action research meets critical pedagogy - theory, practice, and reflection

10.1177/1077800405284367Qualitative InquiryMiskovic, Hoop / Action Research

Action Research MeetsCritical PedagogyTheory, Practice, and Reflection

Maya MiskovicNational-Louis University, Lisle, Illinois

Katrina HoopLoyola University of Chicago, Illinois

This article describes and critically examines the collaborative research pro-cess between an urban university’s research center and its community partners.The authors link the theoretical framework of collaborative research, partici-patory action research, and critical pedagogy to their personal experiencesinvolving two collaborative research projects in which they participated. Theprojects were designed to foster engagement of youth in civic life throughsocial research and to raise awareness of social inequality and injustice. Theauthors critically examine various phases of research with a particular focus onthe following challenges: recruitment and attendance issues, development,language and methods issues, and the university and funding agency–drivenpush for a “product.” The authors point out the strengths and weaknesses of thecollaborative approach and problematize issues not visible in the final researchreports. Finally, strategies for enhancing the quality of the collaborative researchinvolving youth are proposed.

Keywords: action research; critical pedagogy; youth involvement; university-community collaboration

This article is a description and critical examination of the collaborativeresearch process between an urban university’s research center and its

community partners. We link the theoretical framework of collaborativeresearch, participatory action research (PAR), and critical pedagogy to ourpersonal experiences involving two collaborative research projects in whichwe participated. During these projects, we both worked as graduate research

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Authors’ Note: A brief version of this article was presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of theSociety for the Study of Social Problems, Atlanta, GA, August 2003. We wish to thank NormanDenzin and an anonymous reviewer for their comments.

by Giorgio Bertini on October 13, 2010qix.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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fellows at the university center and were involved in the research collaborationfrom the initial phase of designing the research to the end phase of writing thereport. Both projects were designed to foster engagement of youth in civic lifethrough social research and involved the university research center and differ-ent educational and political institutions and agencies in the greater Chicagometropolitan area. Drawing on experiences from community-university col-laborative research projects, we critically examine different phases of collab-orative research and our role in the process. We point out the strengths andsetbacks of the collaborative approach involving youth and problematizeissues not visible in the final research reports. Certainly, this article is writtenfrom our perspective and might not reflect the impressions of other actorsinvolved. Finally, we propose strategies for enhancing the quality of the col-laborative research process that involves youth.

Collaborative Research as an Educational Practice

Notions of collaborative research and PAR are used simultaneously in thisarticle because a review of literature revealed great similarities in definingthe terms (e.g., Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, & Maguire, 2003; Greenwood& Levin, 2000; McTaggart, 1997). What those definitions have in common isthe idea of university-trained researchers and community representativesworking together on all the phases of the research process and generatingknowledge that promotes social justice for groups that have been tradition-ally excluded from the process.

In their fierce critique of university-based produced knowledge that bearslittle or no significance to the everyday activities of the communities inwhich the universities are embedded, Greenwood and Levin (2000) pro-posed praxis-oriented research that is not abstract, self-referential, and dis-tributed within a narrow disciplinary circle; instead, such research is highlycontextual and focused on “real problems” in the communities. By develop-ing “cogenerative inquiry” (Greenwood & Levin, 2000, p. 86) where trainedresearchers and community stakeholders collaborate in all phases ofresearch, the process becomes democratized, done “with the community, notto it” (Nyden, Figert, Shibley, & Burows, 1997, p. 7).

PAR as theorized in this article has six key features, adopted fromKemmis and Wilkinson (1998): PAR is a social process whereby actors in aneducational and social setting learn how they are connected to social struc-tures. PAR is participatory and practical because the actors involved are notpassive subjects but rather, active agents working toward social action. PARis emancipatory and critical as individuals examine and challenge the role of

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larger social, political, economical, and cultural conditions that shape theiridentities and actions. In this process, research inevitably touches on the issuesof power, domination, and hegemony. Finally, PAR is reflexive because par-ticipants are encouraged to critically examine their own role in research.

Collaborative research could have an empowering effect for thoseinvolved, such as community groups. By including community activists on auniversity-trained research team, the research process is demystified. Inaddition, community members acquire skills to conduct research pertinent tolocal issues. The idea of empowering the powerless by including them in theresearch process is not a novelty; the topic is well documented in research lit-erature (Fine, Weiss, Weseen, & Wong, 2000; Greenwood & Levin, 2000;Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000; Suarez-Balcazar & Orellana-Damacela,1999), as well as on the World Wide Web (e.g., Aspen Institute Roundtableon Comprehensive Community Initiatives at http://www.aspenroudtable.org,Community Tool Box at http://ctb.lsi.ukans.edu/, United Way OutcomesMeasurement Tools at http://www.national.unitedway.org/outcomes/).However, this process presents many challenges, especially when youngpeople are included in the research process.

