Reconceptualising the Cyclical Process in Participatory Action Research: A Focus on the Individual-Collective Dynamics

Abstract

This article proposes a new multi-helix model for Participatory Action Research (PAR) to capture the individual-collective dynamics in the cyclical process. By offering a critique of Lewin’s traditional action-reflection cycle, we outline the dangers of assuming synchronicity between the ‘individual’ and the ‘collective’ and the reflection-action linearity pervasive to existing PAR cycles. We draw on the authors’ experiences of carrying out PAR in various cultural, social and professional contexts to explore (mis)aligned rates and weights of participation, considering these alongside temporality and materiality within the PAR process. We argue that collective reflective practice is the site of both the performance and the construction of the collective, which benefit from embracing individuals’ changing concerns and life projects. Informed by the work of Archer (2000, 2007) and Schatzki (2009, 2017), the proposed model harnesses PAR’s potential for democratising knowledge production by exposing the social and emotional work carried out by participatory researchers, evoking timely implications for a practice turn in PAR.

Introduction

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an orientation to research that involves and encourages the participation of those directly impacted by the phenomenon being studied, in actively and collectively examining action to change and improve the situation (Heron & Reason, 2001; Wadsworth, 1998). It encompasses a commitment to challenging the linear problem-solving process that is typically found in positivistic science (Drummond & Themessl-Huber, 2007), with PAR researchers intending to engage those involved from the very beginning of the project through collaborative planning and designing of the research. From here, the cyclical and iterative work process begins, which allows for and encourages change in understanding and knowledge production embedded in the problem-solving process (Abma et al., 2019). PAR also reflects an ethical commitment to creating conditions for social change that can be used by the community for their own purposes (Cahill, 2007a), which inevitably involves addressing power differences to promote equitable social, epistemological and political participation (Kong, 2014). Underpinning which are the ethics of care, theories of social justice and virtue ethics (Banks, 2014) that guide the conduct of individuals and the collective in resolving ethical dilemmas and undertaking ethics work in PAR (Banks, 2016).

PAR, and the ideas of co-production and participation, have now become more established in a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, psychology, social work, international development, geography, social design and other scientific disciplines in the form of citizen science. While the cyclical/ iterative processes of PAR are at the heart of the approach, and are also well recognised in participatory research literature, little has been systematically written about how different cyclical processes are conceptualised, especially the relationships between personal and collective processes. This paper offers an analytical venture into the relationships between the personal and the collective in the PAR cyclical process, drawing on the authors’ experiences of carrying out PAR in various cultural, social and professional contexts.

In this paper, we will first map out the nuanced differences of previously proposed ‘cycles of action and reflection/evaluation’, taking into consideration their theoretical foundations where relevant. By looking at moments of misalignment between individual and collective cycles, we seek to challenge any assumed synchronicity between the two processes. Further informed by the work of Archer (2000, 2007), Schön (1983), Schön and Rein (1994) and Schatzki (1996, 2001, 2009, 2017), we also propose a remodelling of the cyclical process to represent the relational, reflexive and dialectical nature of knowledge production and action in PAR. The renewed cyclical process will bring the complex relationships between the construction of the collective and participants’ (inter)subjectivity, and their concerns and projects, to the foreground to make explicit the simultaneity of multi-level learning in PAR.

Participatory Action Research: Traditions and the Various Cyclical Processes

The origins of the cyclical process found within PAR, can be traced back to Lewin’s (1946) action research cycle which outlined a framework for repeated ‘reconnaissance’ in research. The cycle was simple: plan, act, observe, reflect, and repeat. This process provided a blueprint for the key components of an action-reflection cycle, emphasising the role of reflection and action in integrating ‘know what’ and ‘know how’. Ideally, recursion would be used to enhance surveillance of the social problem, incorporating democratic participation to generate action knowledge in a quasi-experimental design. While Lewin marks the start of the ‘Northern tradition’ of PAR with a focus on building useful and workable knowledge through the cyclical/reiterative process, the ‘Southern tradition’ which includes the work of Freire (1970), Fals-Borda (1979) and Boal (1985) emphasises the goal for participation in learning and knowledge production is human emancipation (Burns et al., 2021). The cyclical process continued to be a key feature of these and latter variants of PAR, including a Feminist Approach to PAR (Maguire, 1987, 1996), Cooperative Inquiry (Reason, 1994; Reason & Heron, 1994) and Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider, 1990; Eilliot, 1999).

The term ‘cyclical process’ is a common feature across nearly all variants of PAR, yet it can refer to entirely different processes depending on the context and purpose. In Lewin's (1946) action research, cycles describe the dialogical relationship between theory and action in real-world settings, with an emphasis on ‘democratic participation’ of laypeople in action science. While his Action Research (AR) is distinct from PAR, focussing more on systemic change rather than the sharing of power and voice (Taylor et al., 2004), it remains essential to understand its cyclical research process. Given its foundational and longstanding influence on later variants, AR provides valuable insights into how iterative cycles shape participatory inquiry and collective action.

