Quality and "actionability": What action researchers offer from the tradition of pragmatism

Actionability refers to people’s ability to use knowledge to produce the actions they want. This chapter offers a framework informed by pragmatist thinking and practice for working toward actionability, while simultaneously holding a concern for quality, or rigor and vigor. Because action researchers, who often work within the qualitative paradigm, have been at the forefront of rethinking quality to include actionability, examples are drawn especially from the work of action researchers around the world. Action researchers generate knowledge to be shared with both their client systems and other scholar-practitioners, thus contributing both to scholarship and to practice. Better appreciation for generating action in a context of inquiry is particularly timely as we move away from the duality of knowing and doing that has plagued conventional social science since Descartes.