The idea of engaging students in classroom activities that stimulate theresearch process from formulating research questions to data collection andanalysis is not a rarity, but situations that apply this newly acquired knowl-edge for solving problems in the community are rare (Atweh, Christiansen,& Dornan, 1998). Manuals, textbooks, and other written sources dedicated toPAR in schools are mostly aimed at teachers as researchers in the classroom(e.g., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993; Mills, 2002; Tabachnick & Zeichner,1991). In their comprehensive analysis of studies that involve teachers asresearchers, Baumann and Duffy (2001) delineated a portrait of a “typicalteacher researcher” as such:

A reflective elementary, secondary, or postsecondary classroom teacher iden-tifies a persistent teaching problem or question and decides to initiate a class-room inquiry. This teacher reads theoretical and applied educational literature,including other teacher-research reports, and decides to work collaborativelywith a colleague. Using primarily practical, efficient, qualitative methods rec-ommended by other teacher researchers, with perhaps a quantitative tool addedin, the researcher initiates a study. (p. 611)

School children involved in this type of research are usually recipients ofresearch practices developed by their teachers, such as case studies of teach-ers assisting an English-as-a-second-language learner (Schoen & Schoen,2003) or when fourth-grade students evaluated, through interviews and group

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discussions, materials studied in the classroom (McCall, 2002). In bothcases, adult figures were initiators of classroom activities. In their study ofteachers and autistic children interacting, Schoen and Bullard (2002)assessed teachers’ actions as successful, but when students themselvesneeded to initiate behavior that teachers introduced, only “modest accom-plishments” (p. 39) were observed.

Another common type of PAR involving children depicts teachers andparents working together to develop strategies that support students withemotional and behavioral disorders (Cheney, 1998), to create a program forparents that enhances reading abilities in children with developmental dis-abilities (Kay & Fitzgerald, 1997), or to establish a school-family partner-ship with economically disadvantaged and racially and ethnically diversefamilies (Ho, 2002). A common feature of this type of PAR is the role of chil-dren and young adults in the process: Students are participants in research,but only indirectly—their role is limited to the receivers of some strategy,practice, or program that was created, implemented, and evaluated by adults.

Why is it so difficult to involve school children as active agents inresearch? Discussing action research that takes place in schools, Feldmanand Atkin (1995) argued that research is riddled with difficulties even whenall the actors involved are adults. Research ideas usually originate from uni-versity researchers, whereas schoolteachers are assigned to “assistant” sta-tus. Such relationships could be successful and collegial, but the major intel-lectual impetus comes from the university. Furthermore, once the research iscompleted and the university researchers leave the school, teachers are rarelycompelled to continue with further inquiry. In addition, researchers outsideacademia must rely on university insiders who understand academic jargonthat often does not have sympathy for context-laden research but ratheradheres to the postpositivist research paradigm; furthermore, researchershave to deal with institutional review board requirements or local schoolboards, all of which contribute in developing a dependent behavior inteachers (Zygouris-Coe, Pace, Malecki, & Weade, 2001).

Even when teachers feel confident enough to pursue their researchagenda, they continue to face a power imbalance between themselves anduniversity researchers (Zigo, 2001). Also, teachers report lack of time andinterest for research among their colleagues, who can feel threatened by theresearch process that in turn can result in alienation and hostility toward theteacher researcher (Lloyd, 2002). These issues are mentioned to stress evengreater challenges to PAR when on one side we have university researchersand on the other, school children or young adults. The PAR projects we par-ticipated in involved youth aged 13 to 15, with an aim to assist them in devel-oping critical agency through participation in social research and active




involvement in their communities. These goals resonate with the theoreticalframework of critical pedagogy, a topic we address next.

Critical Pedagogy and Its Link to PAR

The theory of critical pedagogy has similar goals to PAR. Brydon-Milleret al. (2003) claimed that action research aspires to contribute to the well-being of individuals and communities, promoting large-scale democraticchange. Like critical pedagogues, action researchers are critical of apositivistic view of knowledge that regards valid research as objective andvalue free. Brydon-Miller et al. continued,

Instead, we embrace the notion of knowledge as socially constructed, and rec-ognizing that all research is embedded within a system of values and promotessome model of human interaction, we commit ourselves to a form of researchwhich challenges unjust and undemocratic economic, social and political sys-tems and practices. (p. 11)

Similar to PAR, critical pedagogy addresses the challenge of providingstudents with the capacity for critical judgment, social responsibility, and asense of public commitment (Giroux, 2001). It has also been associated withcritical literacy, “the capacity to decode, demystify, and deconstruct thetaken-for-granted narratives, symbols, metaphors, and tropes that guide theproduction of truth within texts” (Carlson, 2003, pp. 46-47).