Within the field of AR, significant variations of Lewin’s cycle have emerged that have attempted to advance its democratic potential. For example, Stringer et al.’s (1996, 2007) ‘look, think, act’ model condensed the cyclical process into three summarising steps that enhanced its systematic process of inquiry. Variations of Lewin’s cycle have also included the incorporation of sense making through mapping (Bawden, 1991) but have not explicitly unpacked the potential for multi-level learning in the cycle. This is distinct from the communicative spaces made available in critical participatory action research, wherein social practices, including the research process itself, can inform understandings of social realities (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1992, 2005).

The reflection-action-reflection cycle proposed by Heron and Reason (1997, 2001) and Reason (1994, 1999) in their Cooperative Inquiry, embeds reflection as the core process for facilitating the multiple forms of knowing (propositional, practical, experiential and presentational) that contribute to the practical knowledge essential for human flourishing. Cooperative Inquiry is both an informative and transformative participatory methodology (Heron & Reason, 2001). It elevates the status of participants to co-researchers and co-subjects, meaning they are simultaneously being studied whilst being researchers themselves. In doing so, they contribute to knowledge generation and shape the entire life cycle of the project. Rooted in a subjective-objective ontology, this approach diverges completely from experimental science, instead affirming the full range of human capacities and sensibilities as legitimate instruments of inquiry (Heron & Reason, 2001). It also prioritises practical knowing over theoretical understandings. However, while the four phased cycle in Cooperative Inquiry is designed to support collective knowledge production in PAR, it does not fully account for individual learning processes, which may be linked but are also distinct from the collective sense making process.

Paulo Freire, although not directly engaged with theorising PAR, influenced how voices, participation and actions were understood (Thompson & Bambamba, 2022) hence affecting the conceptualisation of the cyclical/reiterative process central to PAR. Freirean PAR, drawing on the idea of the ‘grammar of people’ (Freire, 1993), focuses on the reiterative processes that capture everyday language of the oppressed in order to formulate generative themes to be de-coded and creatively re-coded in order to give a voice to and re-humanise people who suffer from oppression (Burns et al., 2021). Through resisting and challenging ‘banking’ education and raising awareness on how existing power structures and relations hinder the oppressed and the oppressors from connecting with each other’s humanity, we see dialogical knowing and participatory knowledge production are the means to participatory democracy and liberation (Jurmo, 1985).

Sharing a focus on the language and everyday lives of the oppressed, as well as the reiterative process of seeking opportunities and appropriate tactics to trespass the existing class, race and gender boundaries, Boal (1985, 2008) and Maguire (1987, 1996) respectively developed the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ and a feminist approach to PAR. Boal considered theatrical spaces useful for creative reimagining of self-society relationships and symbolic trespass of societal boundaries. Through these trespasses, the usual spectators of social problems can gain knowledge (symbolic and embodied) to become spectators. Patricia Maguire refused to render gender invisible with terminologies, such as people, the oppressed and the campesinos; and she explicitly focused on how ‘women experience their oppressions, struggles, and strengths’ and how they differ given their multiple identities, including ‘race, class, culture, ethnicity, sexual preference, age, physical abilities, and their nation’s place in a changing international order’ (Maguire, 1996, p. 111).

Orlando Fals Borda’s version of PAR (originally called Action Research) was rooted in the commitment of bringing together ‘people’s knowledge’ and ‘scientific knowledge’, with the former he aimed to radically transform the western idea of what science is and for (Rappaport, 2020). Seeing theories and practices as dialectically linked, he believed that scientific inquiry could nourish activism (practices for change) and that activism could reshape the agenda and process of scientific inquiry, making them both parts of a whole political act. Reflection and ‘empathetic dialogue’ remained central to the ‘continuous flows of reciprocity in both research and political action’ which ‘would transform the very meaning of ‘objectivity’ into a bi- or multi-directional process’ (Pereira & Rappaport, 2022). The place of individuals in the collective action/activism, which dialectically shapes and is shaped by scientific inquiry, is to serve as a mechanism for the integration of knowledge and action through emancipatory education and political awareness raising.

