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Participatory action research: Contributions to the development

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Educational Action Research
Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2009, 79–93

Participatory action research: contributions to the development

of practitioner inquiry in education
Mary Brydon-Miller* and Patricia Maguire

Educational Studies, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

(Received 28 June 2008; final version received 25 September 2008)
Taylor and Francis
10.1080/09650790802667469
REAC_A_366916.sgm

Educational
0965-0792
Original
Taylor
102009
17
brydonml@ucmail.uc.edu
MaryBrydon-Miller
00000March
&Article
Francis
(print)/1747-5074
Action
2009 Research (online)

The notion of teachers studying their own practice and working with students and
community partners to address issues of inequality in schooling is the radical root
of many forms of educational practitioner inquiry. But this emancipatory
foundation of practitioner inquiry is currently under threat by efforts to limit the
focus of this engaged form of knowledge generation to narrowly defined and
decontextualized problems, disconnected from critiques of unjust and inequitable
social conditions. Participatory action research (PAR) provides a framework for
recapturing the potential of practitioner inquiry to bring about meaningful change.
PAR expands the notion of researcher to include a range of stakeholders who
collaboratively engage in all phases of the action–reflection cycle. The intentional
focus on collaborative research, action for social change, and participant education
shifts inquiry from an individual to a collective endeavor, intentionally aimed at
transformative personal, organizational, and structural change. PAR is an openly
and unapologetically political approach to knowledge creation through and for
action. It is political in the sense of naming and unsettling relationships of power.
The struggle to maintain, or in some cases introduce, a counter-hegemonic edge to
action research, including all types of practitioner inquiry, frames our work. The
diverse community of participatory action researchers has unique contributions to
offer the dialogue about the nature and consequences of various forms of
educational practitioner inquiry. In this article, we briefly address the origins,
purposes, values, and unique aspects of PAR. We then identify some of the
contributions PAR can make to our common goal of improving educational
practice and contributing to positive change in the lives of children, their families,
teachers, and communities, and consider some of the tensions that may arise when
we attempt to integrate the principles of PAR into practitioner inquiry along with
strategies for addressing these concerns in creative and constructive ways.
Keywords: participatory action research; collaboration; political engagement;
social justice

Introduction
We open with a confession. We never intended to be here – in the field of education
that is. Mary began her academic life in the field of psychology and was introduced to
participatory action research (PAR) by Peter Park, a sociologist, as a way of integrat-
ing her work as a community organizer with her scholarly self, while Pat returned to
graduate school after spending time in the Peace Corps to pursue a degree in interna-
tional education and was introduced to PAR there. That said, we have both found a

*Corresponding author. Email: brydonml@ucmail.uc.edu

ISSN 0965-0792 print/ISSN 1747-5074 online

© 2009 Educational Action Research
DOI: 10.1080/09650790802667469
http://www.informaworld.com
80 M. Brydon-Miller and P. Maguire

warm welcome in our new disciplinary home and feel that our experience outside
education as participatory action researchers has much to contribute to the develop-
ment of practitioner inquiry in education. We contend that schools are the most funda-
mental site for social change efforts and that PAR and other forms of critical
practitioner inquiry are central to that struggle.
In this article we consider the contributions PAR has made to the practice of
educational action research and its implications for the continuing development and
deepening of this practice. We begin by providing a brief history of PAR and an over-
view of different approaches included within this broader framework. We then focus
on the implications, challenges, and rewards of using PAR to address issues facing
teachers, students, and their families.

