INTEGRATING ACTION AND REFLECTION THROUGH CO-OPERATIVE INQUIRY Reason, P. (1999). Integrating Action and Reflection through Co- operative Inquiry. Management Learning. Special Issue: The Action Dimension in Management: Diverse Approaches to Research, Teac

2 Co-operative inquiry is an inquiry strategy in which all those involved in the research endeavour are both co-researchers, whose thinking and decision-making contributes to generating ideas, designing and managing the project, and drawing conclusions from the experience; and also co-subjects, participating in the activity which is being researched. The arguments which support this approach—the participative worldview, the human person as agent, critical subjectivity, the political, epistemological ecological and spiritual dimensions of participation etc.—have been explored extensively in earlier writing; the methodology itself and the choices facing an inquiry group articulated have been described in considerable detail (Heron, 1996; Heron & Reason, 1997; Reason, forthcoming). Later in this paper I shall discuss how co-operative inquiry compares with other approaches to collaborative or participative research. Those who advocate co-operative inquiry (and other forms of collaborative action research) are in pursuit of two important purposes. The first purpose is to articulat