Today, PAR is often described as a ‘big tent’ (Rowell et al., 2017, p. 844) that encompasses a broad range of theoretical orientations and methods and yet very few re-conceptualisations of its core cyclical process have emerged. Rather than offering an exhaustive literature review on PAR, this paper explores some of the different PAR cycles in the literature, based on their levels of representation, influence, and the extent to which their cyclical or iterative processes are explicitly discussed and considered. Although various adaptations of Lewin’s cycle have been reported, along with alternative approaches proposed within the Southern tradition of PAR, little progress has been made in (re)conceptualising the personal and collective processes that exist within these cycles. Participatory researchers often conflate these dimensions, either collapsing them at the level of the individual or the collective, or reducing the entire process to a dialogical framework, leaving little room to consider their interaction in depth.

To address this gap, we draw on Schatzki’s (1996, 2001, 2009) social practice theory and Archer’s (2000, 2007) work on reflexivity to inform our analysis of moments of misalignment between individuals and the collective to highlight the individuals-collective dynamics within PAR, based on our extensive experiences ¹ in conducting PAR across multiple cultural and social contexts. The re-conceptualised reflection-action-reflection cycle, proposed in this paper, allows us to examine how individual interpretations of realities and personal social relations can exist independently and as part of a (un)coordinated whole in PAR; and how they interact with one another. In doing so, we unpack the complex responsibilities and roles that PAR facilitators perform to foster an egalitarian negotiation of the collective that embraces individual concerns. Acknowledging the emotional and relational labour involved in supporting both individual and collective projects, this model provides insights into how these journeys can thrive together over time and offers a more realistic expectation for researchers entering the field of PAR.

Peeking through Moments of Misalignment: Individuals and Dynamics

The collective is often positioned as a necessary component of PAR, as multiple individuals are expected to form a group consciousness without any formal consideration of the ‘self’, i.e., the relational, intersubjective components that comprise a person and shape their changing views and preferences, which may (mis)align with another person’s. While it is assumed (and often acknowledged) that individuals bring with them personal histories, expertise, and circumstance, the individuality of these personal realities are seldom reflected in conceptualisations of the reflection-action-reflection cycle. We believe this tendency has major implications for the agency of those involved in PAR, as it inevitably erases how individuals choose to enact their own practices, communities, and identities in an inquiry group from theorisations. To meaningfully acknowledge the agency of individuals comprising the collective within broader structural and social processes, moments of misalignment between the individual and the collective must be considered.

We argue that the inadequate conceptualisation of personal reflection-action-reflection processes in relation to the collective reflective process is a symptom of ‘social hydraulics’ (Archer, 2007). Archer (2007) defines ‘social hydraulics’ as ‘the generic process assumed by those who hold that no resource need be made to any aspect of human subjectivity in order to explain social action’ (p. 6). This argument cleverly points out a common critique of structuralism and social constructionism – their tendency to render ‘any reference to personal powers irrelevant or redundant’ (Archer, 2007) and reduce human behaviours to coordinated or uncoordinated social derivatives. While some theoretical traditions informing PAR do emphasise the importance on intertwined agency, resistance and structural/cultural/political constraints, particularly those from the ‘Southern tradition’ which draws heavily on critical theories, postcolonial and feminist theories (Ferreira & Gendron, 2011; Wallerstein & Duran, 2017), there remains a gap in discussions about ‘internal conversations’ and the relationship between personal and collective reflexivity in PAR.

When the conceptualisation of the PAR process focusses solely on the collective without consideration of individuals’ internal conversations, two major issues arise. First, the false assumption of synchronicity of the collective and personal processes in reflection and action fails to account for the changing membership over time. This, in turn, affects the capacity for collective action in a PAR project. Individuals engage in ongoing reflexive internal conversations that shape and reshape their personal concerns and life projects, directly influencing their level of engagement with and approach to the PAR process. PAR researchers are encouraged to engage with the pre-existing knowledge, diverse experiences and values of the communities or organisations comprising their collective (Fals-Borda & Mora-Osejo, 2003; Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991), the existing PAR literature offers little discussion on how personal reflexive processes either contribute to or hinder coordinated action or collective consciousness raising of the inquiry group, except on group formation (Wicks & Reason, 2009).

Second, without this knowledge of how an individual’s experiences, worldviews, values and their relationships might shape their action-reflection cycles in the context of the inquiry group, the potential of PAR for democratising knowledge production cannot be fully understood, explored or harnessed. For example, changing circumstance, emerging problems and opportunities, and personal growth all work to (re)construct one’s perception of the wider world as well as that of the collective project. In recognising these ongoing internal conversations, the creation of more diverse pathways not only becomes possible, but necessary to help individuals find their own project/journey within and apart from the collective. We consider misalignments then, as places where we can examine the relationships between the personal and the collective reflection-action-reflection processes in PAR. Analysing these moments of misalignment offers insights into how the ongoing construction of the collective is mediated through personal internal conversations and contributes to the critique of the assumed synchronicity of the personal and collective cyclical processes in PAR.

Constructing the ‘Project’ in PAR: My/Our Concerns and My/Our Project?