[PAR] combines aspects of popular education, community-based research, and action for
social change. Emphasizing collaboration within marginalized or oppressed communi-
ties, participatory action research works to address the underlying causes of inequality
while at the same time focusing on finding solutions to specific community concerns.
(Williams and Brydon-Miller 2004, 245)

More than a set of techniques, PAR is a systematic approach to personal, organizational,

and structural transformation, and an intentionally and transparently political endeavor
that places human self-determination, the development of critical consciousness, and
positive social change as central goals of social science research (Brydon-Miller 1993;
Horton 1981; Maguire 1987).
Terminology can be confounding in trying to develop an understanding of the
theory and practice of PAR because the same term has been used by scholars who do
not necessarily share the commitment to radical social change that we believe is at the
core of our practice (Whyte 1989), while others use a variety of different terms includ-
ing community-based participatory research (Minkler and Wallerstein 2003), action
research (Greenwood and Levin 1998), and action science (Friedman and Rogers
2008) to identify methods that for the most part share the same values and many of
the practices of our approach to PAR. For our part, we prefer the term ‘participatory
action research’ both because it reflects the origins of our own understandings of the
practice and because it simultaneously emphasizes the collaborative, productive, and
knowledge generative aspects of our work.

A brief history of participatory action research

The legacy of PAR goes back at least as far as the founding of the Highlander Research
and Education Center in the mountains of Tennessee (then the Highlander Folkschool)
in 1932 (Adams 1975; Lewis 2001). Based on the model of Scandinavian folk schools,
Highlander served as a focal point for researchers and activists involved in labor
organizing, the civil rights movement and environmental justice, among many other
initiatives. Hall (2001) credits Marja Liisa Swantz, a social scientist then working in
Tanzania, with first using the term ‘participant research’ in the early 1970s (see also
Swantz 2008), and Orlando Fals Borda is often cited as coining the term ‘participatory
action research’ (Brydon-Miller 2001). But, in truth, the practice of PAR seems to have
developed at much the same time in various locations around the world including
India, Brazil, Tanzania, Colombia, and the Appalachian region of the United States
(Fals Borda 1977; Freire 1970; Hall 1975; Horton 1981; Park et al. 1993; Tandon
2005). According to Maguire (1987), the development of PAR was shaped by three
 Educational Action Research 81

trends, including: the post-colonial re-conceptualization of international development

assistance (Frank 1973; Furtado 1973); the reframing of adult education as an empow-
ering alternative to banking education (Freire 1970; Nyerere 1969); and critiques of
positivist social science research and its claim to supposedly values-free knowledge
production (Fay 1975; Kuhn 1970; Mills 1961; Popkewitz 1984). Affirming the notion
that ordinary people can understand and change their own lives through research,
education, and action, PAR openly challenges existing structures of power and creates
opportunities for the development of innovative and effective solutions to the problems
facing our schools and communities.

Nature and varieties of participatory action research

Each version of PAR reflects the culture, political and economic realities, and social
issues of the time and place in which it was developed as well as the personal experi-
ences of the individuals who led the movements in these locations. So, for example,
Myles Horton, one of the founders of the Highlander Research and Education Center,
was from the Appalachian region of the southern United States, and his approach
reflects the poverty of his youth and the importance his family placed on education.
His experience of studying with Reinhold Neibuhr and his visits with Jane Addams,
founder of Hull House, clearly shaped his approach to understanding injustice and
social change, as did his study of the Danish Folk School movement (Adams 1975;
Horton and Freire 1990; Lewis 2001). Freire’s approach draws upon his close ties to
liberation theology and to his personal experience of political repression and exile
following the military coup in his native Brazil, while Swantz’ experience in Tanzania
‘started from the practical need to connect research to national development and to
avoid separating the university from practical reality’ (2008, 32). And at approxi-
mately the same time, in India the general economic and social conditions and the
experience of working with marginalized groups such as women, Dalits, and tribals
influenced Rajesh Tandon and led to the founding of the Society for Participatory
Research in Asia (Tandon 2005).
But while there are distinct histories of PAR, there are also points of commonality
and intersection. The work of political and social theorists such as Marx, Dewey,
Fanon, Habermas, Gramsci, Kuhn, and Durkheim are commonly cited as important
influences. And with the development of a community of participatory action
researchers, individual participatory action researchers came to influence one another
– Freire’s warm collaborations with Horton, for example, or Tandon’s enduring
friendship with John Gaventa and Juliet Merrifield, who were for a time on the staff
at Highlander, and with Budd Hall, who also worked in Tanzania and was on the
faculty of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Each strand of PAR has produced second generations of practitioners who have
continued to define and to deepen the practice of PAR and who have challenged its
practitioners to examine their own beliefs and practices more critically. For example,
based on a robust critique of the male-centeredness of early PAR (Maguire 1987)
there is an extensive body of feminist participatory action research, which challenges
some of our assumptions and confronts limitations of the theory and practice of PAR
(Brydon-Miller, Maguire, and McIntyre 2004; Lykes and Coquillon 2006; Maguire
2001b; McIntyre 1997; Reid and Frisby 2007; Weiner 2004).
A similar disjunction continues to be challenged by those interested in incorporat-
ing or, to use Ella Edmondson Bell’s term, ‘infusing’ race into the theory and practice
82 M. Brydon-Miller and P. Maguire

