Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Participatory Action Research
Reading some material over Participatory Action Research (PAR) provided some insight into my (our)work in community development. At first glance, I must admit, I believed that PAR was used during studies of a community for a research paper or proposal. However, I realize now that PAR should be used during all types of community development work. I believe this is true because it returns to our initial readings of Neil Thin which emphasized the need to find effective ways of measuring social progress. By using PAR, then an organization is enabled to know first hand what a community needs because it is consulting (or working together) with the community its attempting to help. By allowing the community to participate in identifying a problem, creating solutions, and implementing a project, then social progress might be achieved.
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You're on the right track in trying to understand where 'research' fits in developing community.
Sound information is a critical element in identifying and solving community (human) problems. It's one of many critical elements in what we want to understand as community change.
The question, then, becomes how does the community get necessary and useful information? One way is 'research.'
Then, the challenge becomes 'how and who' should do the research.
Stoecker, in Are Academics Irrelevant, '...sees the two basic characteristics of PR (participatory research) to be increasing participation in the research process and making social change. Increasing participation means democratizing the knowledge process (i.e., legitimizing forms of knowledge such as folk culture ... and involving participants throughout the research process."
(There's link to this Stoecker article from Diem's blog).
Finally, research for us is one dimension of our operating definition of policy as hands-on action/application/practice. That is, it is change through participatory experience.
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