People living in/with similar social conditions do not necessarily comprehend or respond to a situation in the same way. For example, people might respond to the experience of poverty by working three jobs simultaneously while some might join a demonstration advocating for a living wage. This variability comes from individuals’ internal conversations which are the regular exercise of one’s mental capacity to make sense of themselves in relation to their social contexts (what do they want?) and their ‘right’ course of action to pursue their project (how do I go about getting it?) (Archer, 2007). Through internal conversation, where different modalities of reflexivity (communicative, automatic, meta- and fractured reflexives) are exercised, the generative power of structural, cultural and social properties in their situations are activated. In this regard, no one enters into a PAR project with the same ‘project’ in mind given the diversity of past and ongoing internal conversations they have, nor do these personal projects remain static.

In a project carried out with women survivors of intimate partner violence in Hong Kong (see Supplemental Material, case study 1), it was clear that women survivors who shared the aspiration of supporting other survivors might consider their roles and personal projects differently, depending on their personal relationships, financial circumstances and skill sets in a particular socio-cultural context. While Yan, Nancy and Perry were all involved in the same participatory research project for supporting other women survivors, Yan was not that enthusiastic about joining the PAR project, compared to Nancy and Perry. She considered her participation as a form of support to Nancy and Perry to establish themselves as women advocates. While Yan gathered that ‘women who suffered from domestic violence would rather have easy solutions to their problems than be involved in something with no guarantee of solutions or timeframe’ (like a participatory research project), she made the ‘rare’ decision to participate in the PAR project. It was to help build Nancy and Perry’s portfolios in policy advocacy which was part of their paid positions in the legislative councillor’s office. Yan openly discussed her mixed feelings over the PAR project at the beginning, ‘I agree that it is helpful for them to get involved in developing solutions, but you know it is pretty rare.’ Meanwhile, the sisterhood and solidarity built between Nancy, Perry and other women survivors, especially in a Chinese familial society, strongly motivated her to ‘do something’ about the lack of support for women who had left abusive relationships (see also Kong, 2021; Kong & Hooper, 2018).

The emotional context is also crucial in shaping people’s concerns and hence their project in navigating their realities. In a PAR project with older people, carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s lives were repeatedly disrupted and redirected, impacting both collective and personal projects (see Supplemental Material, case study 2). Having both seen the drafted version of a collaborative storybook output for example, the intention was to obtain feedback from Moira and Winnifred (both older carers), amend the work accordingly and create action points for the next phase of the project. However, after reading the story and reflecting on her past experiences with the day centre, Moira became upset and detailed her frustrations at the State and media in great depth. The storybook, which was intended to offer comfort to co-researchers, instead ignited anger in Moira. At this time, Moira was also experiencing ongoing family conflict, health challenges and mounting unease at the ageism rife in society. After some reflection, the conversation concluded with a plan for Moira to start a new volunteer position at a local organisation. While this decision was connected to the collaborative story and shaped her later (lack of) participation in the wider project, the resulting actions and opportunities were Moira’s alone. In Winnifred’s instance, the drafted story instead evoked feelings of indifference. Having lost her husband, who lived in a residential care home, to COVID-19 the previous year, Winnifred’s grief was intensified by the realisation that the day centre would also be taken from her, along with the informal care and support it provided. This left her disheartened about the research and after a long conversation and period of self-reflection, she decided to take an extended break. Winnifred’s personal wishes departed from those of her peers as her focus reoriented toward grieving and minimising the risk of further loss. Rather than illustrating the facilitator’s influence on Moira and Winnifred’s decisions to return to or leave the collective, these experiences highlight the importance of respecting choice and nuance in an individual’s action-reflection cycle. They also underscore the facilitator’s role in enabling the autonomy of co-researchers.

The collaborative storybook of the day centre captured the story of the collective, reflecting the views of the majority, but lacked the capacity and complexity to formally acknowledge and integrate the misalignments expressed by Moira and Winnifred. Although these feelings were significant in their own lives, they were articulated as an aside, highlighting the issues, concerns and people that are often excluded from a PAR project. Integrating these feelings and concerns back into the collective action of the wider project could have offered a chance to realise what Gergen termed ‘second order democracy’ (Gergen, 2003). Moira and Winnifred’s critical reflections misaligned from the collective and represented crucial moments of ‘spinning out’- instances that called for a renegotiation of the collective itself, including its memberships, personal investments, division of labour and the co-ordination of roles in collective action. Rather than discounting these divergences, engaging in renegotiation would have provided an opportunity to critically reflect on the power dynamics that marginalised their voices – and others - in the wider group.