of PAR. Bell acknowledges the important contributions made by the Highlander

Center to the Civil Rights movement, but describes her own frustration when, as a
graduate student, she sought examples of scholarship integrating critical race theory
into the discourse of PAR (Bell 2001; Brydon-Miller 2004; Darder 2002). While our
own experience teaching PAR offers hope that the practice is attracting more minority
scholars (Action Research Team 2006 ; Meyer et al. 2004), there is clearly still much
more work to be done in this area.
Although the histories and practices may differ somewhat, PAR also shares with
most other forms of action research a common set of values: ‘a respect for people and
for the knowledge and experience they bring to the research process, a belief in the
ability of democratic processes to achieve positive social change, and a commitment
to action’ (Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, and Maguire 2003, 15). But while PAR
continues to be committed to this transformative social justice agenda, it is threatened
internally by the sometimes unexamined biases of its practitioners and externally by
the increased depoliticization of action research as a tool for educational ‘problem-
solving’ disconnected from theory and critiques of unjust social conditions and rela-
tionships. We will examine these threats and possible responses to them in more detail
later in our discussion.

Participatory action research in community and educational settings

The overall purposes of PAR include three types of potential change: the development
or expansion of critical consciousness of co-researchers, including community-based
and university or agency based co-researchers; improvement in the lives of those
involved, as they define change or improvement; and transformation of fundamental
societal structures and relationships (Maguire 1987). PAR is most frequently utilized
in community-based projects related, for example, to health, agriculture, literacy and
numeracy, the arts, income generation and in non-formal adult education or teen
projects (deKoning and Martin 1996; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003; Park et al. 1993,
Reid, Tom, and Frisby 2006). Over the past quarter century, PAR has become much
more widely accepted as an effective teaching, learning, and research practice for
working with youth in grass-roots community organizations and in international
development projects (Groundwater-Smith and Downes 1999; Hart 1997; Lewis
2004, 2007). One notable development has been in its application in after-school
enrichment and youth development programs with young people included as agents
rather than as the objects of research (Fernandez 2002; Hutzel 2007; McIntyre 2000;
Morgan et al. 2004; Nairn, Higgins, and Sligo 2007). Lewis (2007) notes that many
participatory projects with children and youth have been in the fields of community
environmental education and health education since these areas directly impact young
people’s lives. Increased attention to children’s rights to self-expression and active
participation in projects that affect them was given impetus by The Convention on the
Rights of the Child (United Nations 1989; see also Lundy 2007) and Agenda 21, Rio
Declaration (United Nations 1992). Specifically, ‘Articles 12 and 13 of the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989) require that
children should be informed, involved, and consulted about all the activities that affect
their lives’ (Kellett et al. 2004, 329).
PAR also offers principles and frameworks to enable teacher and/or school-based
practitioner inquiry to become more participatory, collaborative, and democratizing in
ways that meaningfully engage students, families, and other educators in the full range
 Educational Action Research 83

