Participatory and appreciative action and reflection (PAAR) – democratizing reflective practices

The paper introduces a new approach to reflecting and acting called participatory and appreciative action and reflection (PAAR). It explores its potential to enable individuals and groups to move forward, to improve their working practices and lives in particular communities and contexts. The paper situates PAAR in the historical context of participatory and action research and reflective learning. It suggests that using PAAR requires four strategic ‘turns’. By turn we mean a change in direction from one way of thinking and practising to another. The four turns are: (i) away from a preoccupation with changing behaviours in order to solve problems, with ‘fixing’ things and an engagement in deficit‐based discourses, towards the development of appreciative insight, understanding the root causes of success and sustaining strengths‐based discourses in order to amplify those things that will help build a better future from the positive present; (ii) away from self‐learning (individualism and isolation) and towards collective learning through interconnectedness, appreciative knowledge sharing and the use of new forms of communications technology which enable simultaneous action in dispersed geopolitical spaces; (iii) away from one way of knowing and one perspective on truth to an acceptance of more pluralistic view of ways of knowing, of understanding human experience and putting this knowing to good use; (iv) away from reflective cycles and spirals and towards the use of a reflective learning (r‐learning) framework comprising four mutually supportive processes. They are those of developing an appreciative ‘gaze’, of reframing lived experience, of building practical wisdom and of achieving and moving forward.