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Concept
Participatory action research
Summary
Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to action research emphasizing participation and action by members of communities affected by that research. It seeks to understand the world by trying to change it, collaboratively and following reflection. PAR emphasizes collective inquiry and experimentation grounded in experience and social history. Within a PAR process, "communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers". PAR contrasts with mainstream research methods, which emphasize controlled experimentation, statistical analysis, and reproducibility of findings.
PAR practitioners make a concerted effort to integrate three basic aspects of their work: participation (life in society and democracy), action (engagement with experience and history), and research (soundness in thought and the growth of knowledge). "Action unites, organically, with research" and collective processes of self-investigation. The way each component is actually understood and the relative emphasis it receives varies nonetheless from one PAR theory and practice to another. This means that PAR is not a monolithic body of ideas and methods but rather a pluralistic orientation to knowledge making and social change.
In the UK and North America the work of Kurt Lewin[21] and the Tavistock Institute in the 1940s has been influential. However alternative traditions of PAR, begin with processes that include more bottom-up organising and popular education than were envisaged by Lewin.
PAR has multiple progenitors and resists definition. It is a broad tradition of collective self-experimentation backed up by evidential reasoning, fact-finding and learning. All formulations of PAR have in common the idea that research and action must be done 'with' people and not 'on' or 'for' people. It counters scientism by promoting the grounding of knowledge in human agency and social history (as in much of political economy).
Official source
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