query: action research

[colist-admin at comm-org.utoledo.edu]

[ed:  please copy COMM-ORG with your responses.  I will have a couple of 
thoughts below.]

From: "stephanie campos" <scamposwatson at hotmail.com>

I'm a graduate student at Hunter College in NYC and I'm especially
interested action research.  Does anyone know of any programs/organizations
that might offer training or any kind of hands-on experience in this area?

Stephanie Campos

[ed:  the COMM-ORG "Action Research" page may be of help, as it lists lots 
of resources.  One of the problems currently is that this form of research 
has become popular everywhere and everyone thinks they are doing it.  Kind 
of like "community organizing" the definition of "action research" 
"participatory action research" "participatory research" "community-based 
research" and other labels can sometimes be stretched to include anything 
but the kitchen sink.  The vast majority of my work now uses various 
versions of this practice (you can see my 1998 COMM-ORG working paper) and, 
for what it's worth, here are some ways I think one can evaluate these 
programs:

1.  One issue is whether the program is controlled by the university or the 
community.  Some organizations, such as the Applied Research Center 
(Oakland, http://www.arc.org/) and Project South (Atlanta, 
http://www.projectsouth.org/), are entirely community-based.  Others are 
university-based.  I think the best university-based programs are those 
that have developed ways of making sure there is very strong community (and 
I don't mean service provider) influence over program and project 
development.

2.  Another issue is the extent to which you prefer a "conflict model" of 
action research or a "functionalist model."  The conflict model folks 
believe it is crucially about changing not just power relations but also 
knowledge relations--in other words it is important for grass roots 
community members to become information creators and providers.  Conflict 
model folks also tend to believe that the powerful have a self-interest in 
preventing that.  These folks tend to work with community organizing and 
development groups and other social action groups. Functionalist model 
folks believe a good action research project can bring people together 
across divisions of class, race, sex/gender, etc.  They are also not as 
strongly interested in community members learning how to create and present 
knowledge but in doing research that helps people recognize their common 
interests.  These folks do a lot of management and labor collaboration stuff.

3.  Getting training to do this then, may be more an issue of finding a 
community mentor than a faculty mentor.  I first learned how to do 
participatory action research when I got called on the carpet by a 
Minneapolis community activist.  I was a graduate student wanting to 
interview a community activist for a course paper.  Tim Mungavan, then from 
the Cedar-Riverside Project Area Committee, started complaining about the 
students and reporters who took up his time with interviews and then he 
never heard from them again.  He made me promise to give him a copy of my 
paper.  I was so taken aback at being held responsible for the sins of all 
before me, and feeling guilty enough to want to atone for all of them, that 
I started rethinking everything about being an academic and ended up 
forming a relationship with the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood activists that 
continues to this day.  When I came to Toledo I found another very 
important community mentor.  The day I arrived at the University of Toledo 
as a young assistant professor, Dave Beckwith, from the Center for 
Community Change, handed me a list of two dozen research projects that 
Toledo community-based groups wanted done.  I ended up doing only one of 
those--a needs and resources assessment of Toledo CDCs--and it would have 
been the last (because the results were so depressing) if Dave and other 
CDC activists hadn't guided me and figured out what to do with the research 
to turn it into action and ultimately a $2 million windfall to build CDC 
capacity.

So there are some thoughts.  Others are certainly welcome.]