Having emerged in the 1980s in the United States, critical pedagogy hasbeen inspired by various sources: Latin American philosophies of liberation(Freire, 2001), the Frankfurt school of critical theory (see Kincheloe &McLaren, 2000), feminist theory (Luke & Gore, 1992), and neo-Marxist cul-tural criticism (McLaren, 1998). It also encompasses the discussion of multi-culturalism (Gay, 1995) and antiracist education (Ng, Staton, & Scane,1995). Therefore, critical pedagogy is not a homogeneous concept but abroad tenet that includes sometimes-disparate discourses. Even its name is asource of debate; for instance, Gore (1998) used the term “radical pedagogydiscourses” (p. 272), Lather (1992) wrote about “emancipatory pedagogy”(p. 122), and Rezai-Rashti (1995) employed the notion of “transformativetheorists” (p. 5) to include theoretical approaches that despite their differ-ences, have a common goal: to practice the “teaching/learning intended tointerrupt particular historical, situated systems of oppression” (Lather, 1992,p. 121).

Critical pedagogy has similar goals to PAR in that it is aimed at drawingon “indigenous knowledge” rather than knowledge rooted in those who have




power to claim authority, such as academic scholars and university-basedresearch sites (Greenwood & Levin, 2000; Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000).Both approaches have transformative potential, demanding equality, diver-sity, and social justice. Educators and researchers using PAR and criticalpedagogy challenge the educational system on many fronts, such as policy-related issues, stereotyping, and oppressive practices within the schoolsetting. In addition, teachers address educational content that reflects author-itarian positions, fostering individuality, critical empowerment, critical liter-acy, and instituting multicultural education materials and activities thatreflect demographic shifts throughout the world. Although each student’sbackground experiences are respected and honored, they are also taught tocritique and respond to the many texts and resources they are given.

Has critical pedagogy fulfilled its goals? Educators who have attemptedto implement the principles of critical pedagogy in their classrooms havereported success on various fronts, such as developing students’capacities toread, write, and use language to consider how they perceive themselves in theworld and what choices they make (Ball, 2000); challenging university stu-dents’ beliefs about race and class, while simultaneously being attentive totheir own role as multicultural educators (Obidah, 2000); or leading studentsto use their imagination and critical thinking when addressing abstract socialissues such as globalization and its effects on everyday life (Bigelow, 1998).

Still, reviewing some earlier critiques (Ellsworth, 1989; Lather, 1998) andthe recent writings on critical pedagogy (Giroux, 2000, 2001, 2002;McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c; Wardekker & Miedema,1997; Weiler, 2001), the impression is that critical pedagogy, once a promis-ing and prominent paradigm, has been seriously flawed, if not completelyfailed. Apparently, critical pedagogy, along with its partner multiculturalism,has become rearticulated and domesticated by its ideological enemies, thepolitics of neoliberalism, and corporate global capitalism, prompting anexplicit and vocal anticapitalism turn in the field, although offering differentsolutions (Giroux 2000, 2001, 2002; McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2001a,2001b, 2001c). Because of the intellectual and moral paralysis of post-modernism, critical pedagogy has been redirected toward identity politics, inwhich social class lost its crucial place in the discussions on difference(Scatamburlo-D’Annibale & McLaren, 2003).

Rather than focusing on the postmodern equivalence among differentforms of oppression, McLaren and Farahmandpur (2001c) proposed a “stra-tegic integration of different yet equally important struggles . . . in which raceand gender antagonisms can be addressed and overcome within the largerproject of class struggle” (p. 143). Critical pedagogy, or what has been left ofit, could be salvaged by a revolutionary Marxist pedagogy that




must be able to endorse the cultural struggles of workers and coordinate suchstruggle as part of a broader “cross-border” social movement unionism aimedat organizing and supporting the working-classes and marginalized culturalworkers in their efforts to build new international anti-capitalist struggles.(McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2001a, p. 12)

It is questionable, however, that critical pedagogy could be rescued by his-torical materialism and calling on a socialist revolution. We are not debatinghere the “end of history” or “end of ideology” ideas but are highly suspicious(one of the authors of this article experienced socialism, East European style)of most educators envisioning no less than socialist revolution when contem-plating the possibilities of improving the educational system in the UnitedStates. McLaren and Farahmandpur (2001a) wrote,

A turn to socialism in no way diminishes the importance of industrial, post-industrial or technological development, which we believe must continue.However, in our socialist vision, individuals would contribute labor accordingto ability, and the material means of life would be distributed according to need[italics added]. Ideally, a redistributive socialism would be followed by themanaged obsolescence of the money exchange. (p. 13)

Despite McLaren and Farahmandpur’s eloquent and poetic indictment of theexploitative nature of capitalism, those who have lived under East Europeansocialism remember these sentences as empty slogans memorized andrecited in classrooms and displayed on banners in factories. At the end, therevolution did eat its children and those who survived seem to have immersedthemselves happily into mind-numbing consumerism. Regardless of the bro-ken promises of a get-rich-easily capitalist mantra, one needs only to take astroll through the streets of Moscow or Belgrade to see youth (who can affordit) enveloped, often to the grotesque extent, in designer clothes and accesso-ries, which are supposed to symbolize high life à la Hollywood.

