Consulting with children is widely recognised as an essential element in building understanding about children's lives. From a children's rights perspective, it is also a legal requirement on professionals working with children. However, translating the rhetoric into research and practice is still evolving. Previous studies report on working with…

The knowledge translation movement in health has led to the production of vast amounts of knowledge tools aimed at broadening clinicians' evidence base and improving the quality and efficacy of their practices. However important, these tools, largely oriented towards biomedical and technological aspects of care, are of limited potential for…

This essay explores connections between post-colonial theory and action research. Post-colonial theory is committed to addressing the plague of colonialism. Action research, at its core, promises to problematize uncontested "colonial" hegemonies of any form. Both post-colonial theory and action research engage dialogic, critically reflective and…

This paper reports on an experiment linking science with people. Taking as a paradigm the holistic scientific approach fostered by agroecology, we present a methodological proposal for the implementation of participatory action research in rural areas. Our aims were various: to solve a specific problem, i.e. the exclusion of small- and…

This paper draws on a case study of a new Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme in the north of England to draw attention to some of the ethical issues encountered when using a participatory action research approach to animating CSA. Both CSA and participatory action research have been associated with the concept of "caring…

The author's used this article to discuss critical pedagogy and praxis, but also provided an example of their work and process of engaging in participatory action research (PAR) with Native American Youth as they navigated through their own tensions of positionality and criticality with historically marginalized teens. They introduce the…

This paper explores the concept of what a community-based participatory dropout prevention planning process might entail. Specifically, it looks at a year-long research project that brought together formerly incarcerated school non-completers, researchers, and local policy-makers (stakeholders) to address low high-school completion rates in the…

Evaluation occurs within a specific context and is influenced by the economic, political, historical, and social forces that shape that context. The culture of evaluation is thus very much embedded in the culture of accountability that currently prevails in public sector institutions, policies, and program. As such, our understanding of the…

Background: The research community has long documented educational disparities along race lines. Countless studies have shown that urban African American and Latino students are systematically denied educational resources in comparison to their white counterparts, resulting in persistent achievement disparities (Ladson-Billings, 2006;…

This project contributes to the literature on action research and undergraduate pedagogy for leadership development through application and expansion of existing theory on collaborative ways of teaching and learning. I applied a participatory, inquiry-based approach to teaching an undergraduate course in leadership studies over four semesters…

This paper demonstrates the explanatory power of the participatory-anticipatory distinction postulated by Tzur and Simon (2004). Using data from our current project, we show how this lens allows us to make sense of seeming inconsistencies in a student's development of a mathematical conception. More broadly, the distinction allows us to observe,…

The recent study Polling for Justice (PFJ) used a multigenerational participatory action research approach with embodied methodologies to document youth experiences of education, criminal justice, and public health in New York City. Through an exploration of the PFJ project, this column demonstrates how participatory action research and embodied…

Narratives and activity theory are useful as socially constructed data collection tools that allow a researcher access to the social, cultural and historical meanings that research participants place on events in their lives. This case study shows how these tools were used to promote reflection within a cultural-historical activity theoretically…

Drawing from a sociocultural perspective of literacy, with the goal to promote the use of African Native Languages (ANL) in schools, I conducted a Participatory Action Research in one multilingual primary school community in North West Tanzania. For three weeks, 19 teachers, 19 parents and 119 6th grade students collaborated with each other in a…

The inclusion of the Knowledge about Language strand in the recently introduced Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E) is both promising and challenging. For the first time, students across primary and secondary years of schooling are expected to develop "a coherent, dynamic, and evolving body of knowledge about the English language and how it…