In different fora, the feedback
stemmed predominantly from
academics considered the project from a methodological point of view. In one instance, a university professor showed a
strong skepticism about any added value in the learning alliance. On the other hand, for the practitioners, the necessity of participation on a communicative- action-based approach was more clearly definable. However, only
when both groups were able to visualize the learning alliance
via two films,
a short animation and a film documenting a whole process
of a project implemented applying
PAR.

These films document and illustrate
a project focused on building a school for children of underprivileged background via application of PAR. They depict
how an alliance of learnings is happening
among different programmes from painting, theater,
music, and handcrafting. While children
as the main beneficiaries are actively participating and communicating their
needs, visions, and dreams about
their future school, teachers, facilitators and
mangers are becoming part of this learning
alliance by observing and taking actions in another circle. In one instance,
when the theatre teacher noticed
the level of physical tension
among boys in a more closed space
intensifies, he utilizes
the experience of the music group to mitigate the level of violence. In
another example when girls expressed interest in having gender separated
classrooms, their experience of a drawing course, where they could paint the classroom walls, they felt they were
able to make space their own. This self- determination assisted their visualization process in producing a more gendered
learning environment.

The participants of PAR and LA when
being shown films and depicted in pictures this process rather than purely being told about a theoretical concept
stated a better understanding and showed more interest in learning
more about it. The cycle of learning
from students to teachers and mangers and ongoing reflective review highlight
the importance of participative approaches in education supported by either film or video screening or indeed making a
film as part of PAR and documenting change process
in learning and over time.

8.
PAR and Praxis of Learning Alliance through Films: Preliminary Findings

One can argue that film meets
Habermas’ four main conditions for as a “communicative
action” especially when it is employed as a tool for documenting action learning. The inclusion
of all those,

who can contribute to a ‘controversial validity
claim’ can be better verified and reviewed through documentation via film. Although,
granting equal opportunity to express oneself
in front of a camera
is arguably not a given, however, the self-reflective practice of
filming a learning action can provide those with less access to representation to engage in future or repeated communications. While the participants’ genuine intention in a communicative action via film can be paradoxical, illusion
or deception can be part of any narrative similar to
real life. However, the paradoxical split of self- reflection starts when the subject can be in a
position to render aid to itself and at the same time represent itself, be in a film or real learning action. Finally,
the exclusion of coercion for communicative action occurring via filming, needs the
validity check of this claim in different stages. This seems to be imperative especially when it includes
children or marginalized groups, whose participation via informed choice should be the base of the communication.

On the other hand, the three main
components of AL (Fals-Borda,
1999) appears to be present in documenting an action learning
via film. First,
there is a problem to be addressed
and acted upon.
Second, there are actors ready to take action and accept the responsibility. Third,
there is a collective way about solving
the problem.

9.
Conclusion

Given the preliminary findings
of this study, using film as a communicative action tool can combine the three types of empirical-analytical, hermeneutic (interpretational), and critical
participative action research
described by Stephan Kemmis. The starting point is
always a practical situation with problem statement and the researcher/ actor interchangeably shifting
roles and being
researched or acted
upon via a self- reflective praxis.

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Image: Azadeh Ghahvie