of the action research cycle, from problem identification to making project results and
implications public (Fitzpatrick et al. 2007; Kelly 1993; McCaleb 1997). However,
despite the explosion of teacher or educational action research and its increased legit-
imacy as an approach to democratizing and transforming schooling, the structures and
processes supportive of students as research collaborators are not well represented in
teacher action research literature, training materials, or teacher education programs.
While the teacher-as-researcher movement encourages teachers to use an action
research model to examine and improve their own classroom practices, students are
often positioned as objects of teacher’s study rather than collaborative partners or
allies (Groundwater-Smith and Downes 1999; Kelly 1993). Groundwater-Smith and
Downes identify four levels of research activity in projects designed to build youth
agency, the first three of which are ‘knowing about young people’s perspectives,
acting on behalf of young people; and working with young people’s perspectives’
(1999, 1). They note that there are fewer instances of research activity that involve
‘acting with young people to improve and change their lifeworld conditions.’ School
and after-school-based PAR provides a process for teachers and other stakeholders to
act with students. More substantive and intentional collaboration with students and
community members is critical to the project of democratizing and transforming
schools through practitioner inquiry.

What can participatory action research principles add to practitioner

inquiry dialogue?
While not drawn solely from the theory and practice of PAR, a number of principles
emphasized within the PAR framework make important contributions to the overall
dialogue regarding practitioner inquiry, and more specifically to the effort to more
meaningfully include students, their families, and communities in the practitioner
inquiry undertaken by educators. We focus here on three key principles: the notion of
research as a form of political engagement, a critical examination of systems of power
and privilege, and the importance of collaborative relationships as a framework for
effective practice.

Research as political engagement

PAR is not a neutral, apolitical, technical process (Anderson and Herr 1999; Brydon-
Miller, Maguire, and McIntyre 2004; Hollingsworth 1994; Noffke and Stevenson
1995). Following in the footsteps of Freire (1970), among others (Fals Borda 1977;
Hall 1979; Tandon 2005), we would argue that all knowledge generation is a political
endeavor; that is, all knowledge creation processes and products have implications for
the distribution of power and resources in society. All research is located within
specific political, social, and economic contexts. ‘Research can never be neutral. It is
always supporting or questioning social forces, both by its content and by its methods’
(Reason and Rowan 1981, 489).
Some forms of practitioner inquiry take a narrow focus on improving classroom
practice or on deepening the individual’s understanding of her or his own experience
as a teacher. Such forms of research are extremely important and intersect with the
more collaborative approach of PAR by giving teachers and other educational prac-
titioners a framework for locating themselves as researchers, for understanding
education (Zeichner and Noffke 2001). Such research is also vitally important to
84 M. Brydon-Miller and P. Maguire

small-scale change. As Freire’s (1970) identification for the personal experience of

