LEADING INCLUSION IN SCHOOLS
Through Critical Participatory Action Research
Dr Andrew Bills and Nigel Howard work with innovative and emerging schools to inform and develop practice through Critical Participatory Action Research.
The purpose of critical participatory action research (CPAR) is to change social practices. Kemmis and co-authors (2013, pp 2-3) explain critical participatory action research as ‘to change social practices, including research itself, to make them more rational and reasonable, more productive and sustainable and more just and inclusive’.
CPAR expresses a commitment to bring together broad social analysis, the self-reflective collective self-study of practice, and transformational action to improve things.
Transformative action is strategic and can involve ongoing public discussion to deal with injustices for social change. CPAR can also involve building alliances with broader social movements, and strategically working for social and policy change by extending membership to enhance the understanding and political efficacy of individuals and groups. This can call for use of media or social media, production of texts (e.g., books, film, educational guides), geared for academic and non-academic audiences, and strategic work to give participants access to particular bodies of expert knowledge.
Australia’s leading researchers in CPAR, Carr and Kemmis (2013) argue that for critical participatory action research to bring about positive social change, the researcher(s) is a subjective insider. They advocate that self-reflection is essential, for the individual and the collective, to ensure the critical aspect and validity of the research. Overall, they say participatory forms of research methodology create the conditions for practitioners to be actively involved where they have a voice in all aspects of the research process (Kemmis et al., 2013).
The On-going Changing Nature of CPAR
The CPAR process is collaborative: involving a group of people addressing a social issue(s). It is cyclical, with each cycle of research affecting subsequent versions of planning, acting, observation, and reflecting (see Kemmis, 1988; McTaggart, 1991) changing research foci and creating need for project funding to be used in new ways. CPAR if it is done properly, is never static and linear but, rather, dynamic and changing in response to the reflections of each phase. Actions for change are interventions in a social situation, planned with "outside" as well as "inside" participants and interests.
The changing nature of interventions, and funding needed to guide new interventions when and where they are needed. In the education realm, such research is invaluable for informing policy and action in schooling design, curriculum and pedagogy and how education systems work to address issues and can also generate theory about the change process itself.
REAL Hope, REAP and Growing NGUTU are CPAR projects. Participants are co-researchers who come together and talk about their workplace and their values, and come to a mutual consensus or shared understanding on various challenges/issues. As co-researchers, they require access to expert information through texts and active discussion. Participants are active in the process and their expertise is both recognised and valued. Our researchers (students, teachers, principals, and the Flinders research team) value and explore difference in open and honest ways, and agree on ways of working together that minimise the power distribution to create a safe communicative space. Such a space allows them to remove participants from organisational constraints and dare to dream (Kemmis et al., 2013).
Our three current CPAR projects seek to redress:
· The exclusion experienced by disadvantaged students as a consequence of curriculum and teaching practices that served the interests of other students.
· The exclusion of Indigenous students and students in poverty
· The alienation of students from schooling and the circumstances that lead to it (action research programs and initiatives prompted by a movement for democratic education),
· The mismatch between school curriculum and pedagogies and the knowledge and the kinds of learning people encounter in their lives outside or beyond school.
· The entrenched “grammars” of mainstream schooling that do not work for many young people.
· How indigenous knowledge is marginalised in curriculum, pedagogy and schooling design.
· How education systems operating in ‘silos’ restrains equity and equality for young people.
· How poor students get poor outcomes even though they are just as smart as other students.
· How schools serving disadvantaged communities are often left to fend for themselves.
In summary, several past and present ARCs in Australia use the CPAR paradigm. The FAIR GO Project and the RPIN project are two examples that come to mind. The nature of this paradigm is that research foci are ever changing, to best enable positive and just social change, and as a consequence, because CPAR is designed with emancipatory intent, research funding needs to be attuned to ongoing CPAR fundamentals and needs.
CPAR Fundamentals re REAL Hope, Growing NGUTU and REAP
· Teachers are researchers and require texts and professional learning to participate effectively.
· Social change is a political proposition/endeavour so funding conferences, video footage, consultancy support that serve the presenting change endeavour is essential to the work.
· Social change requires strategic action within a cycle of inquiry demanding new budgetary uses.
· Consultancy funding use for expert speakers/mentors on topics of need are sourced when needed.
REFERENCES:
Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (2003). Becoming critical: education knowledge and action research. Routledge.
Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2013). Changing practices, changing education. Springer Science & Business Media.
Kemmis, S. (2009). Action research as a practice‐based practice. Educational action research, 17(3), 463-474.
Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). Introducing critical participatory action research. In The action research planner (pp. 1-31). Springer, Singapore.
Kemmis, S. (1988). The action researcher. Educational research, methodology, and measurement: An international handbook.
McTaggart, R. (1991). Principles for participatory action research. Adult education quarterly, 41(3), 168-187.
FURTHER READING re CPAR ARCs:
Hattam, R., Brennan, M., Zipin, L., & Comber, B. (2009). Researching for social justice: Contextual, conceptual and methodological challenges. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 30(3), 303-316.
Munns, G., & Sawyer, W. (2013). Student engagement: The research methodology and the theory. In Exemplary teachers of students in poverty (pp. 30-48). Routledge.
FURTHER READING re CPAR:
Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2015). Critical theory and critical participatory action research. The SAGE Handbook of action research, 453-464.
McTaggart, R. (1994). Participatory action research: Issues in theory and practice. Educational Action Research, 2(3), 313-337.