We do not accuse McLaren and Farahmandpur (2001a) of being “naive,impractical or hopelessly utopian” (p. 13). However, if the United States isever to reach socialism, we hope this time it will be devoid of tactics so merci-lessly employed by East European socialist ideologues for half of the pre-vious century, namely, exploitation, manipulation, and outright inhumanetreatment of its citizens. If the “metaphysical turn” of postmodern,postcolonial, and cultural studies has lead to the abandonment of theory as atool for concrete political action (De Lissovoy & McLaren, 2003), we thinkthere is a danger that critical pedagogy as a Marxist project could fall into thesame trap.




We believe that the idea of critical pedagogy is not superseded; and insearching for solutions toward its renewed relevance, we agree with HenryGiroux (2002), who asserted that “we need to reject both neoliberal andorthodox leftist positions, which dismiss the state as merely a tool of repres-sion, to find ways to use the state to challenge, block, and regulate the devas-tating effects of capitalism” (p. 1154). Giroux went on to claim that we aremissing a language and movement that does not equate democracy with con-sumerism and market relations. It is extremely difficult today for both youthand adults to articulate their private concerns within a public discourse,because the private has become the only space where we can imagine a senseof hope or possibility. In such an atmosphere, capitalism’s very fuel is con-sumerism, where prosperity and safety are addressed by consumption. Thekey here is to teach youth how to become “skilled citizen[s]” (Giroux, 2002,p. 1153) who can use critical thinking skills to understand that the principlesof democracy should not be coupled with corporatizations of private andpublic life. It seems more realistic that solutions be pursued within the sys-tem we live in, using all avenues where critical identities are created.

Because critical pedagogy is concerned with the social embeddedness ofeducation and its inevitably political character (Wardekker & Miedema,1997), its commitment to social justice remains a valuable platform fromwhich educators and practitioners can speak and act. At the end of the 20thcentury, Carlson and Apple (1998) addressed the importance and urgency ofcritical education in “unsettling times.” Post-9/11 United States presents suchtimes again with national homogenization, political and ideological divisive-ness, subversion of civil liberties, and military expansion and imperialism.Patriotism is measured by the level of consensus, in which “symbolic capitaland political power reinforce each other through a public pedagogy producedby a concentrated media” (Giroux, 2004, p. 207), and it is not surprising thatyouth, and many adults as well, have difficulties in breaking from this dic-tum. Not immune to these cultural shifts, the American Association of Uni-versity Professors (2003), representing academic establishments, has exten-sively addressed the pressure and scrutiny to defend academic freedom.

Alternative media has addressed the silencing and vilification of progres-sive voices in education (see, e.g., http://democracynow.org and http://zmag.org). However, beyond the educational setting, the role of critical pedagogyis needed to critique and challenge dominant modes of thinking. The U.S.government has effectively framed its role in geopolitics as the carrier offreedom and democracy to the world. This practice of domination is danger-ous: Any dissenter must be aware of the subversive nature of ideologicaldomination. Although we cannot make claims about the state of critical ped-




agogy outside U.S. borders, there are some current trends in Europe that donot seem promising with regard to the dissemination of critical thought.First, the demise of Eastern European forms of state socialism and the lack ofa visible alternative to failed Marxian ideas. New state members of the Euro-pean Union are seemingly ready to replace one form of dependency (the for-mer Soviet Union) with another (the United States) in exchange for eco-nomic exploitation. Second, the bureaucratization, consumerism, andwidespread corruption of these societies have placed much of the criticalthought where it had been during the dark communist years—on the margin.

In such a climate, here and abroad, we deem the framework of criticalpedagogy and practice of action research as crucial components of a demo-cratic educational system to penetrate and challenge systems of control.Despite the differences between various critical discourses and their often-complicated relations with critical pedagogy, at this historical moment—when debate in and of itself is threatened—the right for critical voices tosafely and rigorously be heard must be defended. Not to conclude on a pessi-mistic note, we take with hope the words of Darder, Baltodano, and Torres(2003), who “in the light of a long-standing historical tradition of progressiveeducational efforts in the United States,” asserted that the “underlying com-mitment and intent of critical pedagogy will continue as long as there arethose who are forced to exit the conditions of suffering and alienation, andthose who refuse to accept such conditions as natural evolution ofhumankind” (p. 21).

Two collaborative projects we participated in resonate with the main ideasof critical pedagogy. The creators of the projects did not evoke the philoso-phy of critical pedagogy—at least its name was never mentioned; however,as participants in these projects, we came to realize that our mission had a lotin common with its principles. Our projects enacted the framework of criticalpedagogy in our desire to educate youth to question the principles of socialand political life and equip them with strategies to shape and change social,political, and economic constraints in their environment. Equally important,both projects understood youth as community assets rather than problems tobe dealt with. The projects illustrate the difficulties of implementing thisframework or what happens when researchers are faced with a “realitycheck.” Our two projects were designed to assist youth in developing theircapacities to become more active social agents, and although the process wasriddled with challenges, it was a worthwhile attempt to involve youth insocial research and foster their awareness.




