Uncertainty is a core topic for the conditions of our time and especially in European inter- and transnational research settings, it is a given. With the complexity of Participatory Action Research designs (PAR), uncertainty necessitates a practice of organizing within process-oriented, participatory research. Depending on the rationality put in place, uncertainty may even have the quality of an epistemological position to value and to operate with as a researcher. 

Reflecting on these three dimensions and discursive positionings of uncertainty within PAR in transnational complex research settings which encompass conditions, practices, and epistemologies, the symposium discusses uncertainty as a core dimension within collaborative research projects.  

The exemplary case of the Horizon EU-funded project “Transforming Education for Democracy through Aesthetic and Embodied Learning, Responsive Pedagogies and Democracy-as-becoming" (AECED) discusses these dimensions of uncertainty to consider. In its overarching Participatory Action Research strategy, the project’s six national partners have designed distinct phases and different levels of participation and opportunities to co-design, co-create, and co-analyse. The research design involves the highly diverse institutional settings of preschool, secondary school, Higher Education, and professional as well as organizational training. For a methodological foundation, a common methodological framework for transformational participatory action research was developed in an iterative process.  

The symposium intends to present and discuss the underlying methodological understanding with respect to all six projects involved. Each one works with collaborative and participatory action research methodologies that usually have their grounding in a shared issue with participants. Based on this, the research process is to be understood as an emergent and iterative process of theorizing and verification that includes a series of steps or processes of planning, acting, observing, reflecting, and re-planning. Put into practice, the projects all follow a series of phases, which include designing (planning), trialling (acting and observing), analysing (reflecting) and redesigning (re-planning) in which a pedagogical framework and four practice guides are developed, trialed and re-designed with participants and stakeholders. 

All of the projects intend to follow common principles, such as a) flexibility as the project evolves, b) willingness to co-construct and participate in collective problem-solving; c) awareness of how collaboration enables development of critical perspectives and self-directed learning, d) shared curiosity; e) willingness to engage in dialogue and reflection, f) transparency, g) openness to the knowledge and experience of all participants and stakeholders who have their own ideas about the topic of the project and h) collective leadership.   

In addition to that, the AECED project encourages the use of arts-based and embodied methods which brings to the fore the embodied dimension of research processes and the entanglement of researchers, participants, and organizational practices.  

The complex methodological design will therefore be discussed by the different contributions, firstly, to offer a space of reflection concerning conditions, practices, and epistemologies that engage with uncertainties. Secondly, the symposium will delineate strategies for Participatory Action Research that include uncertainties within processes of democratisation ‘in, of and between organisations’. 

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