By recognising the role of power in moments of misalignment, negotiation and democratic participation, a more inclusive and participatory process becomes possible. Power differences exist within any inquiry group, and true democratic practice requires the facilitator to enable and amplify individual voices, particularly those that are marginalised or disempowered. Facilitators thus play an important role not only in enabling individuals to articulate their dreams, desires and personal projects but also in weaving these pursuits together in ways that create shared meaning and purpose.

Peeking through these ‘moments of misalignment’ of concerns/projects between the collective and individuals, we can see that reflexivity does not always reinforce collectivism, rather it enables individuals to consider their changing social, personal, practical and emotional conditions and replot their best ‘way through the world’. The new concerns and projects individuals have in a PAR project may contradict the usual notions of coordinated action and shared purposes which underpins the idea of ‘co-production’. Reason (1994) used the phrase ‘drawing together the common souls’ to describe recruitment of co-researchers into a PAR project, assuming people from similar social positions would have shared concerns which motivate them to get through the forming-storming-norming group process and form a sustainable group identity (Wicks & Reason, 2009). Lewin’s (1946) cycle focusses on the social relationships between participants to sustain democratic participation through communication and co-operation, while Stringer’s (1996, 2007) emphasises the need for engagement of participants and establishing cohesion of the group construct (Stringer, 2014). However, neither consider the possibility of misalignments that might emerge between the collective project(s) and the individual project(s).

We recognise the importance of collective action as much as the precarity of a collective. When individuals’ voices go unheard and their concerns are excluded from the construction of the collective, individuals will spin out of the group and may eventually leave. Our critique to the collective cycle of reflection-action-reflection is not a critique of the transformative function of collective action, but rather a way to seek nuanced understanding of the processes that participatory action researchers have been charting in order to maintain the collective through empowering individuals and attending to individuals’ learning and practical needs (Kong, 2014; Kong et al., 2023). This echoes Healy’s (2001) call for more analysis on PAR facilitators’ use of power to enable people’s autonomy, often in rather restrictive environments, and to connect the individuals’ life projects in a meaningful way that can sustain a collective for collective actions.

A Critique on the Reflection-Action-Reflection Linearity Within the Cyclical Process

The assumption of synchronicity (alignment) between the personal and collective processes in the PAR cycle interlinks with the challenge of action-reflection linearity. Action-reflection processes can occur simultaneously at both collective and individual levels, sometimes in sync and sometimes out of sync. Individuals may reflect on personal experiences during collective actions, or they may take action toward personal goals during a collective reflective phase. Given the multiple internal conversations occurring within a collective, each unfolding at different points of time, individuals engage with the collective action-reflection process in varying ways. Their level of participation differs in weight (the importance they place on the collective project, the resources they contribute and their time investment) and rate (the timing, timeliness and rhythm of their engagement). These variations are mediated through their internal conversations, which serve as the primary mechanism for reflexivity.

When using the term ‘rates’, we are referring to the concepts of timing, timeliness and rhythm. ‘Timing’ relates to the questioning of what is a suitable and appropriate time for an individual to get involved and/or continue their involvement in a PAR project. In Moira’s instance for example, the co-researcher in case study 2 (see Supplemental Material), it was the wrong time in her life to emotionally invest in a project about a day centre that was closing. Having experienced a prolonged period of isolation during the pandemic restrictions, Moira did not wish to dwell on experiences of loss and failure. Instead, she felt it was better to take a different path and assume a new role as a volunteer at another community service, thereby redirecting her outlook. ‘Timeliness’ then relates more broadly to occurrences such as COVID-19, which introduced and suspended a broad range of social policies that (re)prioritised different areas of work and research and redirected the momentum available for certain research topics, as was also the reality in the social work and participatory research project (Kong et al., 2021). Rhythm instead captures the pace of people’s lives. In Winnifred’s instance for example, the loss of her husband left her feeling numb and unwilling to rush her daily practices. She required a much slower pace to her life (and thereby her involvement in the collective project) to make sense of her own numbness and grief before returning to a faster rhythm.

The term ‘weights’ refers to both the contribution of individuals and the distribution of work within the collective, which are shaped by the availability of resources and individual commitments. It also encompasses the level of personal and emotional investment in the collective project, recognising that this varies among individuals and will fluctuate further over the course of the project. This prompts an exploration of what has been agreed in the group process and where the boundaries of my/our project and associated personal and collective concerns are drawn. Rather than critiquing an individual’s level of investment, it acknowledges that action-reflection linearity is challenged by the misalignment of the personal and collective action-reflection processes. In this sense, personal conversations shape the performance of the collective by shaping the weights and rates of an individual’s engagement in the collective.

