Participatory Action Research

Theory and Methods for Engaged Inquiry

Jacques M. Chevalier, Daniel J. Buckles

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351033244
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Sozialwissenschaften
• Categoría: Wissenschaftliche Forschung & Methodik

Fully revised and updated, this second edition of Participatory Action Research (PAR) provides new theoretical insights and many robust tools that will guide researchers, professionals and students from all disciplines through the process of conducting action research 'with' people rather than 'for' them or 'about' them.

PAR is collective reasoning and evidence-based learning focussed on social action. It has immediate relevance in fields ranging from community development to education, health, public engagement, environmental issues and problem solving in the workplace. This new edition has been extensively revised to create a user-friendly textbook on PAR theory and practice, including:

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• updated references and a comprehensive overview of different approaches to PAR (pragmatic, psychosocial, critical);

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• more emphasis on the art of process design, especially in complex social settings characterized by uncertainty and the unknown;

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• developments in the use of Web2 collaborative tools and digital strategies to support real-time data gathering and processing;

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• updated examples and stories from around the world, in a wide range of fields;

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• critical commentaries on major issues in the social sciences, including stakeholder theory, systems thinking, causal analysis, monitoring and evaluation, research ethics, risk assessment and social innovation.

This modular textbook provides novel perspectives and ideas in a longstanding tradition that strives to reconnect science and the inquiry process with life in society. It provides coherent and critical treatment of core issues in the ongoing evolution of PAR, making it suitable for a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It is intended for use by researchers, students and working professionals seeking to improve or rethink their approach to co-creating knowledge and supporting action for the well-being of all.

Module 1

Advancing theory

Chapter 1

Ins and outs of participatory action research

Exploring the big tent

Tricksters are mythic characters prone to disobey rules and conventional behaviour. They cross boundaries created by the natural and social order (Radin, 1956). They come in all shapes and forms, male and female, human and animal. They can mix attributes from different species and transform themselves to further subvert life as we now it. This makes it hard to recognize them. To complicate the matter, they present themselves under different names, such as Hermes in Greek religion, Brer Rabbit in Africa, Nanabozo in Ojibwe mythology and Coyote in many western Native American cultures, to name just a few. As Pelton remarks, ‘no one ever saw, or even heard tell of, a Trickster with a capital “T”, but the process of abstraction that tends to capitalize the “T” is not a perverse function of the academic brain. Everywhere one looks among premodern peoples, there are tricky mythical beings alike enough to entice any human mind to create a category for them once it had met two or three’ (Pelton, 1980, p. 15).

PAR, the subject of this book, is a similar phenomenon. Many have heard about the creature, they know it exists, but no one is entirely sure what it looks like or how much trickery is needed to create and sustain it as a single entity. Establishing some consensus about the essence of PAR is a difficult task, beyond drawing up a list of attributes applicable in some respects. Jung once said of the trickster that his ‘most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness… . He is so unconscious of himself that his body is not a unity, and his two hands fight each other’ (Jung, 1959, p. 263). We are tempted to say the same thing of PAR. In our view, it remains barely conscious of its many and varied expressions, and the body of literature that speaks to PAR theory is far from being united. Many hands keep on fighting or simply ignoring each other.

In the first edition of this book, we ventured to offer a general tour. We now consider the task of reviewing the field to be both daunting and of uncertain value. One major difficulty lies in using the language of ‘PAR’ to bring together frameworks and approaches that prefer to use labels of their own to express what it is they have to offer. For instance, while we are of the view that the history of psychosociology is essential for understanding the evolution and the current state of participatory action research, the fact remains that adepts of la psychosociologie d’intervention in France do not self-identify as practitioners of PAR. The emphasis they place on connections between group dynamics, the unconscious and social life is a foundational principle they will not sacrifice to a utilitarian-sounding expression like ‘action research’. The same can be said of many affiliated frameworks of PAR. Key terms used in the social sciences to describe what may be viewed as variants of PAR – community orientation, sociotechnical systems, praxis, reflexivity, transformative learning and empowerment, to name just a few – are particularly sensitive as they are loaded with history and rife with tensions of all kinds.