Civic Engagement of Youth:Two Cases of Collaborative Research

In this section, we describe the collaborative research process between auniversity research center and its community partners. At the time of the pro-jects, we were both graduate research fellows at a university research centerand involved with everything from the implementation of the collaborationidea to the final phase of writing a research report. We are White middle-classwomen closely related to the university and its culture; our community part-ners and students that participated in research reflected the urban milieu ofracial and economical diversity. Although we participated in these projectsindependently, our roles were common: to teach teenagers how to conceive,develop, research, and report on important social issues for them and theircommunities. The nature of collaboration in the two projects reflected theprinciples on which our university center works: Although the university andcommunity partners collaborate closely during all phases of the research pro-cess, there is a “division of tasks” approach that shifts the element of activitytoward one side as research unfolds.

The first case involved a university research center, Chicago schools, andthe City Educational Institute (CEI).1 Faculty members of the five Chicagoschools implemented a 16-week Empowerment Workshop—developed byCEI and evaluated by a university research center—to bring service learningand leadership development into the educational experiences of school chil-dren. As community partners, CEI developed a course curriculum and amethod of evaluation, whereas teachers implemented the curriculum and dis-tributed evaluation tools. University researchers helped the community part-ners refine their evaluation instruments and served as support when theteachers experienced difficulties. The majority of students who participatedin this program were Latinas and African American females, aged 13 to 14.Teachers used the workshop both in and out of the classroom setting. Theworkshop was designed to allow students to explore their own leadershippotential, build positive relationships with their peers, develop leadershipskills, explore and understand community issues and strategies for action,and ultimately design and implement a service project based on their inter-ests. These interests included racism, disabilities, homelessness, andviolence, to name a few.

The second case involved collaborative research with a universityresearch center and the For Safer Neighborhoods (FSN) organization. FSN isan organization in Chicago that works with neighborhoods on issues such asaffordable housing, civic engagement projects for youth, judicial reform, and




neighborhood safety policy. Youth from FSN, a year earlier, had challenged aChicago-based antiloitering law, deeming it unconstitutional, and won. Uni-versity researchers established a connection with FSN after learning about itsaffiliated youth group that had been active in Chicago political and civicissues. The funding for this project was part of a larger grant on youth civicengagement and hoped to address and challenge the notion that young peo-ple are detached from and disinterested in civic and political issues. With thepromise of critical pedagogy in mind, this project had the potential to chal-lenge the image of disengaged youth and illustrate the importance of actionresearch. The goals of this project were to (a) involve youth in policyresearch by helping them identify and research issues salient to them andtheir neighborhoods and (b) teach youth how to work with their host organi-zation—FSN—so that they could independently conduct policy research intheir communities. However, although the researcher going into this projectwas “equipped” with the goals listed above, there was no “step-by-step”handbook on how to deal with the challenges this project faced. All theparticipants in this program were 15-year-old African American females.

Project Challenges

Although fully aware of the interrelated nature of various stages of aresearch process and the issues emerging from it, the challenges discussed inthis section are separated for analytical reasons. The three areas we discussinclude recruitment and attendance issues, development, language and meth-ods issues, and the university and funding agency–driven push for a “prod-uct.” We faced challenges on both projects within these areas.

Recruitment and Attendance/Rapport Issues

As members of the university research center, we assumed that youth par-ticipation would be plentiful, as had been demonstrated with their past activ-ism. From the start of the FSN project, however, the university staff failed tointerest more youth than it was hoped for. Many of the older youth who hadworked on projects did not attend the first meeting. A group of 15 youth—mostly junior high school students—attended the first meeting. At this meet-ing, our primary goal was to “hook” them into the idea of the project. Webrainstormed ideas for project topics and explained how the process ofresearch worked. From the beginning, we explained that this project wouldbe their project; we were there to work with them. However, at the next meet-ing, 3 girls showed up; we did not “sell” the idea as affectively as we had




hoped. Although 3 young women eventually continued with the project, wefailed to gain more youth participants at our first meeting. Many of the youngteens were new to community work and viewed these gatherings as purelysocial in nature. Had we established a stronger rapport by spending moretime with the youth and by fostering activities that would help capture theirinterest, our group would have been larger. In addition, the civic engagementprocess would have fostered and supported the heightening of critical con-sciousness. In retrospect, it is very likely that the youth perceived our ini-tial meeting as too academic: dry and structured. At the second meeting,researchers were able to form a close rapport with the teens, which was cru-cial to the sustainability of the project. We talked to them without interrup-tion, unlike the first meeting, where distractions cost us the chance to gaininterest and connect with youth on a personal level. At this meeting, theresearchers brought in academic articles about gangs and violence. We dis-cussed whether the articles represented their experiences at school (in manyways, yes) and what other topics were of concern to them. We met in differ-ent places for 6 months—often because of scheduling difficulties—whichalso contributed to the “unpredictability” of the project. However, spendingmore time with the participants at our university would have helped themgain better research skills on topics of their interest. One of the goals of theFSN project was for youth to acquire technical skills, such as computerresearch, but this did not crystallize because of the limited time of the projectand the challenge of transporting the participants to other parts of Chicago.

