Critical Action Research Research Articles

Transition Discoveries: Participatory Action Research to Design Pathways to Success

A multiyear critical participatory action research study was conducted with a total of 503 youth and young adults with disabilities (ages 14–25), family members, and transition stakeholders across the U.S. commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Youth and young adults with disabilities, families, and stakeholders served as participant researchers who collaborated in operationalizing post-school outcomes and the high-quality transition practices, resources, services, and supports that contribute to achieving them. As a result of this study, the Transition Discoveries Quality Indicator Framework was developed. We provide examples of how the content of this framework can be used to design experiences for youth and families to learn about transition planning, programs, and services. Guidelines for ecologically relevant research and implications for practice in secondary transition are provided.

Building leadership capacity in school leadership groups: an action research project

ABSTRACT This research study focuses on school leadership groups taking part in an action research project (AR project) within schools in a Norwegian municipality. The study aims to show and discuss how action research (AR) adopted in school change can help build collective leadership capacity in school leadership groups. Combined with the theory of expansive learning, the theories of critical participatory action research and practice architectures frame the study. The study identified two essential actions for building leadership capacity in school leadership groups: performing an empirical and historical analysis of the problem space worked on and conducting collective reflections regarding their experiences in the development work process. Furthermore, the study shows how external leadership supervisors can contribute as critical friends in ways that may be significant for capacity building in school leadership groups. The study concludes with two implications related to collective capacity building for school leadership groups and one methodological implication for performing action research.

‘Parents don’t need to come to school to be engaged:’ teachers use of social media for family engagement

ABSTRACT This paper presents a small-scale Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) study, investigating school leaders’ efforts to enhance families’ engagement in their children’s learning, through classroom teachers’ use of social media. The study occurred within three Australian primary schools, situated within a culturally and linguistically diverse community. Throughout two action research cycles the participating school leaders and classroom teachers critically reflected on family survey data and a sample of social media posts depicting student learning, so as to identify opportunities for enhanced family engagement. A practice lens was used to examine the sayings (words and language), doings (activities and resources) and relatings (relationships and power dynamics) featured within social media posts, to facilitate the participating leaders’ critical self-reflection of current practice. Data were collected through surveys, semi-structured interviews, transcripts of reflective practice meetings and reflective practice tools utilised throughout the CPAR process. Analysis of practice architectures identified systemic features utilised by school leaders to support classroom teachers’ practice change. Furthermore, this study highlights the significant role that school leaders have in facilitating classroom teachers’ use of social media for family engagement.

“It Is Like a Little Journey”: Deaf International Futsal Players’ and Coaches’ Experiences in Collaborative Blended Learning

The aim of this study was twofold; first, to explore the challenges and successes faced by deaf international futsal players when using a collaborative blended learning approach in preparation for a major competition, and second, to provide a discussion of key coaching lessons learned to inspire coaches to consider how to best develop their coaching knowledge and practices. Data were collected from 12 players via six semistructured focus groups, along with 36 reflective diaries maintained by the two researchers (who held the role of “Joint Head Coach” and “Performance Analyst”), using a critical participatory action research methodological approach. Data collection and analysis were an on-going and cyclical process during the 7-month study. Four key themes were identified: “a little journey: a connected approach to learning”; “ownership, collaboration, and connection”; “communication barriers and fear of misinterpretation”; and “players’ initial ‘buy-in’ to the constructivist approach to learning.” Key coaching lessons highlighted the need for a “flexible” and “connected” approach to learning. In this study, through learning in-action and on-action, the authors often found themselves as “social” managers in trying to explore interrelational complexities and support individuals to build trust, an aspect seen by players as crucial for actively developing collaborative blended learning within the group.

Critical participatory action research: Methods and praxis for intersectional knowledge production.

Building on the conceptual foundation of articles published in the 2005 volume of the Journal of Counseling Psychology on the qualitative turn in Counseling Psychology, we write to introduce and reflect on Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) as an intersectional approach to knowledge production by psychologists researching alongside individuals, communities, and movements dedicated to social justice. We open with a brief review of the origins of CPAR and the epistemological commitments of this approach to inquiry. We then explore why and how participation matters, and the delicate dynamics of CPAR through various phases of research: putting together a research team, crafting research questions and design, selecting methods, sampling, participatory analyses of qualitative and quantitative material, and figuring out how to produce and circulate findings in ways accountable to the community/movement of interest. The second half of the article offers a slow journey into one CPAR project, What's Your Issue?, a multigenerational, national, participatory survey designed by and for LGBTQIA+ youth, with an emphasis on the participation and representation of youth of color. We write this article for scholars, practitioners, activists, educators, and students to make visible why participation is so crucial to social justice research; that "no research on us, without us" is both scientifically and ethically valid, and how mixed methods research with LGBTQIA+ and gender-expansive youth can open new horizons for theory, methods, and action. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Deboning the Fish: Hosting a Future Creating Workshop with Undergraduate Women in STEM

