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Action Research, Case Study, and Community Practice

Action research is still viewed as a “new” form of inquiry by many researchers, and community practitioners and community members discuss and debate its meaning and use. Yet what is new about action research? Perhaps not much, unless you are writing from the perspective of 1952. We incorporate as our historical piece in this issue a very interesting paper written by Genevieve W. Carter entitled “Action Research in Community Planning.” Action research was a new genre of social research, and Carter outlines its relevance to community planning, anticipating that this form of inquiry would become an important part of the community practitioner’s tool kit. Carter was not interested in differentiating action research but in identifying its overarching principles and how community practitioners would use these ideas within the context of community or social studies. Action research in the early 1950s was nascent–emerging as a new form, stirring excitement, and creating a bridge between traditional positivist forms of research and those inquiries that activists, planners, consultants, and community members, themselves, were undertaking. The eight principles that Carter enunciates do not get to the essence of action research, but nonetheless, she in-