On the CEI project, student participants for the Empowerment Workshopwere recruited by their teachers, who clearly sent a message to the studentsthat their participation was a desirable outcome. In this way, all the actorsinvolved on the project were satisfied: The students made a good impressionon their teachers, the teachers satisfied the test makers, and the universitycenter had enough data to conduct data analysis and write a final report.

The question remains whether the approaches employed in these projects—both involving civic engagement—truly reflect the theory of PAR and criti-cal pedagogy. Although the FSN project failed to recruit more participants,those who stayed involved expressed some level of action and it is hoped,developed an insight into how research can make a change in their commu-nity. The young women learned interviewing skills, interviewed each otheron topics related to their neighborhoods, and were later involved in planningand hosting a small youth conference. The CEI research project, on the otherhand, operated on a mass scale (more than 200 students participated), andstudents’ gains from the research were more in accord with the business-as-usual school praxis. Adults proposed and organized the workshop that theybelieved would be useful to students and by choosing a quantitative approach




to evaluate the workshop, failed to engage students in a more meaningful andactive way. Having completed the workshop, during which they could exer-cise some sort of personal involvement and activity through dialogue andclass exercises, the testing situation returned students back to passivity. Stu-dents could have written a newsletter, organized an exhibition in theirschools, or produced a video record of their activities.

Instead, the community partners wanted the university center to evaluatethe course impact in a traditional way, namely, through testing. As programevaluators, we did not have insight into instructional material, nor did wehave an opportunity to observe students and teachers in the classroom. Fromthe evaluators’ position, what was actually happening in the classroomremained a “black box.” The effectiveness of this workshop was understoodstrictly as a test score. This is not a critique of the community partners’ deci-sion but, rather, a reflection of how in a new era of accountability, educatorsare forcefully pushed into the single direction of pursuing and justifyingresearch with quantifiable results.

Development, Language, and Method Issues

When we discussed the concept of power at the first FSN youth meeting,the students’ behavior and responses suggested disinterest, perhaps becausethey had never been exposed to thinking about power critically and structur-ally. After all, the students were 15 years old and it was our responsibility toaddress the topic of power in an approachable way. At the first meeting, lan-guage was an issue of conflict. At one point, when a youth mentioned thetopic of “opinions about one’s neighborhood,” the researcher wrote “neigh-borhood attitudes” on the board. One young woman asked in a loud voice,“What do you mean attitudes?!” The researcher quickly realized the linguis-tic disconnect between youth knowledge and a familiar concept in a univer-sity setting and wrote “opinions” on the board. Gaining a closer rapport tothis particular group before working with them on generating issues wouldhave been beneficial. The potential of critical pedagogy lies in the transfor-mation of understanding the power structure; however, it seems that the cen-trality of language to express one’s experience must be addressed first andforemost. The researcher, a White woman in her late 20s, had worked withAfrican American youth prior to this project and assumed the two groups—similar in race and social class—would be similar in exposure to leadershipactivity and language they use.

On the CEI project, research language reflected the expectations of thesurvey developers. For example, one of the statements that the group of 14-year-olds had to respond to was “I have the tools needed to become an effec-




tive leader.” This is an obvious example of how adults as survey creators didnot take into account that the first thing the 14-year-old children (and notonly them) might think of are their dad’s garage tools and not tools as a socio-logical term. Apart from the misfortunate word choice, there is a larger con-ceptual and methodological problem here: Had the chosen method for theworkshop evaluation been qualitative, the results would have been more tell-ing. An example of effective method choice, albeit in a different context, thatinvolved children can be found in research conducted by Faulstich Orellana,Dorner, and Pulido (2003). Employing a mixed-methods approach, theresearches organized small group discussions to elicit children’s stories. Notonly did children feel more comfortable talking in the company of their peersbut also the power balance between adults and children shifted.

A similar methodological approach could have enabled both the teachersand university researchers to develop a rapport with students and actuallylearn about their thoughts and feelings regarding the Empowerment Work-shop, as well as their ability to recognize social issues in their communitiesand venues for possible action. The workshop evaluation results were indis-criminative and positively skewed, indicating that students wanted primarilyto please their teachers by giving desirable answers. The reasons for optingagainst a qualitative approach were manifold: The majority of those in theschool system, as well as agencies willing to fund PAR, still believe that aquantitative approach, regardless of how ill chosen, clumsily designed, andimplemented, reflects more valid science. Furthermore, it was much easierfor teachers to distribute and collect survey sheets than organize and leadgroup interviews. The greatest perceived obstacle, however, was dealingwith our university’s institutional review board requirements. Teachers wel-comed university researchers to lead group interviews, but it meant sur-mounting the concepts and language that institutional review board formsrequire and waiting for a prolonged decision. As a result, the possibility ofconducting interviews was abandoned.