teaching as a political act and for gaining a voice in research about critical pedagogy
and conscientization emphasize, education – including or perhaps most fundamen-
tally at the classroom level – is vital as the basis for political engagement and radical
social change. To paraphrase bell hooks, the classroom is still a radical space of
possibility (hooks 1994).
Despite the dedication of caring teachers and the concern of parents and commu-
nity partners, however, the current educational system in the United States, as well as
in many other parts of the world, continues to disadvantage poor and minority chil-
dren. Perhaps the greatest contribution PAR can make to practitioner inquiry is in
renewing our faith in the possibility of change and in reminding us of our responsibil-
ity to work together to transform educational policy and practice. As the students in
one of our courses noted (Allen et al. 2003), as educational leaders ‘we have the
opportunity – and the obligation – to make significant changes in educational policies
and practices, both locally and nationally’ (Allen et al. 2003, 996). Working in a
variety of educational settings and from a range of positions as teachers and adminis-
trators, these students found that by using PAR they were able not only to address
specific issues in their own schools, but that in doing so they had also deepened their
personal commitment to acting as agents of positive social change. Practitioner
inquiry inclusive of PAR principles encourages educators to work with their students
and community partners to explore the social, economic, and political contexts of
schooling and to examine the central role that educators and their students can play in
creating a more equitable, democratic, just society (Apple 1995; Freire 1998).
Framing research as a political act is not without tensions and challenges,
however. On the one hand, educational practitioner inquiry has gained the support of
professional education organizations (Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development 1995; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education 2003)
and is also gaining legitimacy in university-based teacher education programs
(Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1990; Noffke and Stevenson 1995; Price and Valli 2005;
Zeichner 2001). There has been rapid expansion of practitioner inquiry literature,
much of it imbued with the same transformative social justice focus we articulate here
(Anderson, Herr, and Nihlen 1994; Burnaford, Fischer, and Hobson 2001; Herr and
Anderson 2005; McNiff and Whitehead 2006; Stringer 2004).On the other hand, the
increasing legitimacy of practitioner inquiry has been accompanied by contrary
pressures to de-link action research or practitioner inquiry from its radical roots and
critical epistemological foundations (Anderson and Herr 1999; Greenwood 2004;
Maguire 2002; Price and Valli 2005; Valli 1992).
The space for potentially transformative practitioner inquiry is under siege both
here in the United States and globally. On the international front, concerns have been
raised that the European Union move for compatible European educational standards
will lead to the same dramatic change in educational research as in the USA, making
social justice issues and democratic values invisible (Biesta 2007, in Maguire and
Berge 2009). The World Bank’s recent education plan in Namibia, as another exam-
ple, dismantled the successful Critical Practitioner Inquiry project (Callewaert et al.
2007), a process that aimed ‘to change the distribution of the preferential right of inter-
pretation to the benefit of the subaltern professionals’ (Dahlström, n.d., 3).
In the USA, the National Research Council (2002, cited in Flessner 2006, 6) called
for ‘scientifically based education research’ in which randomized controlled trials are
considered the ‘gold standard’. School reform efforts, the most recent incarnation of
 Educational Action Research 85

which is the current standardized testing driven No Child Left Behind legislation, call
for narrowly defined quantitative data to drive decisions to improve teaching with little
critique of the contexts or purposes of schooling. It is difficult for teachers and admin-
istrators to even find time to do practitioner inquiry of any version. Educators are oper-
ating in an era of decreased control over curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Indeed
teachers are being marginalized from meaningful reform discourse while being held
accountable to rigid state and national mandates and being forced to implement prefab-
ricated curricula, all aimed at raising scores on high-stakes standardized examinations
(Apple 1995; Darling-Hammond 2006; Nichols and Berliner 2007). Sleeter (2007)
maintains that US teacher education, under assault from the narrowing of the meaning
of democracy under neo-liberalism, has moved from preparing teachers to advocate
for democracy and equity to preparing technicians to implement measures to increase
test scores. Equity and social justice issues are left out of many practitioner inquiry
courses and texts, which instead frame practitioner inquiry as a formulaic strategy for
improving test scores and controlling student behavior. Such individualized versions
of practitioner inquiry undermine the emancipatory aspirations of many educators by
outsourcing responsibility for educational ‘improvement’ and ‘significant gains’ on
standardized tests to classroom teachers, while leaving intact and unchallenged under-
lying social and economic inequities that have a profound impact on children’s
schooling experiences. We are not suggesting that there is a correct set of ‘political’
or social-justice-oriented questions to examine through practitioner research. Any ques-
tions explored or actions taken through practitioner inquiry can be better understood
by examining connections to broader social contexts and existing power dynamics.

