Small-scale Actions Research Articles

Growing food, growing community: Community Supported Agriculture in rural Iowa

The emergence of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Iowa holds promise for rural areas. CSA offers opportunities for small-scale, beginning and part-time farmers, not only growers of vegetables and fruit, but also providers of animal products such as meat, eggs and wool. For conventional farmers, CSA offers opportunities to diversify. As a food systems model, the benefits of CSA transcend growers and the members who receive fresh, healthy food. CSA becomes a potential comprehensive strategy of local action for transforming the daily lives of individuals and the daily rhythm of community. With food as a focal point, CSA brings a growing circle of people into a closer relationship with place - farming, nature, each other. Multiplied in an extended network of local, small-scale actions, CSA provides a sensible and viable counter-balance to the large-scale, global-industrial food system.

The importance of cumulus cells on the in vitro production of bovine oocytes

The rapidly expanding urban population in intertropical African cities that lives in poverty in informal settlements poses major problems for urban health, safety and risk reduction. Such settlements often encroach on floodplains and wetlands, restricting the space available to convey and store flood waters Climate change and the expansion impermeable urban surfaces are contributing to increased magnitude and frequency of flooding. The use of green infrastructure in Africa to alleviate climate change impacts, including for sustainable urban drainage, is widely advocated. Many consider that urban agriculture can be part of such green infrastructure. However, although municipal plans often envisage removal of settlements from floodplains and do not encourage urban agriculture, efforts to bulldoze dwellings and move people from the settlements close to city centres are strongly resisted and can become politically contested. Improvements in urban drainage require participatory, multi-sectoral planning and implementation. In many African cities three different levels of action occur, frequently without considering interests at any other level: municipal drainage and floodplain clearance plans; international NGO and consultant led schemes; and community-based small scale actions for immediate relief and protection. Political allegiances cut across the three levels, showing that without holistic views across all scales of the political, social, economic and environmental aspects of these intertropical African cities, widespread use of floodplain and wetland green infrastructure for flood hazard reduction will be difficult to achieve.

Secondary power source: High school students as participatory researchers

Conditions that foster and hinder participatory research are examined, using examples from one such research project aimed at dropout reduction undertaken with students in a “last chance” high school. Student researchers sometimes used racial, gender, and social class differences to gain power and display undemocratic behavior within the group. Dilemmas arose as small-scale actions were implemented that seemed to threaten the power and authority of teachers and administrators both within the alternative school and the traditional high schools that fed into it. The limits to extending democracy to students through research are identified, drawing upon recent theoretical work on feminist pedagogy and participatory research. The conclusion is that youths need to be taken seriously as knowers and potential agents of change and that adults who want to work with adolescent researchers need to model democratic teaching and leadership.

Educational research in chaos: New paradigms for the changing era

My address today has taken us all into deep and uncharted waters. But at its heart there are some basic understandings and issues which we should pursue to maintain our endeavours. The responsibility for change lies not just with researchers but also with bureaucrats, interest groups and politicians. But can we wait for them to make the first move? It is within our capacity to take charge of change and apply what we know about learning to bringing about change. A starting point is to use this information as a framework for reflecting on our own processes. The strategies I have outlined do not rely on your institution or this organization’s initiative but can be implemented by individuals or groups of researchers. What is needed is a broad vision for change and some willing, small scale actions. I hope I have provided the former. The action lies in all our hands.