One of the goals of the Empowerment Workshop was to teach studentshow to actually design and implement a service project. Most of the studentsagreed that abstractly they could conceive of an imaginary project that wouldaddress social issues. Practically, students felt uncertain that they actuallyhad the skills, knowledge, and power to realize their imagination. This is notsurprising given the age of the students: At the time of this research, most ofthem were 14 years old. At this age, a small-scale project in the students’ownneighborhood or school and under the supervision of an adviser—teacher orolder student—may have been more appropriate for their intellectual, emo-tional, and social level of development.




Drive Toward the “Product”

Another constraint common for both projects was the drive to end with a“product.” The fact that a research study is funded adds “a spin on the issues”(Cheek, 2000, p. 409). Receiving funds for the study is not a neutral act, itimplies a certain relationship between the funder and researchers in terms ofobligations, responsibilities, and expectations. In the FSN project, all ourmeetings needed to be accounted for with a finished result, such as a paper ora research piece. We were constantly cognizant of this requirement and won-dered who should write these weekly pieces: Did the authorship belong to theuniversity researchers only or should the youth have some impact on theshape and content of the texts? This constraint was compounded by the factthat the youth involved in the project had weak writing and researching skills.Although they were interested and eager to carry out interviews in their com-munity and discuss the results, we, as university-trained researchers, had theimpression that they enjoyed the meetings more for the social aspect than thestrictly research-learning component. This experience pointed to the assump-tion that PAR often has an empowering effect on the participants. We forget,however, that participants may not share our assumptions. Because researchwithin universities is a “product-oriented” process, we often tend to neglectthe aspects of research that might seem successful to participants. In thiscase, it was more social gathering and doing activities different from every-day school tasks.

A related issue to a research “product” is that of offering financial rewardsto participants. University researchers may view an intellectual discovery orpublished article as an intrinsic reward in itself, but for the youth on the FSNproject, their highly anticipated reward would come in the form of Old Navyclothing gift certificates. However, a university research center could notoffer them this prize for participating and instead, offered coupons for eithera grocery store or a bookstore. The youth reluctantly took the coupons fora grocery store, deemed by the FSN project funders as a “reasonable expen-diture.” This situation illustrates yet another reality check in the work ofcommunity-university researchers: differing notions of participation andrewards within a capitalistic economic system. What represented a rewardfor the university center staff meant little to the participants.

Regardless of how much students are aware of societal injustices andinequalities, which they themselves experience on an everyday basis, theseyoung women inevitably contribute to and are a part of this exploitive pro-cess. Growing up in capitalism socializes young people to desire and enjoythe products of capitalist exploitation, so the wish of our participants to be




rewarded with Old Navy clothes instead of books or social research itself isnot surprising. After all,

exploitation through the capitalist marketplace has been so naturalized andthe pauperization of the state so dehistoricized and depoliticized that wehave learned to accept a certain amount of exploitation and . . . feel that it isan inevitable part of living in a developed capitalist democracy. (McLaren &Farahmandpur, 2001a, p. 6)

The perceived failure of critical pedagogy to engage more educators inapplying its principles to their teaching and research practices lies partly inthis disconnect between echoing socialist and communist icons and attempt-ing to make them attractive to youth in today’s consumerist United States.Regardless of all the injustices and inhumanities that capitalism (Whose cap-italism?) brings to human lives, it is questionable whether its alternative liesin socialism (Whose socialism?) and even more, whether that alternative res-onates with the lives of North American youth. Various and complex types ofcapitalism exist (Esping-Andersen, 1990), which makes a valid debate aboutwhether capitalism is necessarily evil and if so, whether the idea of itsabolishment is empirically unrealistic.

In the completion of the projects, our university center’s staff took controlof the research by being the sole author of the research reports. It seems thatthis role was expected and welcomed by the community partners, becausethe writing phase may be seen as less “active,” more analytical and, therefore,less interesting. The underlying message from the community partners was“After all, you are trained to write, and we’ll gladly let you do it.” The ques-tion, then, is, what should be the research product and who owns it?

McTaggart’s (1997) writings bridge the gap in our dilemmas of full col-laboration and of research report ownership. He differentiated “authenticparticipation” from “mere involvement.” Although the former implies own-ership, or “responsible agency in the production of knowledge and improve-ment of practice” (McTaggart, 1997, p. 28), the latter denotes a mere co-option and further exploitation of people for the sake of others. McTaggartargued that this is a common practice in community programs that are pro-claimed as collaborative but instead, are just another oppressive implementa-tion of some policy. According to Tandon (as quoted in McTaggart, 1997, p.29), characteristics of authentic collaboration are

• people’s role in setting the agenda of inquiry;• people’s participation in the data collection and analysis; and• people’s control of the use of outcomes and the whole process.




