Participatory Action Research Literature Review Text

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Make an exploratory change, collect data on what happens, reflect, and then build more refined plans of action. In both cases, if the lewinian action/reflection spiral is thoughtfully and systematically followed, preferably in a group context, then issues and understandings on the one hand, and the practices themselves, on the other, will develop and evolve. The collaborating group is widened from those most directly involved to directly involve as many as possible of those affected by the practices concerned.

Participatory action research establishes self critical communities of people participating and collaborating in the research processes of planning, acting, observing and reflecting. It aims to build communities of people committed to enlightening themselves about the relationship between circumstance, action and consequence, and to emancipating themselves from the institutional and personal constraints which limit their power to live by their legitimate, and freely chosen social values. Participatory action research is a systematic learning process in which people act deliberately through remaining open to surprise and responsive to opportunities. It is a process of using critical intelligence to inform action, and developing it so that social action becomes praxis critically informed, committed action.

Participatory action research involves people in theorising about their practices. This involves them in being inquisitive about and coming to understand the relationship between circumstances, action and consequences in their own lives. The theories that participatory action research develops may be expressed initially in the form of rationales for practice. These initial rationales are then subjected to critical scrutiny through the participatory action research process. Participatory action research requires that people put their practices, ideas and assumptions about institutions to the test by gathering compelling evidence for substantiation. Participatory action research involves not only keeping records which describe what is happening as accurately as possible but also collecting and analysing the groups judgements, reactions and impressions about what is going on.

Participatory action research is a political process because it involves people in making changes that will affect others. For this reason it sometimes creates resistance to change, both in the participants themselves and in others. Participatory action research involves making critical analyses of the institutionally structured situations projects, programmes, systems in which people work. The resistance to change felt by a researcher is due to conflicts between the proposed new practices and the accepted practices eg concerning communication, decision making and educational work of the institution. This critical analysis will help the participatory action researcher to act politically by a involving others collaboratively in the research process and inviting them to explore their practices, and b by working in the wider institutional context towards more rational understandings, more just processes of decision making, and more fulfilling forms of work for all involved. Participatory action research starts small by working on minor changes which individuals can manage and control, and working towards more extensive patterns of change. These might include critiques of ideas of institutions which might lead to ideas for the general reforms of projects, programmes or system wide policies and practices.

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Participants should be able to present evidence on how they articulated the thematic concern which holds their group together, and on how they established authentically shared agreements in the group. Participatory action research starts with small cycles of planning, acting, observing and reflecting which can help to define issues, ideas and assumptions more clearly so that those involved can define more powerful questions for themselves as their work progresses. Participatory action research starts with small groups of collaborators but widens the community of participating action researchers so that it gradually includes more and more of those involved and affected by the practices in question. Participatory action research allows and requires participants to build records of their improvements: alice mcintyre is the director of elementary education and an associate professor at hellenic college. She authored three books and co edited another, all of which discuss par as an approach for engaging with people in processes of reflection, education, and change. She is i am currently writing about a two year par project with nine and ten year old latina girls in the u.s.

participatory action research par introduces a method that is ideal for researchers who are committed to co developing research programs with people rather than for people. The book provides a history of this technique, its various strands, and the underlying tenets that guide most projects. It then draws on two par projects that highlight three integral dimensions: the meaning of participation the way action manifests itself and the strategies for gathering, analyzing, and disseminating information.

Author alice mcintyre describes the various ways in which par is carried out depending on, for example, the issue under investigation, the site of the project, the project participants, people's access to resources, and other related issues. intended audience: this resource is an ideal supplement for graduate courses par. Riel's participatory action research course the literature review should be organized around a small set of concepts, themes, critical dimensions, and debates that are related to your research objective the problem or issue you are exploring. It is not just a descriptive list of a set of studies, or a set of summaries of papers arranged without structure.

    you will need first to identify a problem or research question. the literature review will help you understand more about this topic or problem. You will need to identify the source of literature and good search techniques to find relevant studies or articles. You will not have time to do an exhaustive search so you should decide on where you will look and how you will organize your search.

    What are you reading? you should be able to distinguish between: popular press articles, practitioner magazines with ideas and success stories, publications where respected leaders in the field describe their work and its implication with a wide audience, and research journals that are peer reviewed where new knowledge is reported and debated by a community.

did you find a small set of materials that were closely related to what you are interested in doing? don't be worried if you find someone has already done your study. The hardest part is to critically analyze the literature you read. You need to abstract a set of concepts and questions, compare items to each other, and discuss strengths and weaknesses. The result should be a fair and balanced treatment of a subject that helps a reader learn from your creative work.

But then you should start to look for major concepts, conclusions, theories, arguments, etc.

    who is the author? at what institution are they based? what is the problem or issue that is central and how is it defined? look at the language as it will reveal a great deal about the perspective of the author. Examine the relationship of the literature relevant to the problem/issue in the article. How did this person approach the problem? without extensive background in research, it may be difficult to evaluate the design, but think about the methods.