Focus on systems of power and privilege

The positivist trope of feigned neutrality and objectivity serves to mask the extent to
which most conventional educational research supports status quo political and
economic agendas that benefit the powerful by maintaining and rendering invisible
existing systems of power and privilege. Educational systems are deeply embedded in
these broader hegemonic structures. In the USA, education is rigidly hierarchical in
nature, with ever increasing federal government control flowing from the imposition
of legislation such as No Child Left Behind, and states and school districts caught in
a stranglehold of externally imposed regulations, requirements, curriculum materials,
and unfunded mandates. Left out of these draconian mandates is the meaningful
inclusion and participation of teachers, parents, children, and other members of the
community as informed partners in the educational process. By unmasking systems of
power and by developing strategies for genuine school and community engagement in
the educational process, PAR offers the possibility for creating more equitable educa-
tional policies and more empowering and inclusive practices for educational reform
from the bottom up.
PAR’s focus on systems of power and privilege also includes researchers’ atten-
tion to their own positionality and multiple identities (Herr and Anderson 2005;
Maguire 2004). A key contribution of feminist PAR is in its examination of the inter-
locking nature of oppression and privilege, what Patricia Hill Collins (1991) terms the
‘matrix of domination’. These relationships of power and privilege, reflected in every-
day school life for students and teachers, are important to examine in order to develop
solutions to specific local problems. Educators and students must be encouraged to
examine the interface between practitioner inquiry and their values and world views,
86 M. Brydon-Miller and P. Maguire

and to consider how their identities, shaped by personal histories and life experiences,
are also mediated by race, gender, class, and other power dynamics (Adams et al.
2000; Barajas and Pierce 2001; Barajas and Ronnkvist 2007; Brydon-Miller 2004;
Pohan 1996; Villegas and Lucas 2002). Educational practitioner inquiry with a critical
stance can build the capacity for critical reflection, as well as help teachers and
students recognize and contend with the implications of their identities and position-
ality, however seemingly ‘narrow’ their starting question.
But confronting issues of privilege and oppression can be difficult for teachers. For
example, many white teachers are unaccustomed to acknowledging, let alone critically
examining, the privileges of whiteness (McIntyre 1997). It is also challenging for
minority teachers who do not want to get stigmatized and accused of ‘playing the race
card’ if they raise issues of discrimination or institutional racism. Although school is
a raced, classed, and gendered space, it is also a space of great silence on how race,
class, and gender get played out on a daily basis. To examine how their identities
impact their teaching and relationships with students, teachers need to have structured
opportunities in teacher education programs to begin the uncomfortable and deep
dialogues to explore these issues, even if there is some initial resistance (Maguire
2004).
Many teachers do want to democratize schooling and share power with students and
families, changing how teachers and students function in the classroom (Fitzpatrick
et al. 2007; McIntyre 2000). PAR promotes the meaningful inclusion of students as co-
researchers with their teachers about issues of mutual concern in the school or class-
room. However, given the real power differentials between teachers and students,
adults are not always prepared to work with youth to solve school and community
problems (Fernández 2002). Fitzpatrick, a high school science teacher, co-wrote with
her Native American high school students about their greenhouse and traditional garden
PAR project in New Mexico (Fitzpatrick et al. 2007). Fitzpatrick noted that, prior to
the PAR project, ‘I was making all the decisions in class. Therefore the students partici-
pated by doing what was expected of them and finding solutions to problems that were
already solved’ (2007, 3). Aware of needing to transition from traditional teacher to
PAR project facilitator, she had to learn ways to share and shift control to students, for
example, by providing a process by which students designed an agricultural course
curriculum. It was this shared process that evolved into building the greenhouse and
garden on school grounds, during school time. To share power, she had to become a
more astute listener. Indeed, the PAR project had its genesis in a student’s question on
how to improve school lunches. The student wrote: ‘Ms. Fitzpatrick listened to my
objection about the school food … she simply asked me, “How do you see a solution
to the problem?”’ (Fitzpatrick et al. 2007, 7).
Sharing power with youth as authentic co-researchers in a PAR process can signif-
icantly change the nature of the project itself. Fernández (2002) reported on this regard-
ing a project that involved middle schoolers in community PAR in a city in California.
Adults realized that once youth were involved in the community project, youth and
adults’ perspectives differed on what research question they thought worthy of asking.
Fernández noted: ‘adult planners … had framed the question … as “What services do
youth need at this school that will improve their lives?” In contrast, youth came up
with the question, “How can we improve Redwood City for youth?”’ (2002, 5).
Indeed, one of the ultimate manifestations of power in research, including PAR, is
controlling the question (Maguire and Mulenga 1994). McIntyre (2000) found that
positioning youth participants as ‘catalytic agents of change’ made adults listen to
 Educational Action Research 87

