Abstract
This chapter provides advice on conducting a critical participatory action research initiative. It guides readers through the stages of initial reconnaissance, planning, enacting the plan and observing what happens (collecting evidence), and reflecting on the nature and consequences of what happened, before planning a new cycle of action and reflection. The chapter contains references to specific resources (provided in Chap. 7) relevant at different stages in planning and conducting critical participatory action research: considerations about forming a public sphere and identifying a shared felt concern, notes on research ethics, suggested group protocols for co-researchers, principles of procedure, suggestions about keeping a journal and about gathering evidence and documenting, about reporting, and about working with academic partners.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The right of free speech does not include a right to defame or vilify other people or groups.
- 2.
German researcher Frigga Haug (1999) worked with a group of young women in Hamburg and West Berlin exploring how they were formed as sexualised adults. For a number of weeks, the women met to exchange narrative accounts they had written on an agreed topic (‘The First Kiss’ or ‘The First Bra,’ for example). Each wrote a few pages about her own experience, using remembered details, but in the third person: ‘she’ did this or that. When they met, each read her own account aloud to the group. After all the accounts had been read, they discovered that what had seemed to be a private, intimate and unique experience was, in fact, often common to all or many members of the group. Regarding ‘the first bra’, for example, all had described their mothers taking them to buy the bra, and they concluded that their mothers had played a crucial role in ‘shaping them for the male gaze’. Haug called this approach ‘memory work’, and she regarded it as superior to autobiographical methods because the latter often portrayed individuals as heroes or victims in their own lives, while memory work, by contrast, allowed participants in social life to identify the kinds of social forces that shape us all.
References
Habermas, J. (1984). Theory of communicative action, volume I: Reason and the rationalization of society (trans: T. McCarthy). Boston: Beacon.
Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of communicative action, volume II: Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason (trans: T. McCarthy). Boston: Beacon.
Hadot, P. (1998). The inner citadel: The meditations of Marcus Aurelius. (trans: M. Chase). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Haug, F. (1999). Female sexualization: A collective work of memory. (trans: E. Carter). London: Verso.
Kemmis, S. (2006). Participatory action research and the public sphere. Education Action Research Journal, 14(4), 459–476.
Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (2000). Participatory action research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., Chap. 23, pp. 567–605). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer.
MacDonald, B., Jenkins, D., Kemmis, S., & Tawney, R. (1975). The programme at two: An UNCAL evaluation report on the National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning. Norwich: Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia.
MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue: A study in moral theory. London: Duckworth.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., Nixon, R. (2014). Doing Critical Participatory Action Research: The ‘Planner’ Part. In: The Action Research Planner. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-67-2_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-67-2_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-4560-66-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-4560-67-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)