Consider the panoply evident in Tripp’s review of PAR (Tripp, 2005), The Sage Handbook of Action Research (Bradbury, 2015), The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research (Rowell et al., 2017a) and our own previous scan of the literature (Chevalier and Buckles, 2013). The field includes workplace and Organizational Development methodologies and frameworks such as the Quality Movement (Deming, 1986; Thorsrud and Emery, 1964; Emery and Thorsrud, 1969, 1977; Gustavsen and Pålshaugen, 2015), Sociotechnical Systems Theory (Trist and Bamforth, 1951; Pasmore, 2001), Soft-Systems methodologies (Checkland and Poulter, 2006; Midgley, 2015), Participatory Systemic Inquiry (Burns, 2015), Design Thinking (Silverman, 2015), Action Learning (Revans, 1980), Experiential Learning (Kolb, 1984), Praxis Research (Whyte, 1991; Eikeland, 2015), Cooperative Inquiry (Heron and Reason, 2008) and Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987; Duncan, 2015). Other frameworks also focussed on organizations emphasize the importance of self-awareness and transformative learning. They include Reflective Practice (Schön, 1983), Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry (CDAI) (Erfan and Torbert, 2015), Clinical Inquiry/Research (Schein, 2008) and Action Science (Argyris, 1982). The history and variegated landscape of la psychosociologie d’intervention in France should also be considered here as it upholds the psychodynamic focus in the workplace initially promoted by the pioneering Tavistock Institute. We say more on this tradition in Chapter 2.

Efforts to ground academic interests in social justice have created another collection of action research experiments including Transformational Learning (Mezirow and Taylor, 2009), Equity-Oriented Collaborative Community-Based Research (Foster and Glass, 2017) and Community-Based Research (Hall, 2005; Nicolaidis and Raymaker, 2015; Stringer, 2015; Wallerstein and Duran, 2003; Minkler and Wallerstein, 2008). The Action Research Network of the Americas (arnawebsite.org) and Community-Based Research Canada (communityresearchcanada.ca) are notable endeavours in this direction. Since 2008, Community-Based Research Canada has played an important role in developing policy papers, leading and supporting research, convening community-campus gatherings and developing a national and globally connected community of engagement leaders (Tandon and Hall, 2012). The hallmark of the broader move towards closer community-campus partnerships is an inquiry and learning process that is action-oriented and firmly grounded in practical community needs, beyond scholarly interests alone (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003, p. 24). True to the spirit of PAR, it calls for the active involvement of community members in all phases of the action inquiry process, from defining relevant research questions and topics to designing and implementing the investigation, sharing the available resources, acknowledging community-based expertise and making the results accessible and understandable to community members and the broader public. Mentors in this approach show how students and faculty can engage in action-oriented inquiry and meet academic standards at the same time (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988; Sherman and Torbert, 2000; Herr and Anderson, 2005; Burns, 2007; Coghlan and Brannick, 2007; Stringer, 2007; Israel et al., 2008; McNiff and Whitehead, 2009; Smith et al., 2010; James et al., 2012; Kindon et al., 2007).

