<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>During my (Hafiz) childhood in Bangladesh, I experienced the negative impact of the educational system. My experiences initiated a process of conscientization leading to values-driven activism through the establishment of Education for Development and Sustainability (EDS), a child-friendly community of practice, with Trine and Alamin. In encounters with Erling and Sigrid, we became aware that our activities were in accordance with action research based on cooperative inquiry (Heron &amp; Reason, 2008). From that point of departure, we developed our own collaborative living theory.</p>
<p>In this paper, we explore the research question “How did we become action researchers and what is our driving force?” by using Stoller’s (1989) autobiographical narrative method to analyse selected, lived experiences. Sharing lived experiences and engaging in activism with each other and the EDS children became the base for our conscientization, radical empiricism and contemplating involvement in EDS. Value based activism can create empathic relations and emotions through shared engagement for social justice and the realization that we create a shared reality. Hence, conducting action research with children/youth is in our experience a key to sustainable development. However, to increase the transparency and validity of our research, we needed to explore how our experiences and actions have influenced our values, emotions and decisions to conduct research, our research topic and the research in itself. Therefore, we have engaged co-researchers and participants to critically question the research practice and made it open for discussion and comments in order to see alternative ways of interpreting situations and processes.</p>
</abstract>

During my (Hafiz) childhood in Bangladesh, I experienced the negative impact of the educational system. My experiences initiated a process of conscientization leading to values-driven activism through the establishment of Education for Development and Sustainability (EDS), a child-friendly community of practice, with Trine and Alamin. In encounters with Erling and Sigrid, we became aware that our activities were in accordance with action research based on cooperative inquiry (Heron & Reason, 2008). From that point of departure, we developed our own collaborative living theory.
In this paper, we explore the research question “How did we become action researchers and what is our driving force?” by using Stoller’s (1989) autobiographical narrative method to analyse selected, lived experiences. Sharing lived experiences and engaging in activism with each other and the EDS children became the base for our conscientization, radical empiricism and contemplating involvement in EDS. Value based activism can create empathic relations and emotions through shared engagement for social justice and the realization that we create a shared reality. Hence, conducting action research with children/youth is in our experience a key to sustainable development. However, to increase the transparency and validity of our research, we needed to explore how our experiences and actions have influenced our values, emotions and decisions to conduct research, our research topic and the research in itself. Therefore, we have engaged co-researchers and participants to critically question the research practice and made it open for discussion and comments in order to see alternative ways of interpreting situations and processes.

Our transformative journey to become action researchers

International Journal for Transformative Research

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

{"article-title":"Our transformative journey to become action researchers"}

During my (Hafiz) childhood in Bangladesh, I experienced the negative impact of the educational system. My experiences initiated a process of conscientization...

Our transformative journey to become action researchers

Published Online: Dec 30, 2021

Page range: 9 - 19

Received: Aug 01, 2021

Accepted: Oct 15, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ijtr-2021-0002

Keywords
Conscientization, Radical empiricism, Libertarian education, Value driven activism, Action research based on cooperative inquiry

© 2021 Md Hafizur Rahman et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Our transformative journey to become action researchers

Published Online: Dec 30, 2021

Page range: 9 - 19

Received: Aug 01, 2021

Accepted: Oct 15, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ijtr-2021-0002

KeywordsConscientization, Radical empiricism, Libertarian education, Value driven activism, Action research based on cooperative inquiry

© 2021 Md Hafizur Rahman et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Keywords
Conscientization, Radical empiricism, Libertarian education, Value driven activism, Action research based on cooperative inquiry