The P,A and R of participatory action research with unaccompanied girls

This article discusses the possibilities and the challenges of conducting participatory action research (PAR) with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and youth. Drawing from a PAR project with 12 unaccompanied asylum-seeking girls in a Finnish reception centre, the paper explores the P, A and R of PAR asking the following questions: what kind of participation is relevant in such a challenging phase of life, being in a new society without families; what is ‘good’ action in these circumstances; and, finally, what is the involvement of the children in conducting the research when they find the practical end product clearly more interesting? The results show that as a flexible and child-centred research method, PAR can be used to promote the participation of children and youth in a reception centre. However, participation in research should not be mandatory: unaccompanied children who have often had too many responsibilities and inadequate protection in the past desire to be assured that it is the adults’ responsibility to make the right decisions concerning the improvements of the children’s lives.     

Ethical dilemmas of youth participatory action research in a democratic setting

ABSTRACT

This article discusses ethical issues involved in facilitating the research of young people on controversial issues. This article considers the potential ethical dilemmas of teachers facilitating a particular form of activism – youth participatory action research (YPAR). We consider how teachers foster school-wide conversations on difficult issues and support students who wish to take a critical stand on issues of race, class and gender. The article also discusses how to scaffold the exploration of topics that require emotional maturity and might lead to shifts in beliefs that run counter to the values of one’s family.     

Accessing participatory research impact and legacy: developing the evidence base for participatory approaches in health research

Action research has been characterised as systematic enquiry into practice, undertaken by those involved, with the aim changing and improving that practice: an approach designed to have impact. Whilst much has been written about the process and practice of ‘researching’, historically ‘impact’ has been somewhat taken for granted. In recent years, however, the impact of all forms of research has become the focus of interest with many funding bodies now demanding that researchers not only articulate the prospective impact of their work, but what kinds of evidence will be proffered to demonstrate that impact. This has raised questions for action researchers, not about whether their work has an impact, but what form that impact takes, how it is recognised and by whom. This paper focuses on difficulties researchers find in both articulating the impact of participatory research and demonstrating links between such forms of research and impact. We draw on discussions about the notion of impact with authors that have self-reported and published their work as participatory. These discussions revealed that not only were there difficulties in clarifying the participatory dimension of their research but that whilst authors were able to discuss particular impacts of their work, articulating and evidencing that impact was often absent from their published papers. This paper offers insights into some of issues and barriers those who undertake participatory research face in explicating, for the external audience (and indeed sometimes for ourselves), the impact of this action-based form of enquiry.     

Negotiating democratic relations in a doctoral project examining university conditions and pedagogical praxis

This article is a critically reflexive account of how collaborative processes and democratic relations were negotiated in a doctoral research project which combined elements of institutional ethnography, self-study, and, significantly for this article, critical participatory action research. The critical participatory action research dimension of the project involved a group of academics working in the same university faculty, critically and collaboratively examining their own pedagogical practice and the conditions which constrain and enable critical pedagogical praxis in their setting. The article explores what possibilities for democratic participation were created and limited by the circumstances and conditions that constituted this critical participatory action research. I consider the kind of democratic participation that was possible, what enabled this kind of democratic participation, and challenges that emerged in attempts to realise democratic goals. The discussion highlights some of the complexities of fostering democratic participation in critical participatory action research within doctoral research.     

Using working agreements in participatory action research: working through moral problems with Malaysian students

In this paper we propose that taking time before the work begins to develop agreements about how to work together in participatory action research enables researchers to directly address several ethical issues that can be problematic in this type of research: gaining fully informed consent; in-group confidentiality; cultural misconceptions; and protecting participants from risky self-disclosures. We begin by discussing some of these ethical challenges that can arise in participatory work, especially with young people. We argue that these issues are magnified and politicised in certain politico-cultural settings, and therefore are all the more important when working cross-culturally. Drawing on the findings of the lead writer’s doctoral thesis, which sought to find a more relevant way of teaching moral education in a Malaysian setting by including the voices of young people, we show how participants responded to attempts to address these issues by creating a safe space in which to discuss sensitive topics through the use of a working agreement. Responses indicate that when such an agreement was in place, the young people in this Malaysian study experienced a greater sense of safety, greater encouragement to participate, and were more confident in their ability to solve ethical problems than in situations where there was no working agreement. Furthermore, the agreement enabled the researcher to be more aware of, and responsive to, the cultural context of the participants.     