We investigate the performance of the collective through the aspects of social importance, materiality (weight) and temporality (rate) that shape the coordinated practices. We consider the aligned weights and rates of participation as sufficient conditions for any collective; yet the essential condition for the existence of a collective lies in practical intelligibility (Schatzki, 2009; 2017). Practical intelligibility involves the ability to recognise, interpret and respond to a situation based on one’s own lived experiences and to engage in coordinated action with others in a social situation. A priori social learning and learning during collective practices contribute to the differing ways of making sense of a social situation. Crucially, it does not necessitate any shared practical concerns between individuals; hence, there should be no expectation of shared understanding as people enter collective action with distinct perspectives, making sense of the situation in ways that are intentionally diverse and even contradictory. However, shared understanding can be constructed intentionally to enable a collective project that aligns an individual’s life project into the broader collective endeavour.

The assumption of personal-collective synchronicity is further challenged by considering Schön’s (1983) ideas of reflection-in-action/ reflection-on-action. Human beings solve problems by adjusting their practices through reflecting both in and on their action, leading to new framings of the issues, hence new solutions or embodied knowledge is more aligned with the espoused theories (Schön & Rein, 1994). Translated into making sense of the cyclical processes of PAR, this means individuals engaged in the collective action phase would undergo different personal reflective processes during and after their actions, leading to new bodily practical skills and understandings of the situation. However, there is no guarantee that these emerging personal understandings of the situations and individual skills for problem solving are coordinated or connected with each other for the next collective action. Highlighting these potential misalignments, we acknowledge that individuals do not simply wait to reflect, act and grow until they are in a collective space that congregates intermittently. Rather, their personal contexts, actions and reflections continue to progress and evolve in line with their everyday lives. The multiple reflection-action-reflection cycles simultaneously going on, spinning in and out of each other, highlight a seldom talked about function of collective reflective practice in an inquiry group – serving as a site for the performance and construction of a collective through building connections and embracing differences (Kong, 2021; Kong & Hooper, 2018).

To foster a space for re-negotiating the collective – membership, division of labour, goals and resource distribution – PAR facilitators require advanced group work skills to help connect individual suffering to structural inequalities and oppression (conscientisation, in Freier’s terms), bridge traditionally fragmented analyses of social problems (Jacobson & Rugeley, 2007) and build an inclusive and democratic community that empowers marginalised communities such as young people (Cahill, 2007b). Evidencing this point, we return to case study 2, the participatory project with older adults. Prevented from physically forming a collective due to COVID-19 restrictions, co-researchers were frequently engaged in reflection in/on action as part of the research project, but also in their everyday lives. Changes in contextual circumstances continued to evolve alongside their understandings and awareness of loneliness, the focus of the research, and this in turn shaped other instances of reflection. Drawing on the extracts from two older clients (see supplementary material), Paul and Cedar, their different approaches to reflection and action appear distinctly shaped by their previous personal experiences. It is also clear that their understandings and awareness of loneliness changed over the course of the study, and this in turn impacted our subsequent framing of the experience.

While Paul remained wary of close bonds, his initial dismissal of loneliness formed the basis for a later focus group with other clients where ‘moments of connection’ were literally mapped out in the local area. Cedar’s approach was instead shaped by his ongoing frustrations towards a postal worker, with whom he was eager to place blame after reinforcing his sense of isolation. These moments of misalignments had both individual and collective implications for reflection and action. While Cedar was later inspired to attend talking therapy and eventually reintegrate into his local community after the pandemic, Paul’s emotional investment in the project waned as the perspectives of his peers (in relation to loneliness) appeared too different from his own. However, the collective still benefited from the range in perspectives as it enabled a more fluid construction of meaning that was later termed ‘community loneliness’ (Noone, 2023).

As PAR researchers who are committed to the empowerment of communities, we must recognise the value and complexities of the individuals we work with and minimise the risk of erasing their personal journeys within the collective. When working with social workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, co-researchers’ capacity to participate in a PAR project varied with all sorts of contingencies, such as personal and family health, caring responsibilities, government’s policy responses and support in the workplace (Kong et al., 2021). Building in support and human resources, in a PAR project, to allow individuals to spin in and out of the inquiry group, while not losing sight of the development of the project, was perceived as an empowering practice which also helped keep the group together (see also Kong et al., 2023). However, these swift adjustments could cost extra money and disrupt the coherence of major research activities (e.g., data collection, analysis and writing up of findings).

In this PAR project with social workers, diverse learning styles and the forms of action, reflective of individual goals/personal projects, were integrated into the collective learning process. While the creation of multiple co-learning spaces highlighted the importance of personalised support in fostering equal participation and confidence in self-expression, a critical question remained: Who is responsible for sustaining these spaces? Both academic and community researchers contribute voluntarily, but volunteerism has its limits. At some point, reliance on unpaid labour reaches a threshold, raising an important consideration about the appropriate balance between volunteerism and paid work in a PAR project (Kinchy, 2016).

