Exciting news!

The book has just been honoured as runner-up for Outstanding Book of the Year Award by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Qualitative SIG.

The judges wrote that they were ‘especially impressed’ and described the book as ‘exemplary’. They said:

Wadsworth’s work provides her readers [with] opportunities to engage with complicated ontological, epistemological, and methodological issues in a style that is relentlessly engaging, witty, and tough. Using transparency and humor to reveal competing perspectives, she opens readers not only to the text but to themselves as people, researchers, and change agents.
A tool for any researcher in any field, her text lends itself to theoretical insights as well as list making in processes of recursive reflexivity. Yoland Wadsworth’s work can be applied to qualitative inquiry in health and human services.
We celebrate the accomplishment of Yoland Wadsworth and her work in Building in research and evaluation: Human inquiry for living systems today. [Vancouver April 2012]

More about What other people are saying about it below

About this website

This is a website for the book about a living systems inquiry epistemology by Yoland Wadsworth.

Published in Australia, NZ and the Asia-Pacific as Wadsworth, Y. (2010) Building in Research and Evaluation: Human inquiry for living systems, Action Research Press, Hawthorn and Allen & Unwin, Sydney ISBN 978 1 74237 540 3

Published in the UK, Europe, Middle East and USA as Wadsworth, Y. (2011) Building in Research and Evaluation: Human inquiry for living systems, Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, Calif. ISBN Paperback 978 1 61132 101 2 Electronic 978 1 61132 102 9

What is groundbreaking about this book?

This book is a major departure from currently standard research and evaluation books. It provides a new 'mental architecture' with which to understand self-correcting inquiry processes by which we get from knowing 'how things are' to 'what is their value' to identifying 'what might be better', to seeing how that 'better' can be trialled and potentially reiterated as the new 'way we do things round here' to bring new life to the organism - or not, as the case may be.

It charts and brings together an underlying integrating architecture of 'living changing-form' identified in four hitherto often separated disciplines:

The new biology and physics of complex adaptive-generative systems

The epistemological processes of inquiry that help all living organisms navigate such ecosystemic life

The embodiment of these inquiry processes 'writ small' individually in humans (in diverse yet characteristic psychological ways)

And the embodiment of these inquiry processes 'writ large' socially, economically and politically in groups, organisations, communities, organisations and institutions (in diverse and characteristic sociological ways).

For ecosystemic thinkers this book may illuminate how life evolves or is created by human populations.

For psychologists and those interested in the life of the human mind, this book may show how larger scale 'structures' are co-created and re-created (or not) by the countless systematic and epistemological actions of individuals in relation to each other.

For sociologists this book may shine a light into the 'black box' of the human individual that is co-creating the social, political and economic as living phenomena.

For researchers and evaluators this book may be seen as a way of ending the paradigm wars (the old paradigm now integrated within a new paradigm with neither excluding the other), and a beginning to seeing all human 'inquiry preferences' as necessary within a process for a full enactment of scientia and of organised life itself.

For those who seek change (and stabilising of desirable form), the book provides a reliable sequence of questions and associated methods, methodologies and philosophies of knowledge to continuously go 'full cycle' from inductively observing current action, to reflecting on the meaning of those observations, to abducting new theory, to trialling and testing deductively in new practice, and so on.

For health, human and community services the book may offer a fresh approach to practice seen here as resourcing the inquiring self-organising viable life of the individual, group, community or organisation.

What are people saying about it?

'Highly original... an ambitious integration of concepts. Credible and useful. Grounded in pioneering empirical research'
- Danny Burns, professor of organisational learning UK

'Sound and persuasive, insightful, important and inviting. A great contribution'
- Michael Quinn Patton, author of the best-selling book, Utilization-Focused Evaluation USA

'Brilliant... I'm not aware of any other book of this nature. The examples are impressive'
- Linette Hawkins, social work educator Aust

'I remain critical of 'systems' models and biological analogies for organisational processes, but this work is unquestionably original and in major ways innovative'
- Raewyn Connell, sociology professor Aust

'After years of mechanical researcher-as-expert/expert facilitator texts on evaluation and action research, this book is a breath of fresh air providing a complete rethink of these fields - An absolute must-read'
- Carol Gribch, School of Medicine Aust

Has it been reviewed?