Community-oriented formulations of PAR with a focus on rural livelihoods and well- being make up another extensive set of contributions to the field. They include several variants of Participatory Learning and Action (Chambers, 1993), but also Farming Systems Research and Extension (FSR-E), farmer-to-farmer learning (Bunch, 1982; Holt-Gimenez, 2006), the Appropriate Technology (AT) Movement and a Latin America inspired approach called Systematization of Experiences (Falkembach and Torres Carrillo, 2015; Streck and Jara Holliday, 2015). As Chambers (2015) explains, the list of livelihood frameworks can be further extended to include the contributions of Reality Checks, Stepping Stones (Wallace, 2006), Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS), Participatory Statistics, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and Participatory Epidemiology (Archer, 2007). Ethnographic Action Research and studies of indigenous, traditional or local knowledge systems (IKS, TKS, LKS) provide additional takes on PAR from an anthropological perspective (Gupta, 2006; Sherwood and Bentley, 2009; Brokensha et al., 1980; Warren et al., 1995). The many variants of participatory evaluation, including Action Evaluation (Friedman and Rothman, 2015) and Empowerment Evaluation (Fetterman and Wandersman, 2005), should also be mentioned along with youth-led approaches to research for social justice (recrearinternational.org).

The list does not stop here. A commitment to deep societal change characterizes a set of contributions to PAR made by Critical Pedagogy (Freire, 1970), Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1985), Reflect (Archer, 2007), feminist anti-racist post-colonial PAR (Lykes and Scheib, 2015), Critical PAR (CPAR) (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988; Fals-Borda and Rahman, 1991) and our own formulation of engaged research (Chevalier and Buckles, 2013). A focus on active citizenry underlies another world of experiments of science-in-society, including e-PAR (Embury, 2015), Citizen Science and methods for eKnowledge creation or deliberative democracy such as Search Conferences, Citizens’ Juries (Wakeford et al., 2015), deliberative polling (Babüroglu et al., 2015), crowdsourcing (Certomà and Pimbert, 2015) and Wikipedia (Jemielniak, 2015). Last but not least, many approaches included in the big tent revolve around effective group facilitation techniques and the creative arts, founded on principles of their own. Well-known examples are T-groups (Stefanac and Krot, 2015), The World Café (Steier et al., 2015), Open Space technology (Owen, 2008), Photovoice (Mejia, 2015), Participatory Video (Satheesh, 2012), storytelling (Koch, 2015) and Learning History (Bradbury et al., 2015).

Judging by the increasing attention to research that tries to make a difference in the lives of people, readers can be sure the list will get even longer in years to come. Doing justice to the varied experiences and insights of the many practitioners of PAR, and creating a shared understanding of the lay of the land, is consequently a formidable task, and perhaps a foolish one at that. It assumes that we are dealing with fruit of a kind rather than apples and oranges and that there is a ‘field’ called PAR that can be investigated. This is precisely the problem that literature reviews are supposed to resolve.

At first sight, there are two options to choose from. One is to clearly separate kindred and orphan practices from the ‘true heirs of PAR’. Very few want to go down this narrow path, which is fraught with the risk of arbitrary exclusion. Another option is to simply recognize the jumble for what it is, a mixed bag of ideas and practices that continue to evolve in their own different ways, what Chambers and others have called a ‘flowering of eclectic pluralism’ (Chambers, 2015, p. 41; Midgley, 2015, p. 160). This has the advantage of creating a big tent that can attract an impressive number of supporters, visitors and passersby. The disadvantage is that membership in the big tent exists mostly in name and only when convenient. Maturing as a field gets set aside along with the internal tensions and profound disagreements among the invitees and presumed supporters of the cause.

In this and the following chapter we try to chart a course forward, somewhere between the cut-and-dry and the soft-and-mushy options. We do so to get some perspective on our own work but also to rise to the important challenge of claiming space for the field at this moment in the history of science. To begin, we bring into focus the central vision of science and society that lies at the common edges of PAR. As we shall see in the next section, practically all occupants in the big tent converge around a humanistic critique of positive science and technocracy. Much like Lewin and Dewey, PAR practitioners and kindred members and frameworks oppose a positivist perspective bent on removing everything that is profoundly human from the advancement of knowledge and society, including people other than experts and subjective experience of any kind. PAR boldly steps away from the official line of technocratic science by crossing the boundaries between the objective world and our deep involvement with it. Of course, this is true of all humanistic stances on science. What makes PAR unique is its commitment to fully integrating the core elements built into the acronym, namely Participation (life in society), Action (experience) and Research (knowledge making). To maintain this focus, and walk the talk, all three elements must remain in full sight at all times (McIntyre, 2008).

