Una meta-teoria per la ricerca-azione: dalla teoria di campo alla action science

Journal title RICERCHE DI PSICOLOGIA
Author/s Victor J. Friedman
Publishing Year 2011 Issue 2009/3-4
Language English Pages 16 P. 51-66 File size 384 KB
DOI 10.3280/RIP2009-003003
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The goal of this paper is to argue for the importance of ‘meta-theories’, or "theories about how to build theories", in action research. Meta-theories express the fundamental assumptions about the world that underlie a theory and influence our ability to combine knowledge and communicate. Action research was originally based on "field theory", a meta-theory developed by Kurt Lewin but largely abandoned by his followers. One of the few meta-theories to have emerged from action research is "action science", which developed by Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. Although there appears to be little similarity between the two meta-theories (i.e. field theory and action science), this paper argues that they actually complement each other. It suggests that integrating field theory and action science into a unified meta-theory can provide action researchers and practitioners with concepts that can enable them see their "behavioral world" in ways expand the range of possible goals, actions, and relationships.

Victor J. Friedman, Meta-theory in action research: from field theory to action science in "RICERCHE DI PSICOLOGIA " 3-4/2009, pp 51-66, DOI: 10.3280/RIP2009-003003