Book Review accessed 14 October 2010: mra.e-contentmanagement.com/.../building-in-research-and-evaluation-human

Publisher: e-contentmanagement
Title: Building in Research and Evaluation: Human inquiry for living systems
Author: Yoland Wadsworth
ISBN: 978174237 5403 2010 Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest NSW
Reviewer: Carol F Grbich
School of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide SA

The notion of 'living systems' brings a completely different dimension to traditional approaches to evaluation and action research. At first, research into living systems seems rather like the exercise of chasing a watermelon pip round a plate with a fork - the ineffectual chasing the elusive - but on further reading it becomes clear that Wadsworth is documenting a major and most exciting shift in evaluative processes from a previous focus on Gidden's structuration (structure plus process) with more traditional assessments involving such linear pathways as needs identification culminating in needs fulfilment, to the more recent moves in theoretical physics of viewing systems as complex entities - many layered with inter- and intra- actions at all levels.

Her focus as author in past texts has centred on participatory action research with its collective group think, reflection and problem solving through trial interventions, but this book, although it draws on this tradition, goes beyond collective action to solve identified problems to viewing culture and systems as complex and fluid and individuals as observant and adaptable. Her core argument is that recognition of our inherent capacities for flexibility and adaptation should enable us to devise inbuilt checks and balances for action and monitoring in our workplaces. The terms 'action' and 'monitoring' shift in orientation when terms such as: nurturing, flexible and responsive practice, positive critique and collaboration, are interwoven.

In order to convince us, Wadsworth has produced a detailed text of over 300 pages in which she leads us through the history of evaluation to the advent of living systems with their emotional intelligence and built in approaches for keeping defined values and ideologies on track. She carefully integrates the standard data collection techniques but shows how these can be used to facilitate positive and creative modifications, rather than negative and imposed change, which can then benefit the majority and maintain the system in a healthy productive state. This is followed by extensive examples of how to create and maintain living human service systems using these techniques.

After years of mechanical researcher-as-expert/expert facilitator texts on evaluation and action research, this book is a breath of fresh air providing a complete rethink of these fields. The living systems approach fits neatly within traditions that embrace chaos, complexity and postmodernism with their organic and transitional states - in short, the world we now inhabit, and like these systems, the book is also organic in its reflective and dialoguing style leaving spaces for the reader to reshape and transfer ideas into different fields and settings. An absolute must read for all researchers involved in action and evaluation research and in the creation and maintenance of viable systems involving human beings.

From the Left Coast Press website

"An integrative book by a grandmaster of the field is a treasure. Yoland gives us, not only a rich book on engaging in social research, but also a deep insight into her own thought processes of how to work with issues and questions, and to work with people who care and who want to change structures. This is a book which invites us to develop our own integration of who we are and how we work."

- David Coghlan, Trinity College Dublin, author of Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization

"In this the third and final text in her life’s work trilogy [Wadsworth] displays an extraordinary capacity to integrate many different perspectives, theories, constructs and approaches within an overarching accessible framework. She puts those perspectives and approaches in dialogue with each other, and provides the reader with a way to navigate the labyrinth created by the intersection of inquiry and practice. Her own depth of experience and accomplished capacity for reflection as both a practitioner and inquirer make her insights important and innovative. Her style of writing, presenting and engaging the reader is uniquely her own–and therefore quite original…. Wherever people are engaged in trying to make the world a better place and open to undertaking inquiry as a part of that process, this book will be a welcome addition to their journey."

- From the Foreword by Michael Quinn Patton, author of Utilization-Focused Evaluation

The Table of Contents

Download file

A guide to its key pages

Download file

Allen & Unwin co-publishers website for how to buy the book in Australia, NZ, and Asia

External site

How to buy the book in Europe, USA, UK and the Middle East from our international publisher Left Coast Press

External site

Action Research Press publisher's website

To see the not-for-profit community group that has been a local home for action research and community of practice for its members including Yoland Wadsworth (being reconstituted after cyber attack)

To see other online accessible readings by Yoland Wadsworth (being reconstituted after cyber attack)

To access the complimentary book launch gift bookmark, dedicated to the memory of Cate Kyne

A brief bio about Yoland Wadsworth

Yoland Wadsworth is the author of Australia's best-selling research and evaluation books (more than 50,000 copies sold) - Do It Yourself Social Research and Everyday Evaluation on the Run (both recently published 3rd editions in 2011, Allen & Unwin, Sydney), now also available internationally through Left Coast Press, San Francisco

She is an experienced research and evaluation practitioner, methodology theorist and consultant who has worked for government and community organisations in the health, community and human services sector over the past 38 years. She began life as a researcher with her first survey at sixteen years, and by eighteen was hand-calculating chi squares in the Mathematics Department at Monash University while receiving a classical sociology education (1969-1971) with a double major in history and sociology and minor in psychology, and later a PhD in the sociology of knowledge (1978-1985) entitled: 'Sociologists in Work: In Academic and Social Policy-Oriented Research Settings'.

She went on to pioneer in Australia the use of critical collaborative community research in the 1970s; consumer-staff participation in dialogic evaluation in the 1980s, and 'whole systems' culture change and quality improvement using multi-stakeholder participatory inquiry in the 1990s.

She has been program manager of three action research resource centres in Melbourne over twenty five years; held senior government roles in research and policy, including with the Policy & Research Branch of the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet; co-founded the Health Issues Centre and the Australian Women's Health Network; and has been a recipient of multiple national evaluation awards. Yoland is also a 1995 Churchill Fellow, a life member of the international Action Learning Action Research Association, and a Fellow of the Australasian Evaluation Society. For the past fifteen years she has had various academic appointments (including at Victoria University, RMIT University, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University) as well as a private consultancy and writing business yolandwadsworth.net.au.

She is currently Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Applied Social Research, School of Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, Design and Social Context Portfolio, RMIT University; Principal Fellow in the McCaughey VicHealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community Wellbeing, School of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Action Research Center, University of Cincinnati.

Being taken to see a lake infested with duckweed by her biology teacher, Wendy Hurle, at age fifteen marked the beginnings of her thinking about the conditions for living systems.

Links to other people working elsewhere in the world in similar areas of thinking to those of Yoland Wadsworth's transdisciplinary living systems inquiry epistemology

Peter Senge at MIT, the Society for Organisational Learning and at the Presencing Institute

The Late Donnella (Donna) Meadows' Sustainability Institute

Ray Ison, Rosalind Armson, Simon Bell and the Open University Systems Group

Otto Scharmer's evolutionary business 'theory U', and the Aesthetics/Arts, Creativity and Organisational Research network ACORN

Laura Brearley's Aesthetics/Arts, Creativity and Organisational Research network ACORN

Gerald Midgley and Wendy Gregory of the Hull Systems Studies Centre and Environmental Science and Research (ESR) Social Systems Group

Ken Gergen at the Taos Institute

Diana Whitney's Corporation for Positive Change

Fritjof Capra's implications of the new physics and systemic thinking and for transformative learning through Schumacher College

Peter Tufts Richardson's use of Jungian Myers Briggs theory

Bill Harris's facilitated systems consultancy

Patti Lather's post-critical feminist social science theory

Jack Whitehead's living educational theory in action research

Jane Cull's work for Maturana's livings systems approach

Bill Torbert's action inquiry

Mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme's Centre for the Story of the Universe

Brian Walker's resilience and sustainability in social-ecological systems

Christopher Alexander's pattern language in architecture and Project for Public Places (place-making)

Margaret Wheatley's living systems theory and Berkana Institute for community involvement

Drew Dellinger's Planetize the Movement

The Feminisms and Participatory Action Research Group (PARFem) and Boston Conference

ANU's Complex Open Systems research network

Elisabet Sahtouris' evolutionary biology and living systems design

Gabrielle Bammer's Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S)

Ian Hughes' new living systems research network and FARNET

Anisur Rahman and Research Initiatives Bangladesh (RIB)

Alan Rayner's Inclusional Research

Danny Burns and Susan Weill's former Centre for Social and Organisational Learning as Action Research Centre (SOLAR) and Danny currently at the Institute for Development Studies Participation team

Mary Brydon-Miller's Action Research Center, University of Cincinnati

Jennifer Green's approach to democratic social science

Bob Dick's Action research resources

Joanna Macey's approach to integral all-of-life

Michael White's narrative therapy

Bud Hall at the Global Center for Community Based Research, Canada

Jacques Boulet at Borderlands and the oases Graduate School

Rajesh Tandon's Participatory Research In India (PRIA)

Gilbert Rochecouste and Amadis Lachek's wholistic place-making at Village Well

Susie Goff's approach to facilitating culture shift using participatory action research

Lyn Carson's active democracy

Jose Ramos's action foresight