Quality as primacy of the practical

Cooperative inquiry involves four kinds of knowing. Practical knowing—skill—is a primary outcome assessed by four criteria, but its essence is an indefinable "knack." Aristotelian bias favoring propositional outcomes is evident in nonpositivist inquiry. But the action paradox—that we learn more about our reality when our primary intent is to change it rather than inquire into it—affirms practical primacy. The research format for skills outcomes is distinctive, and reports of such outcomes are secondary to portrayals. The social dimension of skills is a culture of competence that can become collectively self-transforming through variations of cooperative inquiry. A society as an extended cultureof competence can become self-transforming through three forms of peer self-help: yeast groups, learninggroups, and inquirygroups. For the initiating researcher of a participative inquiry, written outcomes may not be secondary to practical ones. Cooperative inquiry breaks down any separation between the roles of researcher and subject. In traditional research, these roles are mutually exclu-sive; the researcher contributes only the thinking that goes into the project-conceiving it, designing it, managing it, and drawing conclusions from it-and the subjects contribute only the action to be studied. In cooperative inquiry, this division is replaced by a collaborative relationship among all those involved. The inquirers engage in both roles, moving in cyclic fashion between phases of reflection as co-researchers and of action as co-subject