Using participatory action research to address absenteeism

Many urban high schools serving low-income families have below-average attendance rates, which can indicate that fewer students are prepared to matriculate into college and career opportunities. Through the use of participatory action research (PAR), we – a group of four educators at Wilson High School – have changed school policies and procedures in order to address our school's most problematic behavior: students cutting class. Through the processes and outcomes that our group, the Class Cutting Task Force, has experienced, we have called upon action learning (AL) in our focus on practical and experienced problems, and we have learned an important lesson: without clear and consistent school-wide expectations, our students cannot meet their potentials. Additionally, we have become empowered to drive a school-wide improvement initiative from the ground up by using the four-stage PAR process. It is our experience with the PAR process as a method of engagement in AL for school practitioners that we aim to share in this account of practice.     

New understandings of communities and ourselves: community-based participatory research with Alaska Native and Lower 48 youth

In the summer of 2014, students from universities in the contiguous United States (Lower 48) and Inupiat youth from Alaska carried out a pilot project as participants/co-researchers in a process called Intergenerational Dialog, Exchange, and Action (IDEA). This action-oriented, community-based, and participatory research method was first developed in 2008, as a platform for structuring dialog between adults, Elders and youth within a community, and for extending resonant ideas emerging from these discussions through Photovoice and digital storytelling amongst youth participants. This pilot study was designed to investigate the feasibility and potential of university students from the Lower 48 and Indigenous youth from Alaska to carry out the IDEA process together as co-researchers. The results of the pilot suggest that it is both possible and meaningful for IDEA to be conducted by a team of youth co-researchers. We found that participation in IDEA expanded the perspectives of youth co-researchers from both Alaska and the Lower 48 in parallel, yet different ways. Exploring the strengths of older community members, being exposed to different ways of living and being, and having opportunities to reflect on and build narratives around these ideas, allowed all the co-researchers to develop a new understanding of their own communities and their roles and responsibilities within them. This paper shares youth co-researcher reflections of the process and the ways in which the process prompted these new perspectives about themselves, their respective communities and their roles within them.     

The student voice in well-being: a case study of participatory action research in positive education

Positive education blends academic learning and student well-being. Although research and application in positive education is growing, most has involved psychologists and educators applying strategies in schools, with little research that involves student voices in the development and implementation of a school’s positive education strategy. Assumptions are frequently made about what is best for student well-being, with little input from the students themselves. This paper describes a case study of participatory action research (PAR) carried out by students (N = 10) at a publically funded Australian school aiming to implement positive education. PAR is a form of collective inquiry undertaken by the people that the issue directly affects. The PAR group researched the school community regarding well-being during the school year. Mixed methods examined PAR student’s well-being, self-efficacy, autonomy, social and emotional assets, and other competencies before and after the process. Student involvement allowed the school to better understand their students’ well-being, and student-led communication about positive education laid the groundwork for its implementation. Results suggested benefits for the PAR students, particularly in engagement and self-efficacy. This realistically scaled study suggests that involving students using a framework of PAR is a promising, accessible, evidence-based, and developmentally beneficial approach to the implementation of positive education.     

An educational framework for participatory action learning and action research (PALAR)

The purpose of this article is to provide an educational, theoretical, and methodological framework for using a special kind of action research, namely PALAR (participatory action learning and action research). This integrated methodology of lifelong action learning (AL) and participatory action research (PAR) has been developed over the past 25 years. It has been proven to be an effective approach to individual, professional, organizational, community (and generally practice) development. PALAR can be instrumental in pursuit of social justice and is well suited for both experienced and beginning researchers interested in researching and improving their own practice. The article illustrates with case examples how this framework has been put into practice for various programs in a variety of fields and countries. The PALAR framework is the basis for a generic program design, structure, and content, and for processes of learning, teaching, assessment, evaluation, and leadership development. It is a systemic and systematic program on how to design, justify, conduct, evaluate, write, and publish research that is particularly useful for community or work-based theses at master’s, professional doctorate, and PhD levels. An original feature of this article is its comprehensive overview and summary of the theory and practice of PALAR for the first time, with references to further readings.     

