What is participatory action research?

For at least seventy years, some researchers around the world have been identifying what they do using terms like ‘action research’, or ‘participatory research’, or a combination of these. Some have stressed the action component, while others have focused more on the participatory process. Still others have come from the field of social science and have identified it as a means of inquiry or research per se. This paper came about in response to requests to speak about some of the collective wisdom that has been generated over many decades by people who have identified what they do using the term ‘participatory action research’. It is the way I tell the story. Throughout this account participatory action research is contrasted with formulations of conventional research science. For me, participatory action research is not a different and separate matter from science at all, but constitutes a formulation of how I understand all science in the wake of the wave of thinking that is popularly being called the ‘new physics’. This ‘new physics’ or ‘new paradigm science’ 4 in the natural physical world seems to me to match a ‘new paradigm science’ in the social world. I identify ‘participatory action research’ 5 not as an optional variant or specialist technique, but as one of the more inclusive descriptions of this new understanding of social science