Participatory action research: From within and beyond prison bars.

Abstract

Participatory action research represents a stance within qualitative research methods-an epistemology that assumes knowledge is rooted in social relations and most powerful when produced collaboratively through action. With a long and global history, participatory action research (PAR) has typically been practiced within community-based social action projects with a commitment to understanding, documenting, or evaluating the impact that social programs, social problems, or social movements bear on individuals and communities. PAR draws on multiple methods, some quantitative and some qualitative, but at its core it articulates a recognition that knowledge is produced in collaboration and in action.With this essay, we aim to accomplish four ends. First, we provide a cursory history of PAR, beginning with Kurt Lewin (1951) and traveling too briskly through the feminist and postcolonial writings of critical theorists. Second, we introduce readers to a PAR project we have undertaken in a women's prison in New York, documenting the impact of college on women in prison, the prison environment, and on the women's postrelease outcomes. Third, we present a glimpse at our findings and offer up an instance of analysis, demonstrating closely how we analyzed thematically and discursively data about "transformation" as a research collective of inmate and university-based researchers. Fourth, we articulate a set of reflections on our work as a PAR collective, the dilemmas of writing openly under surveillance.

Qualitative Data Analysis and Interpretation in Counseling Psychology: Strategies for Best Practices

“…The qualitative PAR model (e.g., Brydon-Miller, 1997) strives to develop ecologically valid and culturally responsive interventions that identify immediate needs and create systematic social change (e.g., Fine et al, 2002). In this paradigm, research and meaning are coconstructed by the researchers and the community being studied, and participants are considered to be integral research collaborators (Stringer, 1999).…”

Learning from and with incarcerated women: Emerging lessons from a participatory action study of sexuality education

“…PAR investigators work with research participants in an effort to increase understanding and produce meaningful research (Cahill, 2004). Participants' contributions strengthen the research process, increasing its validity, accessibility, and connection to social justice (Cahill, 2007;Fine et al, 2003). For researchers, community partnerships thus allow new theories to emerge and increase the likelihood that interventions will be feasible and appropriate to the audience (Schensul, 1999).…”

“…Incarcerated researchers' participation and access to the data were contingent on the outside researchers returning to the jail each week, granting incarcerated women admittance to the workshop, and bringing data for analysis. Established researchers may always have an advantage in PAR given their greater experience and comfort with the research process, but the militarism and restriction inherent to jails and prisons make PAR with incarcerated populations particularly challenging (Fine & Torre, 2006;Fine et al, 2003). For example, jail staff, lawyers, judges, and medical staff could call incarcerated researchers into other appointments that conflicted with the workshop meeting times or even place the entire housing unit (called a pod) into lockdown (in which no movement or visitors are allowed).…”

Ameritocracy and infra‐racial racism: racializing social and cultural reproduction theory in the twenty‐first century

“…For example, in Patterson's 'Poverty of Mind', he asks, 'What are some of the cultural factors that explain the sorry state of young Black men?' His solution is not jobs, an overhauling of our educational system with an emphasis on urban teacher development and critical pedagogy (see Foster 1997;Darder, Torres, and Baladono 2002;Noguera 2004;Duncan-Andrade and Morrell 2008), increased investment in the green economy for low-income youth (Jones 2006), youth development programs (see Ginwright, Noguera, and Cammarotta 2006), rethinking Black mentorship (see Akom 2006), better living conditions (Bullard 1993), or radical prison reform (Fine et al 2003;Torre et al 2007). Rather, instead of even probing for solutions, Patterson insists that the reason for Black male failure, particularly in the realm of public education, is what sociologist refer to as the 'cool-pose culture' -'hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture … it's almost like a drug for these young men.'…”