This month I am sharing some of my syllabi, assignments, rubrics, and class lectures for my “Introduction to Global Studies Theory” class, which in my department was called “Foundations of Global Studies.” In my face to face and hybrid class alike I liked to use small group work during class. Of all these assignments, none was more popular with my students than this competition. I would frame the competition with a brief lecture (5-10 minutes) on action research. Then I would break the class into small groups, and have each group present their groups’ proposal for an action research project.

Action Research

• I want to briefly discuss action research
• A field that dates back to the 1930s, and has roots in education, as well as anthropology, health and women’s studies
• Action based research blurs the lines between scholar and subject, because the people studied become part of the research process
• One of the goals is to empower them
• The approach hopes that people in the community studied will better understand their problems at the end of the process
• In that sense, an emancipatory theory, that aims to free people to think critically about their world
• Sounds abstract: let me give you a concrete example
• Work mapping in Arctic communities: includes members of the communities
• Map rolled out on the floor: elder note sacred sites, burial grounds, trap lines, the movement of animals
• Creates a product for their use
• The goal is not to be a dispassionate observer
• It is to produce something of use to the community
• The focus is on practical outcomes related to the actual lives of the people studied
• The theorizing tends to be small scale and often has the goal of creating positive social change
• One of the goals is to democratize knowledge production and use
• Very different perspective than the behavioralist ideal of the dispassionate observer off to the side
• Instead, the action researcher is a facilitator, who brings the community together
• This is a collaborative approach to research
• Designed to be accessible and understood by the very people that it studies, so as to empower them

Core Idea:

• At the core is the idea of action
• Knowledge is not created solely for its own value
• Instead, it is designed to be used
• This school draws heavily in theoretical writing in education, in particular the work of Paulo Freire
• The hope is that not only will the research prove useful, but also that people will develop the skills to study their own problems and be empowered.
• For this reason, action research is designed to take into account the communities’ culture, emotional lives, and other influences
• The researcher is a participant in the process of learning with the community
• The research is then shared with the community
• This is very important in action research
• Research that is not shared has no value
• There is a clear social or political value to research in this perspective
• It hopes to create research to help solve a particular problem
• Very attractive in fields such as public health that work with communities
• Challenges older constructs of the social sciences

Small Group Work, Action Research:

• Break into groups of four or five people. Appoint one person to be the action researcher. It is this person’s job to interview the group to learn what the key concerns facing university students are at our institution. Then with the group, this person is to come up with an action research plan that could be used to further study these problems. Remember: you have to include the community in your plan for research process. We’re going to report out on the findings from each of the groups, and the class is going to judge if these sound like good plans for action research. 
• Which of these plans did you like the best? Why?