children’s stories as an integral part of framing the research questions. A connection

can be made here to the school reform movement, which does little if anything to
solicit students’ input into or involvement in school and classroom reform. Jill Clark
(2004) argued that it is essential for educators to listen and consult with children, since
‘the reality experienced by children and young people in educational settings cannot
be fully comprehended by inference and assumption’. Kelly noted that in a university–
schools collaborative research project with two large school districts examining the
school drop-out problem, some administrators and teachers resisted her request to
involve students. When students were involved, they defined the ‘drop-out’ problem
quite differently from the adults. Students framed the issue as being ‘kicked out’ and
‘locked out’ of school rather than dropping out. The schools ‘had disengaged from
students just as much as students had disengaged from schools’ (Kelly 1993, 13).
Teachers, as the adults in elementary and secondary school classrooms, do have a
different type and quantity of power than students. While considering how to more
equitably share power with students in schools, teachers must also examine how to use
their existing power and alliances on behalf of kids. By definition, practitioner inquiry
involves having those working within a system study and critique that system.
Challenging the established policies and practices of one’s workplace, especially
within a setting as hierarchical as the educational system, can be a threatening experi-
ence for the teachers and other school personnel.
Just as there are teacher–student power differentials, there are also power differences
among students. Kelly (1993) reported that she had been unprepared for the ways that
inequalities among the students, in her mind ‘the oppressed,’ made it difficult to overtly
examine the institutional racism aspects of the drop-out issue. The student co-researcher
group had a high proportion of white, female students who actively engaged the sexism
issues related to dropping out while steering discussions away from racism experienced
by some of the students. She realized that she could have used her ‘authority’ as an
adult to take an active and direct role to frame the issue of racism and create a space
for explicit discussion.
Finally, honestly confronting systems of power and privilege also requires those
of us in university settings to do a great deal more to enable our colleagues in the schools
to take a more active role in setting the agenda for reforming education. Too often teach-
ers are seen by those of us within the academy as consumers of the knowledge we gener-
ate, rather than as partners (and often more informed and experienced partners at that)
in the research process. This devaluing of practitioner knowledge is reinforced by the
systems of publication and presentation that exclude voices from the classroom or
present them in patronizing ways. This has begun to shift, as the creation of Special
Interest Groups in the American Educational Research Association dedicated to the
teacher as researcher and to action research and other venues for practitioner research
demonstrate (Zeichner 2001). Continuing to develop more equitable partnerships and
mechanisms for teachers to participate in all aspects of the educational research process
is a critical component of any attempt at radical educational reform.