Despite the broad scope of literature on the topic of women in STEM, women in male-dominated spaces within academia are rarely given the opportunity to speak openly about their disadvantages in the toxic STEM culture. The current study implements a Critical Utopian Action Research method, Future Creating Workshop (FCW), with undergraduate women in STEM in order to highlight women’s voices in the context of their experiences in their undergraduate STEM programs, and develop a salient and timely action plan with women in STEM that capitalizes on their strengths and works towards dismantling barriers to their STEM participation. Four key themes that arose from the FCW that highlighted barriers women in STEM majors face: (1) Social Inequalities, (2) Research Accessibility, (3) Unwelcoming Academic Environment, and (4) Lack of Confidence. A fifth theme, ‘Need for Mentorship,’ developed from the action phase of the FCW, in which the women came up with suggestions for programming moving forward. The current study is couched in a larger participatory action research project, Participatory Opportunity for Women Researchers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (POWER in STEM). The purpose of POWER as a whole is to understand the lived experiences of women in STEM at the University of Cincinnati, and mobilize this knowledge to create an action plan that will influence programming.

A Reflection on SSM as a Critical Social Action Research Method: Towards Improvement of Project Governance

Academic research is often regarded as less than helpful for practice, while knowledge practitioners are accused of failing to apply relevant research in their industries. This study successfully bridged the theory‑practice gap in that it resolved a real‑world problem and added to the body of knowledge, i.e. it aided to: identify underlying social root causes of a flawed project governance process and associated decision support software; define actions for improvement; and realise generalisable theoretical and applied knowledge to improve both theory and practice. It illustrates that collaborative academic research adds value to both academia and industry. This paper discusses an empirical study where soft systems methodology (SSM) was applied as an interventionist action research (AR) method, positioned in the critical systems thinking (CST) and critical social research (CSR) paradigm. SSM is defined as a learning system that facilitates the identification of actions for improvement of problematical social contexts—it gives epistemological guidance to systematically explore perspectives of individuals involved in and affected by social (e.g. organisational) settings, to identify actions for improvement. However, SSM is found to be most often applied interpretively by academia, i.e., to understand a problem context, rather than to improve it, and by practitioners as a consulting tool. SSM successfully facilitates exploring of problematical social contexts, but, according to users of it, fail to effect real and lasting change. It is also quite difficult to extract generalisable learning from its output. In this study, the researcher argues that SSM have the potential to live up to its original intent. So, she positioned SSM in the CST/CSR paradigm by applying an enriched version of it. She guided participants to reflect on inherent flaws in the scrutinised project governance business process and associated decision support software. Hence, by applying methodological pluralism, she also guided them to reflect on actions for change in light of the organisation’s socially constructed structures and their effects on involved and affected stakeholders of the process. SSM was enriched by also reflecting on the output of facilitated workshops, which aimed to identify required transformation to improve upon deficient project governance, from the perspectives of: the role of the participant(s) in the organisation; the effects that identified organisational decisions and changes may have on them; and by asking probing questions about the crux of statements made, e.g. if it is presumed to be true, what would the effect be, or vice versa. The outcome was emancipation, as key underlying social and structural causes for the organisational deficiencies surfaced.

Setting research priorities in age-related vision loss: The first step in a critical participatory action research approach

There are no known examples of studies utilizing a critical participatory action research (CPAR) approach with older adults aging with vision loss, to better understand how environmental factors impact activity engagement. As such, the aim of this article was to share the process of initiating a CPAR approach with older adults with age-related vision loss to identify a set of research and/or rehabilitation priorities related to the influence of physical, social, cultural, political, and institutional environmental factors on activity engagement. This study utilized a CPAR approach. Eight older adults (aged 65 years of age and older) with a diagnosis of age-related vision loss (including macular degeneration, glaucoma, and/or diabetic retinopathy) took part in three half-day meetings as well as a one-on-one interview over a period of 2 months. Through a series of facilitated group discussions, the older adults identified research and/or rehabilitation priorities related to how environmental influences support or limit the participation of older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL) in everyday activities. Three research and/or rehabilitation priorities were identified including (1) community mobility; (2) assistive technology; and (3) community support and services. For each priority, the older adults, along with the researchers, answered four key questions including (1) What do we need to know more about? (i.e., research question); (2) How could we learn more about this? (i.e., proposed methods of data collection); (3) Who would we need to involve as key stakeholders? (i.e., participants); and (4) What would change look like? (i.e., action potential). This study shared the process of initiating a CPAR process with eight older adults with ARVL to identify research and/or rehabilitation priorities. By doing so, this study will help to provide direction for future ARVL research and rehabilitation that is grounded, methodologically, in a CPAR approach.

El portafolio pedagógico reflexivo en la promoción del aprendizaje crítico en estudiantes de artes plásticas y visuales

The research problem was what are the pedagogical conceptions, rationality, emotionality, practices, tools and instruments that underlie and are handled in the teaching and evaluation process of the pedagogical portfolio? And what pedagogical conceptions should we assume and  what practices and instruments should we develop in the teaching and evaluation of the pedagogical portfolio to promote the critical learning of the students who participate in the courses that I develop? We worked with a qualitative approach and the leading critical action research modalityin the classroom. The participants were 30 students from the academic programs of Initial Education, Primary, Communication and Computing of the Institute of Higher Education Pedagogical Public “Indoamérica” of Trujillo, Perou. The process followed was: diagnosis on the use of the portfolio, proposal and application of a reflective portfolio improvement plan. The quantitative results were processed through the SPSS 22 program, specifically the “t” with 29 degrees of freedom and the qualitative ones through the systematization-reflection workshops. The results show that the reflective pedagogical portfolio promotes the learning of critical thinking progressively. Likewise, the achievements and difficulties of using the portfolio as a learning-teachingtool are highlighted.

Transforming educator identities and roles in family engagement through critical participatory action research

ABSTRACT Transformative approaches are essential for teachers, researchers, and teacher educators to rethink their identities and roles and to position themselves as both collaborators with and learners from immigrant families and communities. In this article, we share how Transformational Theory and Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) creates conditions for teachers to engage in professional learning that centers on immigrant and refugee families. In collaboration with immigrant and refugee community advocates, we used CPAR to understand the needs and desires of immigrant and refugee families, to integrate that information into our curriculum, and to support teachers to work with families to pursue shared lines of inquiry embedded in their everyday lives, experiences, and needs. We describe positive shifts in teacher identity and perceptions as teachers prioritized families over school structures and processes, and we share challenges we encountered such as the power imbalances connected to our positionality as white native English speaking researchers working in linguistically diverse communities of color.

Towards decoloniality in a social work programme: a process of dialogue, reflexivity, action and change

Both students and scholars have identified the critical imperative to prioritize decolonization and pedagogical and curriculum transformation in South African higher education institutions. The ongoing context of coloniality, persistent race-based inequalities and hegemonic Western-centric epistemologies led to the Rhodes and Fees Must Fall protests by students at South African universities. As a result of the questions raised by students during these protests, the Department of Social Work at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) embarked on a process of working towards decoloniality in their social work programme. This paper describes the unfolding critical participatory action research process toward decoloniality undertaken by this department. Various theoretical perspectives, including communicative action, reflexivity and ‘decolonising the mind’ informed the process of decoloniality that began at the UJ Department of Social Work. The process of critical reflection, dialogue, analysis, development of methodologies and initial implementation of changes that were used in this department may offer useful insights for working towards decoloniality in other academic settings.

Healing Lives in Community: The Integrated Transformative Potential Intervention Development (InTrePID) Method

This conceptual paper introduces the Integrated Transformative Potential Intervention Development (InTrePID) Method. InTrePID is a method that social problem solvers can use to develop interventions (practices, programs, policies, culture) that translate the critical transformative potential development framework into concrete practice steps: (1) dialogue, (2) critical participatory action research initiatives, (3) skill building, and (4) critical action project implementation. The purpose of the InTrePID method is to develop each prong of the Critical Transformative Potential Development Framework: consciousness (awareness), accountability/responsibility, efficacy (ability), and action. The framework is theorized to bridge the gap between critical consciousness and critical action needed to transform and address dehumanizing realities that harm the self, relationships, and the community. In essence, InTrePID should generate a cyclical process for participants to increase awareness of individual and systemic factors that perpetuate interpersonal and community violence; take responsibility for (in)actions that perpetuate dehumanization and accountability for implementing solutions; develop efficacy in individual and collective community/cultural organizing skills; and, practice solution-oriented multi-level action. The paper highlights the work of a community-based project as an example of one way to implement the method to support community members in healing from the harm of dehumanization by addressing the violence of living in a dehumanizing society.

The Authoritative Sway of Artificial Boundaries of Sexual Orientation: An Ethical Imperative for Public Administration

Public administrators implement and direct the powers of government. Public administration ethics, combined with social equity, is positioned to direct these powers and to thereby advance the rights and inclusion of all humanity. This paper discusses how social categories create artificial boundaries and allow for authoritative removal of rights; it examines barriers to full rights and privileges for individuals who are LGBT. We ask: Do public administration ethics reflect the self-evident truths of the founding documents, including “all… are created equal” with “unalienable rights?” Unfortunately, “all” still does not apply to everyone. Today some groups remain marginalized. Centuries after the Constitution was ratified, in the wake of WWII, the international community affirmed our founding principles. Do we limit rights through categories we create? In society are we “man” or “woman” only as a result of categories determined by various religious approaches? Employing intersectionality and Critical Action Research, we draw from stories of students who are LGBT. We surface the damaging impacts of negative categorization, stigma, and hierarchy of credibility which contribute to their experience as “lesser” persons in society. We conclude with expanding social equity in a way to extend ethics in Public Administration to Humanity Beyond Boundaries.

Business Education Learners in the Further Education and Training Phase: Towards the Development of a South African Readiness Model to Strengthen Learners’ Academic Performance

African and coloured students continue to perform poorly both at public schools and institutions of higher learning. There are two main reasons for their weak performance - a lack of literacy and numeracy skills, and being under-prepared. This article reports on two findings of a study that wasconducted at two high schools in the Western Cape Province. The one high school was a quintile 1, and the other a quintile 4 school. The study aimed to implement intervention strategies over a three year period for Grade 10 to 12 learners in the business-related subjects, Accounting, Business Studies,and Economics. The objective was to develop a readiness model that public schools in South African could use to overcome the challenges so that learners could be equipped with a strong foundation in their primary schooling. The study was situated within a critical education science paradigm and useda critical participatory action research design. Two groups of 30 learners formed the main research participants. Interventions strategies were implemented with the learners when they were in Grade 10 in 2017, in Grade 11 in 2018, and in Grade 12 in 2019. The results show that both groups oflearners did not have an adequate rating of 50% and more subject content knowledge and skills when they arrived in Grade 10 in 2017 in all three subjects, and they did not manage to obtain a 50% or more rating in the three subjects in their final examinations at the end of Grade 12 in 2019. Based on the four key principles of the readiness model, recommendations are proposed that would assist public schools to develop and support the learners during the early childhood and foundation phase so that asolid foundation in literacy and numeracy skills could be laid.

How Do Children Experience the Embodied Communication and Leadership of Teachers? Expressing the Voices of Children Through Artistic, Sensual, and Multimodal Methods in Educational Research

This article focuses on children’s lived experiences with teachers in school, and shows how a multimodal methodological perspective can strengthen the voices of children in educational research. The authors illustrate how a strong children’s perspective can be established with a methodical starting point inspired by phenomenology, critical utopian action research, and arts-based research. The inquiry is especially focused on how the embodied communication of the teacher’s professional practice is experienced by children and transformed from an often silent bodily knowledge to esthetic, artistic, and verbal formats. In order to understand the children’s lived experiences of life in school, they were invited into an open and playful future workshop. The workshop creates a dialogical space where the verbal, sensuous, emotional, and bodily expressions of both criticism and dreams can be articulated. It’s a space that can be seen as potentially activist material, because it allows for the dominance of the already existing structures to possibly be exceeded. Therefore, the article also includes children’s concrete artistic interpretations of the embodied leadership of their teachers. The empirical material shows how the artistic, visual, and aesthetic practices can transform the child’s lived experiences and contribute to creating an open space, where images, imagery, and metaphorical explorations are possible. The children’s voices show how they experience being seen, being invisible, or being touched by their teachers. They also show how they experience being afraid and exposed in the classroom. It is perhaps just here that the forms of expression in art offer a dialogic, collaborative foundation, where embodied experiences can be transformed into forms of knowledge that are more accessible to reflection and exploration. This could be a first step toward change.

