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Truth or fiction: problems of validity and authenticity in narratives of action research

Abstract In what sense is it helpful to argue that the truth criteria for research reports can be understood through analogies with creative narratives, such as novel and short stories? One argument is that both are founded on the notion of constructing the ‘authentic’ voices of those whose world is presented in the narrative. Problems with the concept of authenticity are explored, and a further analogy is presented, between the principles of action research and those of ‘modernist’ fiction, in order to show how narratives can avoid simply reproducing the authoritarian texts of realist fiction and of hierarchically organised research.