Innovating in learning alliances : action research concepts and practice

Practitioners experimenting together with researchers is the essence of action research. Learning alliances provide a mechanism for involving the stakeholders that ought to use research outputs (the tools, approaches, models and technologies) in all stages of conception, development and testing of these inventions. Planners, engineers, civil society groups, decision-makers and agencies involved in urban water management can help to provide access to information and guide researchers to focus on their problems and take account of their context for uptake of research findings. The objective of this chapter is to demystify action research, and to present it as a straightforward and common sense approach for researchers and practitioners to work together to find solutions to real-world problems. [authors abstract]

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