Preface 2014

You are about to embark on a bit of a journey around the Americas and the world. The 2014 Proceedings include contributions from ARNA’s second annual conference, held this past May in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania at the campus of Moravian College. Contributors to these Proceedings include action researchers, practitioner-researchers, and university scholars from all over the Americas and a number of other countries. The collection gives you a good sense of the diversity of voices active in action research and the wide range of interests and approaches being worked on within the global action research community. Enjoy the journey as you read these Proceedings!

I want to share with readers what a joy it is to welcome this collection! Member input from ARNA’s inaugural conference in San Francisco in May 2013 strongly suggested that we should make it a high priority to add Conference Proceedings as a feature of the ARNA conference. ARNA leadership accepted this challenge, and fortunately we were able to assemble a determined and skilled team to make the concept a reality for our second conference. In a mere six months following the 2nd Annual Conference, the Proceedings Editorial Team, under the outstanding leadership of Elena Polush, has completed the task of collecting, reviewing, editing and organizing the electronic resource you are about to open. The ARNA Executive Committee cannot thank Elena and team members Heather Leamon, Tara Flynn, Jamie Hill and Jose Martinez enough for their pioneering work on behalf of ARNA. We also want to thank all those who have contributed their manuscripts. In sharing your work in this way you are developing new knowledge and indirectly inviting others to build upon your work and to generate additional insights.

Of course, without an outstanding conference, one might question the real worth of the conference proceedings. Here, we have to give heartfelt thanks for the outstanding work of the 2014 Conference Planning Committee. Led by Conference Co-Chairs Joseph Shosh (Moravian College, USA) and Catherine Bruce (Trent University, Canada), the Planning Committee assembled an outstanding line up of presentations, workshops, keynote addresses, and cultural events. It is this content which enlivens the Proceedings you are about to read and which so enriched those of us who were able to attend the conference in person in May 2014. It is never possible to attend all sessions in a conference, in particular when so many good sessions are offered, so it is a treat to be able to now catch up on sessions that I wanted to attend but just could not make it to. I hope many readers will share that experience, along with all those readers who were not able to attend the conference at all.

Lastly, a special thank you to all who have assisted with translations for the Proceedings. ARNA has a strong commitment to multi-vocality in our work, and we take seriously the challenge to build ARNA as an inclusive and multi-cultural community. That said, there was never a doubt that our first proceedings would include English and Spanish. For that commitment to have meaning, however, required hours of support and assistance from bi-lingual ARNA members. We are deeply appreciative of their support and guidance as the manuscript preparation moved forward.

So, it is with great pleasure, many thanks, and a sigh of relief that the Action Research Network of the Americas presents its first Conference Proceedings.

Lonnie Rowell, Chair, ARNA Coordinating Group

December 1, 2014