Nonetheless, there is no universal response to how we identify and negotiate misalignments, and the handling of them can present ethical, methodological and practical challenges. Many toolkits have been developed over the years to support the navigation of ethical dilemmas and foster collaborative learning, such as the Dilemma Café (CSJCA, 2015), participatory theatre for performing ethics (CSJCA, 2014) and the Participatory Research Innovation and Learning Lab (PRILL) (Durham Community Research Team, 2022).

From the Existing Cycles to a Multi-Helix Model of Reflection-Action-Reflection

As aforementioned, there is a distinction between the Northern and Southern traditions of PAR. With an extended experimental design that integrates practice and research typically found in the Northern tradition, PAR researchers from the Global South instead focus more on human emancipation. As outlined by Marovah and Mutanga (2023), even participatory research in the Global South can retain and reproduce practices from traditional social sciences that undermine its core principles despite its ‘decolonial appearance’. Indeed, across these traditions there remains little evolution of the theorisations upon which the cyclical process of PAR is based. Lewin’s (1946) action-reflection cycle centralised the role of reflection in aiding knowledge production and action (Koch et al., 2005). As is often found in action research traditions, more credence is given to the role and potential of reflection on action, meaning that reflection typically takes a sequential form. Various adaptations have sought to rearrange or reaffirm these processes, as seen in Kemmis and McTaggart’s (1992, p. 10) position that ‘to do action research is to plan, act, observe and reflect more carefully, more systematically, and more rigorously than one usually does in everyday life’. Stringer’s (1996) distinction of ‘think’ from ‘act’ similarly reorganised the cyclical components, with the latter a direct result of the previous reflections, which are responsible for the progress of the research cycle.

Heron and Reason’s (2001) ‘extended epistemology’ of experiential, presentational, propositional and practical ways of knowing demonstrates the biggest potential to break the action-reflection linearity. By considering human problem-solving, not as mere implementation of theoretical or practical knowledge that a person owns, itself as an embodied learning process, Heron and Reason place reflexivity at the heart of uncovering tacit knowledge and tacit learning. Only through defamiliarising experiences through reflection, can we be presented, theorised and practically (re)appropriated in the problem-solving process. While Heron and Reason’s inquiry cycle embraces reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action, marking a departure from other theorisations of the cyclical process, we have seen little attention given to individual inquirers’ personal action-reflection processes and how their personal life concerns might shape the collective cycle. Granted, experiential knowing acknowledges the importance of individual inquiries in everyday life, and yet the focus remains on the value that this type of knowledge offers the cycle (Heron & Reason, 2001). It is not that such framing lacks consideration for the individual then, but that it does not yet go far enough to incorporate an individual’s journey within the wider collective cycle. A multi-helix model of reflection-action-reflection offers such an opportunity, as different ways of knowing can be attributed to the individual and the wider collective. Importantly, this shifts the understanding of the rigour of the cyclical process, from evidencing the quality of knowledge made available through reflective, action or outcome phases of inquiry to demonstrating the care and flexibility tailored for supporting individuals’ involvement (including the complexities inevitably involved in this process).

The multi-helix model we propose here does not intend to negate the validity of Lewin’s action reflection cycle or the various adaptations made to it. Instead, we propose a different, three-dimensional, perspective of the action-reflection cycle that better accounts for (thereby better respecting and protecting) the individuals comprising a PAR inquiry group. Rather than assuming cohesion in an inquiry group’s journey through PAR, the multi-helix model (Figure 1) captures the practice and performance of the collective, emphasising that without individuals spinning together, there is no collective. Recognising the challenge that misalignment between personal and collective action-reflection processes poses to linear action-reflection, the model acknowledges that individuals – guided by their personal concerns and life goals – engage in internal conversations that build connections by constructing both real and perceived common goals, concerns and projects (connectors across helices). Based on these commonalities, individuals coordinate their actions to solve or navigate shared problems. Through internal conversations, in, on and for action, individual reflection-action-reflection cycles can spin in and out of each other across a timespan, varying the shape of the collective in terms of membership, division of labour, group momentum and personal investments. We therefore advance the traditional two-dimensional cycle, to one that is three-dimensional, taking a new perspective of the cyclical process.

Figure 1.

The Longitudinal View of the Multi-Helix Model of Collective Reflection-Action-Reflection.

