Episode 7-Acting to Learn and Learning to Act with Dr. Alfredo Ortiz Aragon (Pt. 1)

The Action Research Podcast

In this episode, Adam and Joe speak with Adam’s close friend, professor, and mentor, Dr Alfredo Ortiz Aragón, an Action-Researcher and Associate Professor in the PhD Program at the Dreeben School of Education at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, and co-author of Action Research (Fifth Edition) with Ernie Stringer.

During the discussion, Alfredo shares his journey into the Action Research field (4:05), and how he became an action researcher. He then discusses experiences in the then ‘Participation Power and Social Change team’ at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in the UK, where he learned about the critical side of Action Research (6:35): “These experiences exposed me to a broader world of power and… the critical side of the work that we were doing.” The discussion then switches gears to analyze Action Research as a field, with Joe playing “hard ball” with Alfredo in a "lightning round" to address pressing questions and dig deeper into current issues about Action Research (7:49).

To learn more about Alfredo’s journey as action researcher, join us in part-2 of this series where Adam and Joe talk about Ernie Stringer and Alfredo’s exciting new (5th) edition of the seminal book, Action Research.

If you are interested in the book we discuss in the podcast the citation is below:

Stringer, E. T., & Aragón, A. O. (2021). Action research (Fifth edition). Sage publications