Relationality as a response to challenges of participatory action research in indigenous contexts: reflections from the field

ABSTRACT

Three researchers share their reflections on the challenges and goodness of fit of using participatory action research (PAR) in studies with indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. Three central challenges of participatory methodologies are identified: (1) defining what constitutes participation; (2) the extended time required for a PAR study; and (3) researcher positionality. The authors discuss tensions inherent in the western academy when shifting final decision-making authority over research processes away from the academic institution to the indigenous community. A model situating the principles of PAR alongside perspectives and values congruent with the indigenous concept of relationality is presented as a means of mitigating these challenges. This approach aligns PAR principles within culturally-congruent definitions of relationship and encourages researchers to re-imagine participation as a form of relationship, allowing them to engage more deeply and genuinely with indigenous participants.     

Knowledge and transformative social action: the encounter of selected traditions of participatory (action) research

The argument in this paper is that action and participatory research developed within the context of social and political movements aimed at promoting democratic relationships and institutions represents a methodological strategy for deconstructing and reconstructing the hegemonic perspective of knowledge and knowledge production. After a brief reflection about the place of social transformation in today's social practice, especially in education, the paper looks at selected traditions of action and participatory research from Europe [England (Tavistock), Scandinavia and Germany] and Latin America (Colombia and Brazil). These experiences, whilst attending to particular social conditions, can be seen as attempts to develop knowledge that promotes and strengthens a shared world view that aims at social justice and recognition of differences.     

Communities of practice and participatory action research: the formation of a synergy for the development of museum programmes for early childhood

This study explores the integration of two key ideas and working frameworks: a community of educational practice formed by the synergy between a natural history museum and a university department of pre-school education, which undertook participatory action research aimed at the creation of innovative museum programmes for young children. Data analysis and the evaluation of the research process show that the community was able to bring its situated knowledge into question and interrogate propositional knowledge by means of re-evaluating the learning targets, the nature of children’s activity, the nature of interaction between adults and learners, and the nature of resources used in existing and newly designed programmes offered to young children. Participatory action research enabled the community to monitor the implementation of theory with scientific rigour and formulate a new ‘knowledge strategy’, which in theoretical terms will guide future developments.     

Distance teaching in small rural primary schools: a participatory action research project

ABSTRACT

The aim of the study is to identify and examine the distance teaching practices of four teachers in three small, rural primary schools in Finland – small in the sense that the schools consists of between 20–50 pupils and between 3–12 teachers. The schools have experienced a decline in pupil numbers, thus, they are not able to employ teachers full-time. The participating teachers imagined distance education as one solution to extend the classroom and faculty. Practice architectures is used as a theoretical and analytical framework to answer the question ‘What cultural, material, and social discourses constitute the development of the practice around distance education in small, rural primary schools?’ The data consists of interviews with and video blogs by the teachers recorded during 2016–2017. The implications are that cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements surrounding distance education are intertwined in small schools. Architectural arrangements enabled flexible solutions when developing distance education. The same arrangements proved to be material and cultural constraints as the teachers had many responsibilities in their everyday practice and support from the faculty was sometimes lacking. The teachers felt constrained by the technology and communicating with pupils at a distance meant they had to develop new teaching strategies.     

When soda is a social justice issue: design and documentation of a participatory action research project with youth

Schools are increasingly seen as having a promising role to play in reducing adverse health and wellness outcomes among young people. This paper uses a collaborative action research approach to examine the effects of one school’s efforts to change its students’ eating habits by implementing a ‘junk-food free campus.’ By engaging school administrators and students in a six-month process of joint research design and analysis, the author found that students understood but did not necessarily support the policy. Despite students’ uneven support of the policy, however, there was some evidence that some students were developing healthier eating habits. Moreover, student researchers reported developing greater perspective and respect for the policy as a result of studying it.     