Our argument is that focus on the integration of P, A and R (in opposition to systems that dehumanize science) is essential, but that it does not preclude maintaining peripheral vision, as in human sight. In this chapter, the overall ‘perspective’ we offer on PAR acknowledges the need for lateral thinking and movement. This is what we do when we look into kindred ideas, tools and frameworks that manage to catch our attention even when they remain uncommitted to the full integration of all three PAR elements. Their unique focus on some aspect of PAR, novel ways to facilitate group thinking for instance, can challenge, inform and inspire.

The marvel of human sight – the ability to sharply focus while also processing information from the periphery (global impressions, well-known forms, rapid movements in the dark) and shifting attention at will – offers a metaphor for our brand of ‘engaged perspectivism’ where the central vision (and commitment to integration) is effectively enhanced but not distorted by information and teachings from the periphery. In the next chapter, we extend the idea of perspectivism to include the interaction of background and foreground, applying it to the interplay of three histories of PAR thinking and practice: the rational- pragmatic, the psychosocial-transformative and the critical-emancipatory. These represent three traditions of anti-positivist sentiment. The latter focus on social justice comes closer to our own views on the merits of PAR. All the same, all three approaches offer practitioners of today an opportunity to bring one dimension or another to the foreground, depending on the circumstances and as the situation evolves. But first we turn our attention to a common edge of PAR thinking and practice.

United against positivism

One way to capture the central vision of PAR and what brings its many expressions together consists in pitting them against some arch enemy, ideally a common adversary that explains how everything started. Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915) is by far the best candidate for the role. The views he held and those of PAR could not be farther apart. The American engineer advocated a Newtonian approach to the ‘science of management’ where industrial efficiency depends on work being entirely predictable and therefore performed mechanically, subservient to precise time-and-motion studies. The secret to achieving this is to leave all human factors out of the equation, save of course the worker’s all-too-natural drive to make money. When job instructions are based on exact science, problems occur only if workers fail to follow plans and disobey the chain of command. Taylor advised the steel company worker wishing to earn the top salary to do exactly as his supervisor ‘tells you to-morrow, from morning till night. When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk, you pick it up and you walk, and when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. You do that right straight through the day. And what’s more, no back talk’ (Taylor, 1911, pp. 44–45).

Taylor held that ‘under scientific management exact scientific knowledge and methods are everywhere, sooner or later, sure to replace rule of thumb’. While human beings may be complex organisms, exact scientific experiments can unravel elementary laws that will help managers extract maximum sweat from assembly workers. His own methodical experiments highlighted a basic law, he claims: workers will predictably work harder only if ‘they are assured a large and permanent increase in their pay’ (Taylor, 1911, pp. 104, 119–121). Economic self-gain explains all human behaviour.

Traces of Taylor’s system can still be found in the use of empirical fact-finding and research to promote efficiency in bureaucracy and systems of mass production. Measures include the rationalization of workflow, the standardization of ‘best practices’ and a focus on effective knowledge transfer. However, Taylorism is no longer a stand-alone model of managerial wisdom. It became obsolete by the 1930s. As Michelot (2016) explains in his in-depth essay on the early history of action inquiry, the ‘Taylor system’ could not withstand many transformations affecting our understanding of the interface between science and human factors and relations. Some of these transformations date to the rise and growth of liberal and utilitarian philosophy. These hold the conviction that all human beings, managers and workers alike, are rational creatures capable of matching the ends pursued and the practical means to attain them, using logic, experience and empirical evidence in the process. As we shall see, the Lewinian perspective picks up on this more inclusive theme, with an emphasis not so much on what individuals can do on their own to achieve their ends but rather on cooperative human...