The proposed model captures two different reflection-action-reflection cycles spinning together as a collective. It outlines the first dimension as the collective learning cycle, the second as the individual learning cycle and the third as the time progression. When spinning out or in, perceived connections across different individuals might appear weaker or stronger respectively. By understanding the complexity of individual cycles and collective cycles spinning in and out of each other we shed light on the importance of collective reflective practice as the site of the performance and the construction of the collective, highlighting the power configuration of the collective in moments of misalignment. Without acknowledging and seeking how individuals’ experiences, worldviews, values and relationships might shape the personal and collective reflection-action-reflection processes in the context of an inquiry group, we risk closing space for epistemic participation– the different ways by which people interpret the personal and collective experiences and construct knowledge that explains their own realities and informs their actions, both coordinated and uncoordinated. On the contrary, the dismissal of the personal in the collective can make the social and emotional work carried out by participatory researchers invisible and the potential of PAR for democratising knowledge production not fully understood, explored or harnessed.

The implications of this proposed shift are immensely hopeful for future participatory research, practice and policy. By recognising the three dimensions of PAR through the multi-helix model, facilitators can better acknowledge and explore the complexities of the reflection-action-reflection cycle. This does not require facilitators to take on additional roles, but to embrace different perceptions of their roles through this theorisation, including a less problem-saturated understanding of people spinning in and out of the collective.

As illustrated in Figure 1, connections between individual and collective learning cycles are not linear. They can form weaker or stronger connections throughout the course of a project as individuals spin in and out of the collective. The multi-helix model does not consider such spinning in or out as problematic, but of significance. In capturing these nuances, we can begin to understand the broad range of roles PAR researchers might assume during a PAR project, thereby uncovering the immense time and effort demanded of facilitators. For those facilitators starting the PAR journey for the first time, it is intended that this model can offer an enhanced understanding of the multiplicity and complexity of such a role and help justify calls for more sustained support throughout the process. Enhanced support may include the following considerations:

• D1: Collective cycle: Use collective reflection to build connections and link individuals’ concerns to structural oppression. Cultivate a caring culture that fosters both empathetic and strategic connections. Establish clear communication processes to negotiate role changes and division of labour when personal circumstances shift.

• D2: Individual cycle: Build in processes, resources and support to explore and express personal concerns. Create safe spaces for voicing disagreements.

• D3: Time progression: Maintain communication and positive relationships with members who spin out or drop out. Re-open the group membership to those who spin out or drop out when appropriate. Pivot on moments of strong connections to drive collective action.

With the new model, changes to the framing and understanding of phenomena being studied become possible as we reimagine the role of individuals within the collective. This is particularly promising in participatory research with those considered ‘hard-to-reach’, such as older people living with late-stage dementia (Smith & Phillipson, 2021). By capturing experiences like loneliness beyond the individual level, the model enables a more fluid construction of meaning – one that might otherwise be overlooked - thereby (re)shaping research questions and outputs in dynamic ways.

The model also enhances the personalised responses required of participatory researchers. When 1:1 support or specialised services are needed to facilitate involvement, differences in individual needs are more easily identified and translated to funding bodies (Kong et al., 2023). More broadly, the model highlights the necessity of flexible funding structures that can better accommodate both individual and collective needs within participatory research.

A key aspect of this approach is the role of facilitators in using tools to navigate diversity and create a collective that can support both individual and collective learning. Within international PAR communities, particularly those engaging with rural societies and indigenous groups, tools such as the ‘white privilege’ checklist and the ‘Community Tool Box’ help to raise awareness of power dynamics and build on local contexts and cultures (see Loewenson et al., 2014). By understanding the impact of such tools for individuals in the collective, facilitators can better ensure that local contexts, cultural perspectives and power relations are meaningfully integrated into participatory research.

Conclusion

In acknowledgement that action-reflection linearity is challenged by the misalignment of the personal and collective action-reflection processes, this paper calls for the formal incorporation of individual (return) journeys into the collective action process of PAR to better promote and protect the agency of co-researchers. Despite significant progress in the field of PAR in recent years, existing cycles have yet to fully capture the performance of the collective, including moments of misalignment. Guided by the work of Archer (2000, 2007), Schön (1983), Schön and Rein (1994) and Schatzki (1996, 2001, 2009, 2017), we propose the multi-helix model of reflection-action-reflection to conceptualise how individuals’ differences are relocated within this synchronistic collective process. By integrating and considering the individual, as reflected in the multi-helix model, instances of misalignment become more traceable, revealing variations in the weights and rates of involvement. This highlights the importance of emotional investment in collective projects and considers how and why this might fluctuate. A deeper exploration of how the collective is performed then enables a richer examination of materiality and temporality, helping to unpack and enhance the complexities of reflective practice in PAR.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Reconceptualising the Cyclical Process in Participatory Action Research: A Focus on the Individual-Collective Dynamics

Supplemental Material for Reconceptualising the Cyclical Process in Participatory Action Research: A Focus on the Individual-Collective Dynamics by Catrin Noone, and Sui-Ting Kong in International Journal of Qualitative Methods