Local language a medium of instruction: challenges and way forward

The paper reports on a participatory action research study conducted in six rural primary schools in Uganda in 2013 to establish why children taught in the local language had difficulties in reading and writing. Findings through interviews, focus group discussions, reviews of exercise books and lesson observations indicated that though it was easier for pupils to learn the concepts in the local language; challenges ranging from poor translation, inadequate teachers’ language proficiency, lack of instructional materials, high pupils’ enrolment, lack of administrative support and teacher-centred approach of teaching, affected pupils’ learning to read and write. Participants recommended adopting the child-centred pedagogy, incorporating instructional materials, conducting continuous assessment and recording pupils’ competencies attained in reading and writing. Teachers need to engage more in Participatory action research in order to reflect on their practices and pupils’ learning, and collaboratively decide what works best and what needs improvement in their classrooms.     

Polyphony in the classroom: reporting narrative action research reflexively

Against the background of Swedish preschool's historical and traditional functions in Swedish society, this article focuses on some of the choice points and their implications for professional and organisational development in preschool. By combining feminist pragmatism and feminist action research, some analytical points are made regarding the significance of organisational settings and the limitations they can have on the professional practices within the organisational setting. The preschool teachers in this study show that pedagogical change is possible, although it takes time and is not necessarily endorsed by municipal employers. The role of action researchers is described in terms of positions and ethics. The latter is presented as particularly important.     

Breaking through boundaries with PAR – or not? A research project on the facilitation of participatory governance through participatory action research (PAR)

ABSTRACT

In this paper, two researchers reflect on the institutional space for participatory governance in a participatory action research (PAR) process that was initiated by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (ECS) in the Netherlands. It was implemented in two schools by researchers contracted by the ministry. The project’s aim was to explore possibilities for involving schools in policy processes using PAR. We conclude that PAR sheds light on the communication strategies, power and authority balances, and meaning of participation among the participants. The attempt to break through traditional hierarchies generated new insights into the institutional space at both the participating schools and the government institutions that can be used to create participatory approaches to governance. The researchers were the bridging actors between the schools and the government institutions. While previous research showed that a bridging actor can play a positive role as an objective party who is able to deliberate between the participants, we found that it impeded the creation of a participatory governance space.     

Intervention fidelity in participatory research: a framework

ABSTRACT

In community interventions more generally, the concept of fidelity refers to the degree to which a program is delivered as intended. The present paper discusses ways in which fundamental aspects of participatory research challenge the concept of fidelity and differ from more traditional science-dominated approaches. We begin with a discussion of the fidelity concept and some of its strengths and limitations. We then discuss both social problems and proposed solutions as representing complex problems defying simple or permanent solutions. We suggest that three prominent aspects of participatory research highlight this complexity and pose challenges in assessing fidelity. First, in participatory research, the goal is not only scientific but also social action on a local issue as well. Second, the participatory process among varied partners is itself part of the intervention itself to be understood as affecting both processes and outcomes. Third, the goals of participatory research include community-level as well as individual-level changes. These issues are illustrated in a discussion of how culture is conceptualized and acknowledged in fidelity assessment. We conclude with some recommendations for approaching fidelty in participatory research in a way that appreciates its differences from more traditional paradigms underlying community interventions.     

A participatory action research approach to developing youth-friendly strategies for the prevention of teenage pregnancy

Teenage pregnancy among school-going youth is a concern worldwide, but in socially–economically challenged environments it is a result of, and contributory factor to, a complex web of social injustice. In South Africa, most of the school-based prevention interventions to date have been adult-designed and imparted, with the voice of the target audience – the youth – being ignored. The purpose of this participatory action research study was to involve school-going youth in the research and development of prevention interventions, tailored to meet their perceived needs. This article focuses on the first cycle where 24 high school participants interrogated their own and their peers’ narratives about teenage pregnancy so as to determine a way forward. Findings indicate that, although the youth perceive parenthood while they are still studying to have a negative impact on their future life goals, the prevention messages mediated by educators and other adults do not take into consideration the needs and lifestyle of teenagers within their specific social context. The implications of the three themes which emerged from the thematic analysis of the interviews, open-ended questionnaires and visual data are discussed to provide guidelines for the design of more youth-friendly prevention education to inform the next cycle of the research. Since teenage pregnancy is a global problem, the findings of this study have international relevance.