Mission Impossible: Doing PR as a Doctoral Student?

Participatory research methods may be becoming more acceptable within Universities but its openly ideological approach and challenge to conventional science may lead some to conclude that it is an approach only for those academics who have tenure or have found other forms of immunity.  Patricia Maguire*, however, shows that it can be done as a [...]

Academic Participatory Researchers: More harm than good?

According to the experience of Randy Stoecker, academic participatory researchers can be irrelevant or damaging to PAR projects. Irrelevant, as the whole purpose of participatory research is that community members become “self-sufficient” researchers and activists, and potentially damaging, as academic researchers may over-emphasize the research component of a PAR project and find themselves incapable of assisting in social change.
So what are the [...]

Participatory Action Research: An emergent reality?

Davydd Greenwood, William Foote Whyte and Ira Harkavy* argue that the discussions on PAR often miss two important dimensions – the participatory intent of the research process and the actual degree of participation achieved by a project. Like Andrea Cornwell and Rachel Jewkes (see post) they believe that it is very rare to see [...]