Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

ACTION RESEARCH IN A PARTNERSHIP 149
from repeatedly subjecting experience to immediate and continuing reflection,
including such behaviours as: observation of others’ responses, mental
‘replays’ with imagined variations, analysis of structural implications,
observation of follow-up actions. COMEX was set up on the assumption
that these behaviours can be taught and can become embedded in practice
through engaging in action research. What we were centrally engaged in
teaching becomes clear from what Aristotle had to say about the process of
knowledge acquisition:
Let us assume that there are five ways in which the soul arrives at
truth by affirmation or denial, viz. art, science, prudence, wisdom
and intuition. Judgement and opinion are liable to be quite mistaken.
(Aristotle 1955: 206)
In the Greek, these five kinds of knowledge acquisition are episteme (what
is known, believed to be universally true), techne (the reasoned process of
creating something), phronesis (the reasoned process of moral action), nous
(the state of mind that ‘apprehends first principles’ – an unreasoned state
of knowing) and sophia (overarching wisdom). Much has been written
about techne and phronesis in the literature on action research, particularly
about the concept of praxis which incorporates critical reflection with
moral action (Noffke and Stevenson 1995: 1). What COMEX enabled me to
understand was the crucial importance in the acquisition of knowledge of
taking the basis for action beyond what Aristotle’s translator called ‘judgement
and opinion’, and which I believe is much better understood as
‘common sense’, to intuitive understanding (nous), which incorporates an
understanding of underlying principles that govern human action. Nous,
acquired through the long habit of in-depth reflection on experience, is the
set of generic competences that enable managers (and other professionals)
to take well-judged action intuitively under the pressure of the moment,
despite partial information and ambiguity (Somekh and Thaler 1997).
The work of COMEX served to illuminate, but only partially to resolve
the fundamental disagreement between the world of companies and the
world of the academy on what counts as credit-worthy knowledge. On the
first occasion of awarding credit for APEL the Teaching Committee recommended
that the three conceptual competencies should in future be the
dominant ones, on the basis that these are outcomes that could reasonably
be expected from an academic programme. In the revised criteria, this
meant that if candidates registered highly in terms of the ‘interpersonal’
and ‘impacting’ competencies but very low on the ‘conceptual’ categories
they would be recommended for little, if any, credit under APEL. However,
within the taught (as opposed to the APEL) parts of the BA and MA degree
programmes, it was possible to go a considerable way to holding the