Essentials of Critical Participatory Action Research

The brief, practical texts in the Essentials of Qualitative Methods series introduce social science and psychology researchers to key approaches to qualitative methods, offering exciting opportunities to gather in-depth qualitative data and to develop rich and useful findings.

In this book, Michelle Fine and Maria Elena Torre provide an introduction to critical participatory action research, an approach that reveals the everyday stories of struggle and survival of the persons being studied, combats social injustice, and leverages social science research for action. Critical participatory action research challenges the narrow ways in which research has traditionally been conducted, and elevates the voices and perspectives of formerly marginalized groups.

About the Essentials of Qualitative Methods book series: Even for experienced researchers, selecting and correctly applying the right method can be challenging. In this groundbreaking series, leading experts in qualitative methods provide clear, crisp, and comprehensive descriptions of their approach, including its methodological integrity, and its benefits and limitations. Each book includes numerous examples to enable readers to quickly and thoroughly grasp how to leverage these valuable methods.

Michelle Fine, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Women's Studies, American Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Her primary research interest is the study of social injustice: when injustice appears as fair or deserved, when it is resisted, and how it is negotiated by those who pay the most serious price for social inequities. She studies these issues in public high schools, prisons, and with youth in urban communities, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Dr. Fine is a founding faculty member of the Public Science Project, which produces critical scholarship for use in social policy debates and organizing movements for educational equity and human rights. Dr. Fine has been a visiting scholar at the University of New Zealand in Auckland and a Fulbright scholar at the Institute for Arab Studies at Haifa University. She and her colleagues have provided expert testimony in more than a dozen groundbreaking legal victories focused on gender, race, and class equity in education. Among other awards, Dr. Fine has received the 2013 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy, the 2012 Henry A. Murray Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Division 8 of the American Psychological Association, the 2010 Social Justice and Higher Education Award from the College and Community Fellowship for her work in prison, and the 2011 Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award for her mentoring legacy over the past 25 years.

María Elena Torre, PhD, is the founding director of The Public Science Project. For the last 15 years, she has been engaged in critical participatory action research projects nationally and internationally with schools, prisons, and community-based organizations seeking to further social justice. Her work introduced the concept of 'participatory contact zones' to collaborative research, and she continues to be interested in how democratic methodologies, radical inclusion, and notions of solidarity impact scientific inquiry. Before becoming director of The Public Science Project, Dr. Torre was Chair of Education Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. She is a coauthor of Echoes of Brown: Youth Documenting and Performing the Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and Changing Minds: The Impact of College on a Maximum Security Prison. Her writing can also be found in volumes such as the Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology (American Psychological Association), Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods: Connecting People, Participation, and Place (Routledge), the Handbook of Action Research (SAGE), and in journals such as Feminism and Psychology, the Journal of Social Issues, Qualitative Inquiry, and the Journal of Critical Psychology. Dr. Torre was a recipient of the American Psychological Association Division 35 Adolescent Girls Task Force Emerging Scientist and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Fellowship in Social Justice & Social Development in Educational Studies, and is on the national board of the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project and What Kids Can Do. 

Series Foreword—Clara E. Hill and Sarah Knox

1. Critical Participatory Action Research: Conceptual Foundations
Why CPAR? Critical Elements
Where Collective Wisdom Grows: Participatory Contact Zones
Situating CPAR in the Qualitative Traditions
Critical Epistemological Roots: Widening Our Understanding of Expertise
Disciplinary Elders: Historical Roots in Community-Based Inquiry
Crafting and Performing Public-Facing Scholarship for Action, Transformation, and Provocation

2. Participatory Design
Assembling a Diverse Community of Coresearchers
Designing Mirrors and Windows
Images of Opening Sessions
Methodological Release Points: Strategies for Unleashing Collective Wisdom
A Cautionary Note on Privilege in the Contact Zone
Building an Ethical Research Collective: Ethics and Institutional Review Boards

3. Participatory Knowledge Production
Piloting: Accountability to and Feedback From the Community
Finalizing the Instrument: A Qualitative Participatory National Survey?
Cascading Research Questions: Evolving Inquiries in the Participatory Contact Zone
Growing a Sample of Radical Inclusivity and Structural Intersectionality
Inquiry Marinating in Communities of Care, Concern, and Action

4. Participatory Analysis Moving Toward Action
Slicing the Data
Steps of Participatory Analysis: Culling the Database, Macro Review, and Then Coding
Coding: The Stories and Analysis
Creating a Codebook
Bending Analysis Toward Action

5. Vibrant Variations and Grounding Questions
Grounding Questions for Critical Participatory Inquiry
Participatory Research as a Tool of Struggle and Solidarity in Contentious Times
Challenges and Joys

6. Methodological Integrity
Fidelity and Diversity
To Be of Use: Action, Transformation, and Provocation
CPAR Touchstones for Integrity and Accountability
Evaluating CPAR: How Do You Know Whether It Is Good Enough?

7. Writing Process and Research Products

Epilogue: Critical PAR in Crisis: An Epistemic Offering Toward Solidarity

References
Index
About the Authors
About the Series Editors