Collaborative relationships as a framework for effective practice

At its core, PAR is a deeply relational approach to knowledge creation and social
change. One of many feminist influences on PAR is the notion that knowledge is
always created in the context of human relationships (Maguire 2001a). Research, then,
is a social process, not an ‘autopsy’ (Gorelick 1991, 460). Meaningful knowledge is
88 M. Brydon-Miller and P. Maguire

created in the context of relationships, and relationship-building takes time. It takes

shared work across time to get to know each other below the surface level and to begin
developing trust.
The relationships built through PAR can change both students and teachers, as
well as change their perceptions of each other. Steve Kroeger describes a photo-voice
project he did with teachers and students at his school, a study that focused on devel-
oping new strategies to support a small group of at risk students (Meyer et al. 2004,
558). Citing the work of Noddings on the importance of developing caring relation-
ships with students, Kroeger goes on to note: ‘one of the greatest gains of our research
was not the change we were making in our classrooms or even the gradual improve-
ment of scores, but the deepening of our bonds with students who were at risk’ (Meyer
et al. 2004, 562).
During an after-school PAR project with middle school youth that included her
university pre-service practice teachers, McIntyre (2006) observed the difficulties the
practice-teachers had in getting to know the middle schoolers and their life-worlds. It
was through sustained interaction in social activities such as trips to fast-food restau-
rants, pizza dinners, and an amusement park trip that the practice-teachers were able
to get beyond the stereotypes they held of urban, working-class and poor youth. Like-
wise, Fernández (2002), discussing students involved in an after-school community
change project in California, noted that the middle school students thought their
teachers treated them differently as they heard how the students were involved in a
‘productive’ project for the city.
As we noted earlier, PAR is not merely a set of techniques or methods, but rather
a commitment to collaboration and partnership throughout the problem-posing,
knowledge creation, and action-taking cycles of a project. One important contribution
of PAR to the practitioner inquiry dialogue is its broader mandate for collaborative
social change by involving those with a stake in the changes. Education and its
improvement become school and community concerns in which genuine engagement
and dialogue take the place of unidirectional information campaigns aimed at selling
the public on the latest crop of new, improved educational products.
This emphasis on genuine engagement extends to parents and other community
members as well. As noted earlier, PAR had its start in adult education settings.
Freire’s adult literacy programs, Highlander’s early civil rights workshops, and other
early projects all focused on non-formal educational settings with adult participants.
PAR combines aspects of popular education along with community-based research
and action for social justice so the notion of incorporating relevant adult education
programs into the mandate of our schools is an effective way of furthering the overall
goal of addressing pressing social concerns. By conceiving of education as a life-long
pursuit and critical community asset, PAR envisions schools as potential focal points
for community-wide projects.
The collaborative ethos can also change university-based teacher education.
Maguire and Horwitz (2005, 2008) discussed what they were doing in a teacher
action research course to encourage more participatory teacher–student action
research. By making the course, and overall teacher education program, more
congruent with the PAR practices such as collaboration, participation, critical reflec-
tion, and listening, faculty created more structures for students’ involvement in
program review, revision, and development. Likewise, the classroom teachers
created more opportunities for K–12 student participation. The K–12 teachers
became more open to a wider range of student input into more aspects of classroom
 Educational Action Research 89

and school life, as well as trying more participatory teaching strategies. As the
teacher-researchers moved further along a participatory–collaborative continuum in
their projects, their action research questions changed as they more intentionally
sought student involvement. They ‘talked research’ with their students and noted
developing different relationships by getting to know their students. Nurturing rela-
tionships and genuine participation at all levels of the educational process is a critical
aspect of improving educational practice.

Conclusion
We began with a confession and close with an invitation. This special issue highlights
the many varieties of practitioner inquiry that can inform our practice as educational
researchers whether we are students, classroom teachers, educational administrators,
community-based activists or university researchers. Each approach has a unique
perspective to add to our shared commitment to improve educational practice. We
believe that PAR makes an important contribution to the continuing development of
critical approaches to practitioner inquiry by providing theory and practice designed
to reveal and address broader systems of inequality within our schools and communi-
ties and to create settings in which children, teachers, parents, and communities can
work together to create positive change. We appreciate the fact that, like us, PAR, has
found a welcoming home in the field of education, and we look forward to continuing
to explore ways in which our work can contribute to the shared goal of improving
educational practice – and in doing so, addressing broader social justice issues in our
own schools and around the world.

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