Action research as a practice-based practice

Action research changes people's practices, their understandings of their practices, and the conditions under which they practice. It changes people's patterns of `saying', `doing' and `relating' to form new patterns - new ways of life. It is a meta-practice: a practice that changes other practices. It transforms the sayings, doings and relating that compose those other practices. Action research is also a practice, composed of sayings, doing and relating. Different kinds of action research - technical, practical and critical - are composed in different patterns of saying, doing and relating, as different ways of life. This paper suggests that `Education for Sustainability', as an educational movement within the worldwide social movement responding to global warming, may be a paradigm example of critical action research.