Tonnie You said, The research has the form of a field study on the phenomenon LSI, its working elements and its effects. So, my focus is on the philosophy for the change process, not on one specific method. However, OST plays an important role in this research and I hope I am in the right place here. Be assured you are definitely in the right place, for as we all know, Whoever come is the right people. Youre here --- so you have to be right!
And you may even have the right question. It is not about methods (OS, AI, FS, etc, etc)it is about what they do and why/how they do it. And the answer is ??? Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20854 Phone 301-365-2093 Skype hhowen Open Space Training <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute <http://www.openspaceworld.org/> www.openspaceworld.org Personal website <http://www.ho-image.com/> www.ho-image.com OSLIST: To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: <http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html> www.listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] On Behalf Of Tonnie van der Zouwen Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 10:05 AM To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Re: [OSLIST] Action Research Hi everyone, Finally found the time to participate on the OSList. Sorry for my late response on the research topic. I am pleased to be connected to other researchers in the field of OS and cooperative inquiry. Jamie, Christie, Sirin thank you for your information. Did not know the term CI. I am a self-employed consultant and connected to Tilburg University for my PhD as an un-paid researcher (buitenpromovendus in Dutch). My main questions are What are the effects of Large Scale Interventions (LSI), when is it worth the effort, what are the conditions for sustainable change?. I see LSI as an approach for change, defined by participation, systems thinking, action learning and methods for working with the whole system in the room, such as OST, World Café, Real Time Strategic Change and Future Search. The research has the form of a field study on the phenomenon LSI, its working elements and its effects. So, my focus is on the philosophy for the change process, not on one specific method. However, OST plays an important role in this research and I hope I am in the right place here. My goal is, besides earning my degree somewhere in 2010 :-), to develop a sort of information leaflet to get more grip on conditions for success and what effects can be expected, especially sustainable (learning) effects in institutions/organizations. I have used Open Space as a research method during Global Conferences of the Future Search Network and of the Society for Organizational Learning to explore what practioners think about conditions, effects, and to gather information about research papers and contacts. Combined with an extensive literature study on documented LSI cases (of course also from Open Spaces) and some interviews, this resulted in a first draft of an evaluation instrument for LSIs. Now I am refining the instrument and preparing a case study with a reconstruction of 4 LSI-cases (performed more than a year ago, some successful, some not so successful), to test the evaluation instrument and learn more about observable effects. If you are interested in the research design or what and how I have done so far, please visit www.tonnievanderzouwen.nl/wiki. You are invited to contribute to this research wiki, with comments, information, discussion When the case study is completed I want to organize an Open Space conference to discuss, verify and validate my findings, end of August 2009 (date is not set yet). With thanks to Gerard Muller who suggested this idea during an OS on OS he organized in 2007. Possibly a life OS in combination with an online OS. If you are interested to participate, please let me know. For me there is no doubt if OS works, under the right conditions and well performed, but what has to be done to bring sustainable change (a claim often made in literature about LSI)? And what is sustainable change exactly? What are people doing they could not do before? How can that be observed? What do you think of this research? Greetings and a very good 2009, Tonnie Van: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] Namens Chris Corrigan Verzonden: zaterdag 6 december 2008 7:04 Aan: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Onderwerp: Re: [OSLIST] Action Research Nice to see all of my British Columbian friends coming out of the wood work! Chris On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 8:16 PM, Diamond Christie <diamond...@mac.com> wrote: Hi, Just checking in on this topic. Sirin mentioned Cooperative Inquiry (CI), and I had the opportunity to participate in a "bootstrap" CI (no one in the group had any previous experience with CI) during my masters process, and I would agree with Sirin's comments: there is no distinction necessary between researchers and participants, and because it has action and reflection stages as part of the process, it allows the inquiry to be fluid throughout the research phase. (We met in person to begin with, but because our 'action sites' spanned 2 countries & 4 time zones, we then used a combination of conference calls, Skype, & on-line journalling to connect with each other during the reflection phases.) Also, because there is space for the findings to include both informative and transformative aspects, it suits different peoples' preferences for reporting on the experience. In our group, we were able to combine art, photography, and poetry with more analytical writing. In the end, we realized that the informative summary lead to transformation, and the transformative summary lead to new information (go figure!). Four CI's were presented collectively at the Fourth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry: (theme - Ethics, Evidence & Social Justice) http://www.icqi.org/qi2008/ . Many of the students did choose CI for the masters or doctoral work. Although I did not use Open Space for my masters, I did use World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry & Circle in an organization to explore leadership through hosting meaningful conversations (thanks to discovering the Art of Hosting), and was pleased with how the process worked - for the organization, me personally, and for meeting my learning goals. Jamie, I think there are fantastic options for your learning, community, and projects - keep us posted on your progress! Christie PS - I found both The Change Handbook & the Handbook of Action Research to be significantly helpful resources! On 5-Dec-08, at 5:21 PM, Nancy McPhee wrote: Hi everyone, Jamie, I used os as the action research tool for my MALT thesis Opening Space for Community Conversations: Building for the Future. You can find it online at the RRU library. I did one day, with no action day. The community where I live is living with a difficult conflict situation and this research was my attempt to give people a space to start talking. Curious thing is that 3 years after I did the research, we may be actually able to start doing circling again! Nancy _____ From: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Corrigan Sent: 05 December 2008 15:10 To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Re: [OSLIST] Action Research All you folks doing academic research on OS...we've been chasing this for a few years now and trying to get bits and pieces of research organized and in some cases even conducted on OST. I know there is lots of it happening and in my fantasy world it would be gathered and linked in one place. So we have that place, at openspaceworld.org: http://openspaceworld.org/cgi/wiki.cgi?ResearchActivities where some research has alrady been collected. A few years ago Larry Peterson, Peggy Holman and I tried to do some research but it never really caught on. Bottom line is that if you guys - Jamie, Sirin and others - start talking and discovering other research that is done, or somehow you begin a series of conversations about this topic, it would be great if you could share the results and buttress the OST academic research component in the world. Also Jamie, I'm in BC and most of my work is with Aboriginal communities in Canada, and I'd be very interested to talk to you about a few initiatives that I have going on that needs someone who can lend a research eye to using Open Space for community governance. We even have some SSHRC money available for someone who would help us look at action based governance models for urban Aboriginal communities, stemming out of work we did in Prince George BC four years ago. There is a post at my blog which is an invitation to academic researchers:http://chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/?p=1796 Let's talk! Chris On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Sirin Bernshausen <sirin.bernshau...@web.de> wrote: Hello Jamie, I am sorry for the delayed reply, but I really wanted to add my perspective to the discussion on Open Space and action research. For my PhD I am using a systemic action research (SAR) approach which I am particularly fond of because emergence and intuition are built into the research process. Several strands of inquiry are pursued alongside. Different kinds of knowledge experiential, analytical, etc. are co-generated among researcher and research participants. Evidence can come in various forms, including maps, stories, statistics, images, film or questionnaires. It just makes so much sense to combine systemic thinking with action research. Similarly, I am not interested in doing research just for its own sake. I prefer to conduct a form of research that contributes to increased knowledge and understanding of an issue while enhancing social transformation and whole system change. Since my research still is in its early stages and because of its emergent nature I cannot say an awful lot about the details yet. However, in a nutshell, I explore ways of enhancing attitude/behaviour change and facilitating resilience management in the context of climate change/peak oil. Initiatives like Transition Towns are use Open Space in order to engage people and plan for local resilience and energy descent. Danny Burns, author of Systemic Action Research, explicitly mentions Open Space, World Café and similar large-scale events for developing action inquiry strands that may run alongside or even develop into major inquiry streams. Large-scale events are particularly useful for opening up new inquiry questions, testing resonance of issues (whether they are sufficiently relevant to deserve further investigation), to generate a systemic (i.e. diverse, multi-faceted) picture of views and opinions and to tap the collective wisdom present within a system. For my own research, I plan to use Open Space mainly for generating new issues and for resonance testing. In addition to Open Space I carry out semi-structured in-depth interviews with change agents , explore public perceptions of global uncertainties and experiment with different workshop designs. Besides my PhD research I am also involved in a cooperative inquiry process a variant of action research where we map and reflect on the scope, nature and impact of conversations people have about vulnerability and resilience . What I like about cooperative inquiry (and action research in general) is that it is a participatory methodology which respects the agency and intelligence of individuals as capable researchers rather than viewing research as the preserve of trained professionals. In my opinion, this corresponds very much with the basic premises underlying Open Space and similar methods. This type of inquiry can at times be rather cumbersome and it may not produce the type of hard factual knowledge that conventional (positivist) researchers like to see. Yet this isn t necessarily a bad thing - findings may be more ambiguous but they are very rich and (in my view) much more in line with reality and how people make sense of the world. Plus, doing an Open Spac! e on, say, energy descent may generate valuable insights into people s thoughts and degree of awareness, while simultaneously changing people s views and attitudes. I thus hope to both enhance and document positive social change. For my MA thesis I have explored Open Space as a form of conflict resolution (i.e. I just wrote about Open Space but I did not put it into practice - something I'd certainly do differently today!). Jamie - I'd be very interested to learn more about your ideas and the evolution of your research ... Cheers, Sirin ------------------------- Betreff: [OSLIST] Action Research Von: Jamie Snook <jamiesn...@yahoo.com> An: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Datum: 28.11.08 14:27:28 Uhr Hi Everyone, I am new to this list. I am a MA candidate from Royal Roads University in Conflict Analysis and Management. The ideas of systems thinking are less that 6 months old to me and recently I took the step of hosting a staff systems retreat for 25 staff members of the Labrador Metis Nation where I am the General Manager. We used Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe and of course Open Space. The results were great and outside the scope of this email. I am just curious to see how well this Listserv works. I'd be interested to hear views from people on the use of Open Space to conduct thesis and or PHD research. I have ideas for my MA thesis and thinking Open Space might be a fun way to do the research. I am also wondering if anyone is conducting Open Space sessions or events online using forums or other technology? Thank you :-) Jamie _______________________________________________________________________ Sensationsangebot verlängert: WEB.DE FreeDSL - Telefonanschluss + DSL für nur 16,37 Euro/mtl.!* http://dsl.web.de/?ac=OM.AD.AD008K13805B7069a * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist -- CHRIS CORRIGAN Facilitation - Training - Process Design Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd. http://www.harvestmoonconsultants.com * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist -- CHRIS CORRIGAN Facilitation - Training - Process Design Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd. http://www.harvestmoonconsultants.com * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist