Critical Participatory Action Research Research Articles

Collaborative Synchronous Coaching to Enable the Third Space in Initial Teacher Education

ABSTRACT Research highlights the third space as a theory to enhance the practicum experience. This study explores how Collaborative Synchronous Coaching (CSC) can enable concepts found in the literature regarding the third space and initial teacher education (ITE). It used critical participatory action research to develop CSC and guide data collection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four triads, indicating that CSC is a new and practical andragogical technique to enable concepts of the third space in ITE. Pre and post-intervention surveys supported this conclusion. Authentic collaboration is facilitated, relationships de-hierarchized, and greater accountability encouraged, providing effective preparation of beginning teachers. A recommendation is to build a foundation of relational trust before implementing CSC.

Exploring the relationship between legislative theatre and critical participatory action research

ABSTRACT In this paper, we argue that Legislative Theatre processes, as presented by Boal in his book Legislative Theatre: Using Performance to Make Politics and initially implemented in Rio de Janeiro in 90’, can be considered (Critical Participatory) Action Research processes and conducted as such – depending on the approach of the process leader and their consciousness. We present the scope of Legislative Theatre as part of the techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed, and we outline the common origins of Legislative Theatre and Action Research in the work of Freire, Boal, Moreno, and Lewin. We explore similarities and differences between their ideas to show where they are convergent and where they are not. In doing so, we aim to highlight the importance of the Action Research perspective for enhancing the work of social activists using Legislative Theatre. We consider the possible benefits and costs of such integration, and we conclude the paper with recommendations for further research.

Student activists for racially equitable change: lessons for higher education leaders from a critical participatory action research project

ABSTRACT Student activists, and particularly student activists of Color, have contributed significantly to campus change movements for decades. Yet resistance to student activism from higher education leaders has remained consistent. This article presents findings from a critical participatory action research (CPAR) project comprised of student activists at a predominantly white institution in the southern United States. It traces the group’s collaborative work to create and advance a comprehensive set of recommendations and empirically supported justifications for racially equitable institutional change. The purpose of the CPAR project was to draw institutional attention to the racial injustices and inequities on campus, create structured guidance for the necessary solutions, and to spark action for collaborative change. Despite the CPAR group’s intentional and thoughtful approach in developing and presenting their recommendations, the response from institutional leaders was tepid and disconnected, demonstrating the historical pattern of higher education leaders’ responses to student activism. Outcomes of the CPAR group’s efforts are described and implications for higher education leaders are explored.

Interrogating whiteness: Critical reflections on occupational science scholarship and social responsibility

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates the obscurity of whiteness and white supremacy as a system of thought and white racialization as a social process influencing habits of inquiry in occupational science research. By attending to the relationships between whiteness, white supremacy, and occupation, occupational science scholars can critically engage in research that dismantles harmful societal understandings of occupation within their science and in society-at-large. This social responsibility further requires occupational science scholars to initiate anti-racist research and scholarship that actively seeks undoing normalized structural racism by taking up critical theories authored by theorists of Color. Doing so offers alternate ways of conceptualizing human doing, thinking, being, knowing, becoming, and belonging pertinent to people across racialized identities. Critical epistemologies and research approaches, such as critical participatory action research, hold potential for the discipline to ethically produce anti-racist research applicable to diverse populations. However, whiteness must be attended to and deconstructed throughout research processes.

Disability Theatre as Critical Participatory Action Research: Lessons for Inclusive Research

Informed by critical disability studies and disability justice, this article describes the reflections of two university researchers co-researching with self-advocates (individuals with intellectual disability), theatre artists, researchers, and a community living society to create social justice disability theatre as critical participatory research (CPAR), demonstrating how disability theatre can contribute to and advance inclusive research practice. Disability justice-informed theatre as CPAR has direct relevance to people with intellectual disabilities; offers a platform where self-advocates’ diverse ways to communicate and be in the world are honoured and taken up as resources to the research and community; and can generate mentorship opportunities for self-advocates to learn, practice, and develop research skills. Significances include showing how the theatre creation process (devising, developing, and refining scenes) is research in itself and how tensions are recognized as sites of possibility. Future research should explore how increasing pathways to communication, co-creation of KT strategies, and protocols for power sharing and problem solving within disability theatre as CPAR impact the roles, outcomes, and experiences of disabled and non-disabled researchers and audience members.

Supporting WFN Collective Social Entrepreneurship Through Social Movement Learning and Critical Participatory Action Research

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore the complexities and connections between women, femme, and nonbinary (WFN) collective social entrepreneurs, social movement learning (SML), and critical participatory action research (CPAR) within the fields of adult education (AE) and human resource development (HRD). WFN collective social entrepreneurship serves as a reaction and solution to system failures, by creating supportive learning environments. We discuss the potential of social movement learning (SML) in these collectives, offering marginalized learners opportunities for skill development, knowledge sharing, and social impact efforts. This paper proposes using CPAR as a research approach to support social movements and amplify marginalized voices. CPAR can illuminate the development and learning networks of WFN social entrepreneur collectives and emphasize the importance of inclusive and intersectional approaches in entrepreneurial education and research within AE/HRD.

Exploring Students' Perspectives on the Implementation of a Self-Organised Learning Environment

This critical participatory action research explored undergraduate female Saudi students' perspectives on the implications of a self-organised learning environment (SOLE) via their mobile devices. Data was gathered from interviews and focus groups using a convenience sample of 27 undergraduate students and the researcher's reflective journals. The proposed intervention gave students opportunities for engagement and enhanced a spirit of cooperation, which led to the students enjoying their classes. Furthermore, SOLE encouraged the students to evaluate their ideas before posting them. Participating in SOLE helped the students to understand and recall the relevant course content. However, some challenging aspects, e.g., misleading information, emerged during the study's first phase, along with some technical issues.

Stigma and Mental Well-Being among Teenage Mothers in the Rural Areas of Makhado, Limpopo Province

Adolescent mothers experience psychological challenges, such as social withdrawal and rejection by their communities. Assuming the role of motherhood is associated with emotional and mental distress, such as fear and worry, regret and frustration, guilt and shame, and social isolation. This study adopted a qualitative critical participatory action research approach. Purposive and snowballing recruitment were employed to recruit 11 teenage mothers, and semi-structured face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions were employed to generate data. All sessions were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using qualitative thematic analysis. Teenage mothers in this study reported experiencing humiliation and being subjected to degrading remarks and judgement by schoolmates. The experience of being rejected, teased, and labelled made participants feel that they were not accepted as part of their community. It was concluded that teenage mothers experienced inconsistent support from parents and community members, which led to social isolation and feeling rejected; hence, teenage mothers lacked a sense of belonging to and acceptance by their communities. Policymakers and authorities in education and healthcare should encourage social change and transformative learning and address the issue of stigma and social isolation experienced by teenage mothers in rural communities.

Children’s communicative capital: Promoting inclusive storying in a diverse preschool community through critical participatory action research

Advocating for inclusive literacy teaching pedagogies, to support 3–5-year-old children’s multimodal and multilingual storying, is fundamental in diverse nations. In Australia, for example, there are over 26% of 5-year-old children connecting with language backgrounds other than English, 7% are Aboriginal, and over 5% are diagnosed with special needs ( AEDC, 2021 ). Arguably, children draw from their own cultural, linguistic, and neuro diverse ways of expressing; hence, visual, gestural, spatial, auditory, and touch-type modes of expression, deserve greater recognition in literacy. Our critical participatory action research advocates for an expanded view of literacy focusing on children’s assets to communicate stories beyond vocal or written versions of story’telling’ in English, by incorporating translanguaging. We consider ‘storying’ to be a more inclusive term that incorporates multiple and multilingual modes in story creation. Our research on Kaurna country (the Adelaide Plains), involved 66 three to five-year-old culturally, linguistically and neuro diverse preschoolers, and their families. They interacted and translanguaged with 10 educators to explore multilingual, Aboriginal, and autistic children’s storying. The 6-month research project questioned: ‘How do diverse children communicate stories and how can children’s storying be encouraged with culturally responsive community involvement?.’ Observation, interview, questionnaire, artefact and reflective journaling data identified diverse children’s storying capabilities, highlighting touch, embodied expression and movement of props, as children expressed imagined stories. Thematic analysis led to the emergence of the concept, ‘communicative capital,’ a component nestled within Bourdieu’s (1991) ‘cultural capital,’ highlighting multiple modes of expression beyond named languages (as per the concept of ‘linguistic capital’). We argue that children’s communicative funds of knowledge and semiotic systems for meaning-making deserve increased value in inclusive literacy education, curriculum development, teacher education, pedagogy, practice and policy, so to embrace and expand the storying strengths of children with autism, First Nations children, multilingual children, and all children worldwide.

“Do you Shower with your Hijab?”

Abstract In this article, I use data from a Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) conducted in a high school in Salt Lake City, Utah to understand how racialization influences the sense of belonging for Muslim girls who veil. Using data collected through high school students’ questionnaires, Muslim girls’ personal experiences, and interviews with administration and faculty, I investigate how non-Muslim peers and school staff perceive Muslim girls at Mount Top High, a suburban high school. These perceptions shape the way members of the school community interact with Muslim girls and have a great impact on students’ sense of belonging and academic achievement.

It isn’t sloppy language: exploring the discourse of Village English

Abstract In Alaska, as elsewhere in the United States, standardized American English is privileged over both local varieties of English and Indigenous languages. This privileged position is maintained, in part, through a deficit model of language acquisition and a model of school success which locates the source of underachievement among K-12 students within the child rather than within the broader sociopolitical context of school and schooling. Using a critical participatory action research approach, this article examines a single graduate course for K-12 teachers intended to address ideologies of linguistic deficit and demonstrate that the varieties of English spoken by adults and children in Southwest Alaska are systematic and rule-governed. Data are analyzed in terms of trajectories of learning, focusing on three distinct points within this trajectory: Pre-course questionnaire, Mid-point questionnaire and post-course artifacts (e.g., final projects for the master’s degree). Through the lens of discourse analysis (Gee, James Paul. 2010. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method, 3rd edn. New York, NY: Routledge), we illustrate and discuss the tensions inherent in shifting discourse models as the teachers contend with course content that challenges broadly accepted explanations for school underachievement.

The Power Rainbow: a tool to support 3rd–5th graders in analyzing systems of power

Drawing on scholars of critical theory and pedagogy, we understand power as operating within nested social systems, meaning that individuals experiencing injustice are impacted not only by the most immediate agent of that injustice but also by the broader institutions, policies, and values of their society. The practice of attending to power and how it shapes our societies at multiple levels (i.e., power analysis) is necessary to critical research approaches, including Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR). While adolescents and adults (the age groups most commonly engaging in CPAR) are likely to have developed some understanding of systems of power through experience, dialog, and/or educational experiences, children participating in CPAR have generally had fewer opportunities to develop this type of analysis. In our own CPAR projects with 3rd–5th grade children, we have witnessed the challenges and possibilities of exploring power with child CPAR team members. In this paper, we introduce a methodological tool that we developed to facilitate power analysis during critical research projects like these: The Power Rainbow. The Power Rainbow is a graphic representation of nested systems of power, which can be utilized with children in multiple ways throughout the CPAR process. The tool concretizes the abstract concept of systemic power through shape, color, and text, and scaffolds the type of structural thinking necessary to research and take action towards more just futures.

“It Is Nice To Be Seen, Not Gazed At”: A Reflection of Using PhotoVoice and Critical Participatory Action Research With Queer, Trans, Black, and Indigenous People of Color in Substance Use Disorder Counseling

This article focuses on the reflexivity process associated with studying Queer, Transgender, Black, and Indigenous People of Colors’ experiences in substance use disorder counseling. Specifically, this article explores the authors’ experience working with QTBIPOC in substance use disorder counseling, studying QTBIPOC counseling research, researching QTBIPOC lived experiences in substance use disorder counseling, and utilizing QTBIPOC affirming research methods in understanding QTBIPOC lived experiences. This article is especially important as it interrogates what it means to identify as a Queer researcher while studying the lived experiences of QTBIPOC. This article also includes implications for conducting counseling research in studying QTBIPOC lived experiences with culturally responsive frameworks.

Youth Lens methodology: Critical participatory action research with youth in Cleveland, Ohio

Research on youth well-being is often driven by adult researcher voices, while youth experiences are neglected. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is a distinct and powerful approach to capture youth experiences unique to particular social settings and leverage these voices to produce action and change through research. YPAR can be used to challenge oppression, mitigate the researcher-participant hierarchy, and build a social justice-oriented methodology, particularly when it uses a critical and intersectionality lens, rooted in a wider understanding of racial oppression. This methodology paper analyzes our Youth Lens methodology, which uses Critical YPAR to explore African American youth perceptions of how the neighborhood environment shapes health and well-being in Cleveland, Ohio. We describe, in detail, our methodology which was used to examine the history of redlining and systemic racism in the city and how it has driven present-day health and socioeconomic disparities. Further, we reflect in this paper not only on the methodology, but on our own role in the research. We end with implications for collaborative research with youth.

Abandoning a discourse of poverty to develop equitable educational practices through family school partnerships

ABSTRACT A discourse of poverty can influence teachers’ perceptions towards and ways of supporting parents’ engagement in their children’s learning. In 2021, Goodall invited us to examine the discourse surrounding a culture of poverty and seek ways to engage with parents so that we might dismantle systemic inequities. This study explored four primary school teachers’ consideration of how they could adapt their own practices to strengthen families’ engagement in their children’s learning. Data collection incorporated transcripts from reflective practice meetings and semi-structured interviews utilised throughout a two-cycle process of Critical Participatory Action Research. The theory of practice architectures framed analysis of the teachers’ language (sayings), activities (doings) and relationships (relatings) within parent engagement and the specific conditions which support and hinder practice. Within this study the participating teachers perceived that parent engagement is more achievable in a dominant community. Within the nondominant community where the teachers worked, social and cultural factors were perceived to problematise parent engagement. This paper advocates for schools to routinely embed reflexive practices which support teachers to examine and address systemic impediments to parent engagement.