Building better relationships: developing critically reflective practice when working preventively with domestic violence and abuse

Background and context: This article presents reflections on critical participatory action research into the development of critically reflective practice, conducted by the first author alongside practitioners who work preventively in the field of domestic violence and abuse. It is part of a doctorate in health science undertaken in response to the need to question assumptions, presuppositions and meaning perspectives in what is a complex and harmful area of interprofessional practice. Aims: The research aims are to develop knowledge and professional/interprofessional practice in this ill-defined area of practice in two phases – phase 1: creating opportunities for interprofessional critical reflection; and phase 2: examining the impact this has on individual and collective practice. This article offers an emerging framework for critically reflective interprofessional practice, and critical reflections on phase 1 of the study, from the perspective of insider/practitioner/researcher, through the lenses of sincerity and significance in qualitative research. Implications for practice: The article concludes by proposing potentially important implications for practice development in the following areas: Interprofessional practice The conditions required for developing critically reflective practice How we reveal, understand and work with power dynamics when working with conflict, violence and abuse

Building an Engaged Himalayan Sustainability Science

The Himalayan region is facing a new crisis under climate change, rapid economic transformation, and escalating geopolitical tensions. A large body of Himalayan sciences has endeavored to understand this challenge but has failed to engage meaningfully with the local people and policymakers. I argue for a new engaged Himalayan sustainability science that not only understands and interprets the emerging challenges but also strengthens societal capability.

Assessment of agency or assessment for agency?: a critical realist action research study into the impact of a processfolio assessment within UK HE preparatory courses for international students

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a three-year action research project action investigating the relationship between assessment as a social structure and the agency of students within a preparatory course for postgraduate international students at a UK Russell Group University. Action research into academic writing assessment within this highly constrained context was informed by critical realism, which allows for impacts of assessment on students to be conceptualised as ‘absence’, in this case of agency and for change to be understood as the ‘absenting of absences.’ An initial reconnaissance stage precipitated the implementation of an intervention called processfolio. The first intervention cycle involved one class of 14 students; the second cycle widened the scope to three classes. A range of data sets was employed at each cycle, including interviews, and the students’ processfolios. Students demonstrated varying stages of critical consciousness of assessment as a constraining social structure and, through the processfolio, some found space to resist and make agentic choices. Through the iterative process of action research, it became clear that the real purpose of the processfolio was to use assessment itself as a tool to absent the negative impacts of these assessment practices, thereby subverting and disrupting assessment as a social structure.

Accountability from the Ground Up: Uncovering the Limitations and Possibilities of Organizing for Community Schools in Philadelphia

This paper focuses on the evolution of community schools from a grassroots organizing effort to a formal initiative in Philadelphia. The authors implemented a critical participatory action research project to examine the process and impact of the education organizing. We present two narratives to illustrate the potential and limitations of two divergent community school approaches. We argue that education justice movements must develop processes and metrics of accountability to effectively organize for transformative community-driven education. Findings provide insights to communities organizing for public education in other contexts and locales and an example of how research can support social justice movements.

Performance Pedagogy: Performing Fluxus Pedagogy in a Contemporary Lithuanian Context

Educators practice performance pedagogy as the method where an educator/facilitator is seen as a performer or actor (Pineau 1994, p. 4). This paper presents an analysis of the historical roots of performance pedagogies in Fluxus pedagogies and performance pedagogy practices within participatory art events in Lithuania as exemplified by festivals AN88 (1988) and AN89 (1989). The case of my research rests on the contemporary implementation of performance pedagogy techniques during the course The Temporary Department of Time, Space, and Action for BA students at the Vilnius Academy of Arts in Lithuania. This research aims to define the concept theories within performance pedagogy in the art academy education, which developed behind the terms Human Semiotics (Andersen 2002), Hyper Performer,1 and InterMedia (Higgins 1984). This project was implemented using the strategy of critical utopian action research in the context of the Vilnius Academy of Arts. The empirical material was gathered during my employment as a guest lecturer and the implementation of my pedagogical internship at the Vilnius Academy of Arts.2These concept theories are defined through. a reflexive analysis of archive material on the historical origin of performance pedagogies, originating in Fluxus pedagogies, local Lithuanian participatory art, and data from the contemporary case of my project The Temporary Department of Time, Space and Action (2018), in the form of archive material, photographs, interviews, observations, notes, and my diary. The results of this research are the application of performance pedagogy concepts and terminology to the art and education projects and the definition of the key concept theories within this field. These results can be useful for artists and those practicing university pedagogy.