Constructing Arenas for Dialogue in Pragmatic Action Research

For us, the core element in pragmatic AR is the creation of arenas where discussion and collaborative research facilitate cogenerative learning. The encounter between local stakeholders and the professional researcher is the cornerstone on which mutual learning is built. Because we do not begin with a technique defined a priori, and we try to

Searching for Pragmatic Action Research

Although we argue strongly for pragmatic, multi-method techniques and work forms, and we have employed many different kinds of techniques and work forms in our practice, one broad and well-defined approach to cogenerative learning is particularly appropriate to our pragmatic approach to AR. It is called searching. We will present it in extenso here,

Preparing for the Pragmatic Action Search

Many roads lead to a search conference. In some cases, the local actors are familiar with search conferences and accordingly know what they are looking for. In this situation, the task for the initiators is to find a facilitator to take on the job. A standard bureaucratic method is simply to call for proposals

Planning and Executing a Pragmatic Action Search

1. COMMISSIONING THE SEARCH CONFERENCE The first step in searching is working with the local actors who want to commission a search. This discussion is important for many reasons. The ini­tial question that motivates local people may not necessarily be the most fun­damental one for their group or may not be stated in a

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Participatory Research and Southern Pragmatic Action Research

We begin with an analysis of participatory research (PR) and participatory action research (PAR), a set of approaches that came into existence as a critique of inequality and a practice of liberation set within the framework of a model of class struggle. Though such practices and struggle exist in wealthy countries, these approaches are

Educational Strategies in Pragmatic Action Research

One of the most important and frequent paths leading people into the practice of action research (AR) has been through the field of education5 in its various contexts. Education, as we use the term here, refers to everything from reforms of the formal school system, from primary to secondary schools, to universities and postgraduate

Feminist Analyses of Inequality and Development in Pragmatic Action Research

In our teaching experience over the past decade, after we have laid out the basic perspectives of AR, students ask about the relationship between feminism and AR. They correctly perceive that feminist views deal with many of the same issues found in AR: a critique of positivism, an analysis of power relations, a respect

Frameworks of Educational Action Research

Though not all AR-relevant educational work deals with adult education, one of the peculiarities of this field is that it seems that the major intellectual syn­theses and setting of the frameworks in use come from adult education rather than from conventional primary and secondary education and higher educa­tion. These larger syntheses serve our purposes

Reforming Education in the North

1. EDUCATIONAL AR IN THE SCHOOLS AND TEACHING PROFESSIONS No practice that is engaged in by hundreds of teachers and university fac­ulty is likely to be homogeneous; under the heading of educational AR, there are many varieties. To summarize the main thrusts, we see this field as center­ing on primary, secondary, and higher education

Adult Education Approaches in Industrialized Countries

As we stated in the introduction to this chapter, the field of educational AR is huge and heterogeneous. In many ways, the theorists and synthesizers in adult education have gathered the many threads into an overall picture that is more synthetic than those provided by educational action researchers, who may have a more limited

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Corporate Classrooms

A striking feature of late capitalism is the emergence of the corporate class­room. The trend is for many companies to create their own training and edu­cation systems. Major actors in this field are multinational consulting firms that have their own training facilities, where all newly employed consultants must go to get an understanding of

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Adult Education and Community Development

1. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT In Chapter 10, we covered a major portion of what can be classified as adult education. Community development efforts such as those spearheaded by the Highlander Center, by the various movements centering around people like Belenky, Bond, and Weinstock (1997), Freire (1970), Gaventa (1982), Hall (1975), and Hinsdale, Lewis, and Waller

The Authority of Evaluation

Being visited by an evaluator, accountant, assessor, accreditation reviewer, or any of the many other figures playing a professional evaluation role is usually experienced as being placed in a subordinate position to a person whose pro­fessional role is to review and evaluate you, your program, or your organiza­tion “objectively.” Nearly all of us have

The Emergence of Participatory Evaluation

Whatever else it does, conventional evaluation generally does not aim to make a positive impact on a project while the project is underway, except in cases of interim evaluations of multiyear projects. Generally, it records outcomes for a particular audience of decision makers. Programs to fight poverty, to teach the uneducated to read, or

Modes of Participatory Evaluation

Within the literature on PE, we can identify at least three different approaches. These approaches to participation are built on different epistemological premises and conceptualize participation in different ways. Their on-the-ground praxis in PE is also dissimilar. One line of thinking is represented by Guba and Lincoln’s (1981, 1989) constructivist approaches. A second line

Action Research in Evaluation Practice

Participatory evaluation strategies have a lot in common with the complexity, diversity, and specificity of action research approaches in general. PE, though a form of practice in its own right, builds directly on work from AR, and many of the authors refer directly to particular AR works as part of their intellectual repertoire. AR

Participatory Rural Appraisal in International Development

Linked to a variety of forms of participatory evaluation but occupying a very different institutional position is a collection of approaches that now generally go under the name of “participatory rural appraisal.”1 PRA is an element in overall socioeconomic development programs, mainly in poor countries. These strategies aim to develop more reliable baseline data

Participation and Sustainability

The environmental movement had a significant influence on promoting par­ticipatory approaches. Early development practice did not have a strong sense of the problems of global ecology and strongly emphasized big, energy­intensive infrastructure projects (from which many development agencies and private sector companies derived financial benefit). The emergence of the “small is beautiful” (Schumacher, 1973)

The Specifics of Participatory Rural Appraisal

Though all major social research is a collaborative endeavor, drawing on the experiences, theories, and expertise of generations of researchers, PRA, like Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed (1970), is strongly associated with the rep­resentations of it made by a single practitioner: Robert Chambers. Though by no means the only practitioner, Chambers has developed the

Critiques of Participatory Rural Appraisal

Criticism of PRA abounds because so many problems surround its practices in the large development agencies. The development establishment, at least on the surface, has welcomed it as a panacea for getting quick input for the design and evaluation of development programs, but it is by no means clear that these agencies much care