Erratum to

The article metadata for Howard, J., Derk, K., & Colson , T. (2023). Let’s Talk: Critical Participatory Action Research and Improvement Science-Guided Research Comparing Our Approaches to Improve Education. Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice, 8(1), 9–17. https://doi.org/10.5195/ie.2023.285 listed the authors in an incorrect order and contained an incorrect email address of author Joy Howard. The correct order of the authors is Joy Howard, Kim Derk, and Tori Colson. The email address for Joy Howard is howardj@wcu.edu.

Defining the Contours of a Participatory Action Research Counterspace Developed by, for, and about Black Women in Higher Education

Although critical participatory action research (CPAR) has been cited as a means to cultivate more equitable systems in education, its promise has not been fully realized as a mechanism to enhance the experiences of minoritized cultural groups in U.S. higher education. As outsiders within academia who are multiplicatively marginalized, Black women’s engagement in CPAR demonstrates unique potential to address this gap. In this paper, I introduce an agentic diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging strategy embedded in a critical action research methodology known as a participatory action research counterspace (PARC). After situating the proposed methodology in existing literature, I describe a PARC study involving a group of Black women students, faculty, staff, and administrators at a predominantly white institution (PWI), as well as the defining contours of the methodology. A discussion outlining the benefits of the PARC methodology for Black women enrolled and employed in higher education is also included.

Critical Participatory Action Research as Leadership Praxis: Sociopolitical Crises as Ordinary Moments for Expansive Educational Leadership

Philadelphia offers an ideal case study for understanding how community and education leaders negotiate the contemporary sociopolitical context and various crises to advance educational equity and justice. This paper focuses on our critical participation action research and organizing within an education coalition to offer an example of community-engaged research that strives for education equity and justice through leadership development. Our goal is to expand conceptualizations of educational leadership to include diverse stakeholders connected to school communities as experts. Toward that end, we examine and amplify the expertise of informal education leaders (e.g., families and communities) involved in struggles for education justice with attention to their response to the twin crises of COVID-19 and uprisings against anti-Black racism and police violence. Our work centers those directly impacted by systems and structures of oppression as experts on relationship building and community engagement. Findings offer insights and strategies to educational leaders for fostering family and community engagement and collaboration in times of crises and conflict.

Parents with Teachers Re-Authoring the Home-School Interface: A Critical Participatory Action Research Study

Critical participatory action researchers (CPAR) (Kemmis et al., 2014; Ledwith & Springett, 2014) created conditions for 25 parents and teachers to join as co-researchers in this research study. Together, they co-created a hybrid discursive third space (Gee, 1996; Gutierrez, 2008) that invited alignment of their respective funds of knowledge (Gonzalez et al., 2005). Participants engaged in iterative processes of conscientization (Freire, 1976) through story, dialogue, and reflections that led to a convergence of teaching and parenting through relational connectivity and metaphoric bridges of togetherness and trust disrupting previously held institutionalized and unquestioned hegemonic borders, rules, and roles. 

Can Research Heal? Toward Restorative Validity: Axiological Commitments and Methodological Obligations as Contact Zones

This work begins with a simple premise: (re)imagining a healing space for social inquiry. I briefly highlight the work of a critical participatory action research collective—composed of Maya community members, nonprofit staff, and a university-affiliated researcher—and how we explored whether research could provide a restorative function for those experiencing trauma, abuse, and everyday restrictions on free will. We revisited our co-constructed conceptual framework—restorative validity—which paints inquiry as interconnected orientations rooted in relationships, justice, and liberation. By presenting our experiences as counternarratives, I describe how our axiological commitments act in opposition and resist methodological obligations, illuminating Pratt’s conceptualization of contact zones—in this case, a social space where co-researchers’ ethics and values clash with hegemonic research practices. These counternarratives offer a reflexive example of the ethical and axiological considerations that should be examined as collectives approach inquiry as a healing and restorative space. The aim is to educate those interested in questioning dominant paradigms, as well as critically exploring the necessary conditions for restorative validity. These reflections act as an open call: Are we simply too preoccupied with being scientific enough to the detriment of freeing ourselves to imagine, co-construct, and commit inquiry as a healing space? It questions whether our communities of research and practice hold sufficient freedom: Freedom from dominant paradigms. Freedom to challenge methodological practices and empower ourselves to create new forms of inquiry. Forms of inquiry that seek to heal and restore, rather than simply prove a point.