Women telling their own stories in action research

Ros Beadle is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Centre for Remote Health, Flinders University (in Alice Springs). Despite extensive previous experience working in community development, Ros Beadle found herself out of her comfort zone when she first started to work as a community support worker in a very remote Australian Aboriginal community in 2009. As she indicates in this conversation with Ernie Stringer, co-author of a new edition of the text Action Research, action research processes provided her with the means to assist a group of Aboriginal women to engage in significant activities that greatly enhanced their capacity to make a real difference in their lives. Building on the women’s momentum and enthusiasm for telling stories about their experiences in a range of mediums, the women assisted Ros to find a way for their stories to form the basis for her own dissertation research. (author introduction)