how situations respond to action (Kuhne and Quigley, 1997). Investigating situations is integrally linked to the situation itself. Action provides insight and insight provides action. Distinguishing them as two separate processes diminishes each of them.
In this Handbook chapter we will illustrate with everyday examples how common notions of research and of practice unnecessarily distinguish them (McNamee and Hosking, 2012). Everyday examples of deciding what to do or how to do it involve processes to discern the optimal choice(s) for the person given the situation at hand. This is not an attempt to locate the ‘truth’ or the ‘accurate’ choice (Gergen, 2015) – it is an effort to make the best decision for the person given what is available and desired. Considerations of options are predicated on the actions that will or can be taken.
Let us consider how persons decide what kind of transportation to use. Making a decision about buying or leasing a car, car-pooling, using public transportation or taxis, riding a bicycle or walking requires thought and deliberation considering preferences, prior experiences, relationships with employment, costs, and other factors. The consideration of options is connected to the ‘doing’ of the choice – the examining of choices is intimately connected with the eventual performance of the choice. The performance of the choice will include an examination of how the choice is working (or not working) – the ‘doing’ will also involve examination and reflection. Both the doing (practice) and the examining (research) happen concurrently, simultaneously.
Seeing research and practice as merged acknowledges how we make decisions in our everyday lives. Deciding how to go forward is idiosyncratic for each of us and does not lend itself to being categorized as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in an abstract sense. What we do is largely based on what we believe is possible and available – our considerations/reflections are lodged within what we see ourselves as capable of. The optimal answer/decision is the one that fits the myriad of conditions and circumstances involved and that can only be determined by that person or group. We resonate with John Shotter's (2014) views on ‘withness’ and ‘aboutness’ – our work focuses on what is in practice rather than trying to impact or influence practice from a position outside. The idea of research is within practice.
The weddedness of research and practice impacts how practitioners work. A practitioner relates to the situation at hand that involves a client, customer, or a community in a way that points to progressive next steps. The aim is to go forward, not necessarily to fix or to remedy. This is a significant re-imagining for practitioners – the focus shifts from producing change in the client, customer, or community to joining with efforts to take next steps in a preferred direction (Shotter, 2007; Witkin, 2017).
Practitioners undergo this same process when they work with a client in order to understand the nature of the task at hand and to proceed in an effective way. This process of orienting to a client family and their circumstances is a situated endeavor that takes into account a complex of elements in the lives of the clients, the practitioner and his/her way of practicing, and the nature of the service delivery. Research and the production of knowledge about a given problem as detached from practice cannot include enough situational knowledge to fit the specific circumstances of the client. Research knowledge oftentimes needs to be transformed by the ‘user’ of that knowledge to become resonant enough with the context to be useful.
Some of our readers may liken the processes that we have just briefly described to action research, and rightly so (Kuhne and Quigley, 1997). Looking into alternatives and creating change based on exploring the context and the circumstances of the person(s) involved using a series of phases and action steps is the basis of action research. These actions are closely associated with what we are describing in this chapter and closely resemble what we have been proposing in Research As Daily Practice (St George et al., 2015a; Wulff and St. George, 2014), with the primary difference being that we believe that daily living is filled with the ‘action research’ processes without it being formally so labeled. It is an endeavor that is not formalized, specified, or languaged as action research. We might say that ‘action research’ is a formalized and deliberate term for what all people engage in during the course of their everyday lives in making their decisions, big and small.
The centralization and consolidation of ‘research’ activities under the purview of an expert, in our experience, tends to distance people from one another and discourages people without formal scientific training from engaging in examining their own worlds. In this chapter we aim to disrupt the hegemony of research as the exclusive domain of expert researchers, while we would like to acknowledge the importance of ‘expert research’ for what it can provide. Scientific knowledge has helped us understand many aspects of our material existence and has led to the creation of improvements in our health and longevity, our mobility, and technological innovations.
Our point is that researching and/or inquiring is involved in practice and that all practitioners are, by virtue of the very processes they employ, researchers (Schön, 1983). Their ‘research/inquiry’ activities are situated in each unique situation – it is a coordinated project with those affected to determine how to go forward (Simon, 2012). All sorts of decontextualized knowledge, anecdotal information, knowledge from systematic studies, historical perspectives, and creative ideas are germane to the process of figuring out how to proceed. But it is the inquiry that takes place in real time between people (e.g., practitioners and clients) that provides the platform from which to chart the course forward.
Different or the Same?
Our initial impetus in thinking about research and practice as the same grew from an effort to find better ways to coordinate our efforts in doing both research and practice in our academic lives (Wulff and St. George, 2014). Looking at the basic steps involved in each process, we were intrigued by the strong similarities. Practitioners focus on a problem or concern and so do researchers. Practitioners assemble information about the issue (i.e., interviews with their clients, history-taking, reading case files, performing tests or assessments, consulting with others) and researchers collect data (interviews, observations, written documents/archival materials, questionnaires/surveys). Practitioners assemble the information to conceptualize how to understand the situation while researchers design ways to analyze their data in order to develop understanding. Practitioners use the conceptualization to intervene or provide assistance while researchers transform the data with the methodologies to produce knowledge/understanding. Practitioners assess the impact of their efforts to determine whether to continue or to change course while researchers make conclusions about what they have learned through their processes and publish their results (and perhaps create new research projects to extend the knowledge).
How We Use It – Our ‘Solution’ to be More Inclusive and Efficient
We have developed a way of practicing called Research As Daily Practice (St. George et al., 2015a; Wulff and St. George, 2014) and utilize it in our teaching, clinical work, and program of research. This process allows us to integrate all of the responsibilities we hold as academics. Research As Daily Practice has become a form of knowledge-in-action. Inquiry, as described above, is the central process of how we, as practitioners, practice every day. Our definition of Research As Daily Practice is ‘continuously examining data/information from our own clinical work reflexively in order to better understand what we do and what we could do’ (Wulff and St. George, 2014, p. 296). Importantly, inquiry fits into what the practitioner is already doing, rather than being an extra task over and above the daily work. We see our therapeutic work as itself ‘inquiry’ for the purpose of change (Anderson, 2014; Epston, 1999).
Rather than continue to use language that distinguishes research and practice, we present six initiatives/activities that encompass both what we consider practice and what we consider research (listed in no preferred linear order):
Attending to Curiosities
Speculating
