Streams of Praxis
Education and Learning (from pre-school to post-graduate).
The field of Education and Learning is one of the historical entry-points for AR, AL and PAR. The ‘living theory’ approaches to (P)AR/AL; narrative and deconstructionist approaches have been largely influential on education and AR and AL. The new fields emerging in this area include: life-long learning, technical education, University of the Third Age, pre-school and parent groups.Chair: Prof Jack Whitehead, Professor at Liverpool Hope University.
International Community Development
The International Community has a large variety of aspects and levels of involvement, including community development and cooperation, fair trade, volunteering and technical assistance, aid, solidarity and awareness projects, alternative development ‘models’ and practices.Co-Chairs: Dr Rob Nabben, Lecturer: Masters of International Community Development, Deakin University; and Dr Patta Scott-Villiers, Institute of Development Studies, UK.
Health and Wellbeing (including the various ‘welfare’ fields of engagement).
With input and involvement across the curative / preventative / self help spectrums, including health, individuals and social contexts; health and environment; health and work; welfare institutional contexts and PAR, AR and AL—involved in the political, economic and pragmatic.Chair: Prof Tina Koch, School of Nursing and Midwifery, The University of Newcastle.
(Social) Ecology
Social Ecology and its several areas of engagement, including social and deep-ecological approaches and projects; agriculture and sustainability; landcare, environment, wilderness and conservation; ecology-community-economy; the social ecology of (dis)ability, ageing and their (dis)contents.Chair: Neil Powell, Senior Researcher at Stockholm Environment Institute, Sweden.
Decolonising praxis
Decolonising praxis including cross-cultural learning with Indigenous and other Peoples and their surrounding contexts; epistemological and ontological challenges to positivist and post-positivist approaches to PAR, AR and AL. A reflection and reframing of the research and learning relationships, as well as the learning from insider voices; empire, research and learning. Entering into dialogue on the possibility of true post-colonialism.Co-Chairs: Dr. Karen Adams, Research Fellow, Australian Community Centre for Diabetes, Victoria University; and Dr. Bronwyn Fredericks, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
Feminist Action Research
Feminist Action Research has been a challenging epistemological orthodoxy for at least five decades and it has continued to offer a critical voice within the AR and AL emerging traditions; both the theory-practice relationship as well as the methodological relationships have been, and continue to be central to FemAR in addition in questions about the way in which (P)AR and AL engage with gender and sex issues in the ’real’ world.Chair: Dr Claudia Gillberg, Senior Lecturer in Education, Linnaeus University, Sweden.
Systems / Business / Organisational Development
Systems, Business and Organisational Development includes the members of Australia New Zealand Systems (ANZsys), a regional network of AR and AL practitioners interested in ‘whole systems’ approaches and who will use the Congress as their ‘annual conference’, therewith opening up their experiences to everyone and ready to learn—in turn—from everyone.Chair: Dr Danny Burns, Power, Participation and Social Change Team, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom.