Tensional Dialogues in Social Constructionist Collaborative Knowledge Production

The chapter presents and discusses tensions in a social constructionist action research project with managers, care workers and people with intellectual disabilities at a residential home. The aim is to offer a critical, reflexive approach to analyzing and tackling dilemmas resulting from tensions in producing knowledge with people with intellectual disabilities. The research strategy combines Bakhtin's approach to dialogue and Foucault's perspective on power/knowledge relations in order to explore how collaborative relations and processes are fraught with tensions related to multivocality and othering processes. Tensions were present in the care workers´ facilitation of workshops, in the communication of participants´ voices in other parts of the organization and in the organization's ongoing work with workshops as a method. In conclusion, I suggest that use of a critical, reflexive analytical strategy can strengthen the practical validity of co-produced knowledge in action research by raising awareness of the tensions in play in emergent power relations.