Our research experiences do not fit neatly into these determinants. Neitherthe institutions nor the agencies outside the university were the ultimateresearch product owners; nor was the university research center just anotheroppressive body in knowledge production. Again, our experiences are more areflection of a “task division-of-labor” approach, where community partnersproposed the research agenda with minimal interference by the universityand where the university was responsible for analyzing the results (especiallyif the analysis requires knowledge of statistical package) and writing thereport. The realization of the research agenda itself fell in the middle: Whatwas actually happening in the classroom or within the youth group was a truecollaboration. We fully agree with Kemmis and McTaggart’s (2000) asser-tion that in most action and collaborative research, methodological rigor isexchanged for answering the question whether the data collected make senseto participants in their, not our, context. PAR sometimes “sacrifices method-ological sophistication in order to generate timely evidence that can be usedand further developed in a real-time process of transformation (of practices,practitioners, and practice settings)” (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000, p. 591).In our case, a trade-off between technical and “reality check” issues for thepurpose of solving people’s real problems was a worthwhile experience.

Conclusion and Recommendationsfor Future Research

When the two university-community collaborative research projects weparticipated in were designed, their goals were clear: to include youth insocial research. It was believed that participation in the research processcould benefit youth in raising their awareness of social issues and promptthem to take action in their communities. Both projects were concerned withstudents’ development of critical thinking on the issues of social justice andequality and their empowerment that would crystallize in taking action. Wealso have realized that the opportunity to conduct collaborative research withthe school children was a rarity for us and that fact also influenced our choiceto place a theoretical framework of critical pedagogy within an examinationof the research process and our role in it.

Despite the well-defined goals, the research process itself became “mud-died” as a result of various dynamics that different people brought to theresearch table. Thus, our initial goal was to establish a dialogue across classand race. The university researchers failed to attract more youth to one of theprojects; however, close rapport with those who stayed was developed. Afterthe bumpy start and searching for language that could bridge the gap across




age, social status, and race, we developed a mutual and friendly bond thatmade our time spent together worthwhile.

The involvement in collaborative research with youth led us to questionwhether we managed to provide an authentic voice for the youth, andwhether our students made a link between the personal and political. Ourimpression is that students were conscious about their race, class, and genderand that their participation in the research process made them even more cog-nizant. But they felt inapt to take action, at least on the scale that was sug-gested during the research. It seems that the adults, who designed and imple-mented the ideas of what it means to feel empowered and confident to takesocial action, did not take enough into account the difficulties that 13- and14-year-olds might experience when dealing with abstract ideas of differ-ence and social change. It is not that students did not have a chance to linktheir everyday life with broader societal forces; rather, they missed theopportunity to do something in their communities that was meaningful forthem, not the adults.

It seems then that the authority of adult figures—equally universityresearchers, school teachers, and community partners—was not decentered(Trent, 2003), in the sense that we did not question our pedagogical authorityenough during the research process itself. That realization came later, oncethe research reports were filed in the cabinets of the university center andcommunity organizations. This was especially prominent in the Empower-ment Workshop project, where the opportunity for the students to expressfurther involvement ended with the completion of the workshop. Given that achosen method for the workshop evaluation was survey, it asked the studentsto merely express their level of agreement or disagreement with the state-ment adults constructed. It is not a surprise that the results were indiscrimina-tive and uniformly positive. Accustomed to testing, students knew what wasexpected from them.

The power imbalance between students and adults was mirrored by thepower imbalance between university researchers and community partners.Both projects reflected a task division-of-labor approach to collaborativeresearch, where university researchers or agencies’ research associates stillhad more power in the process—by having the power to make importantdecisions—than those who should feel empowered the most: the students.

Although we faced methodological and theoretical challenges that trans-formed and complicated the research, findings, and reports in unexpectedways, there are a number of important lessons we learned from our experi-ences. We encourage researchers involved in community-university collabo-rative research to heed these lessons on future projects so that the process is




feasible, equitable, and productive. We offer the following suggestions forfuture research:

• Find a congruence between the developmental stage of the students and theresearch goals. Researchers should be particularly sensitive to language andyouth culture. We can unintentionally alienate youth by using language that isappropriate in the university setting but not in the social environment of ourparticipants. As our experiences have taught us, this is especially pertinent inworking with nondominant and underrepresented groups, where researchersmust confront their own power, both as usually White, middle-class, educatedpersons and institutionally as representatives from university settings. Termssuch as hegemony, social construction of race, or gender inequality are all apart of everyday vocabulary within a university. The real challenge is to trans-late these abstractions and connect them with the everyday experiences ofyouth so that they can make sense out of them and realize how these abstrac-tions shape their lives.

• Find appropriate ways to research the problems that are important to youth.Sometimes university researchers assume agency where there is none, such aswhen middle school children are expected to critically examine social issuesand independently take action in their communities. Youth are rarely, if ever,equipped with money, institutional power, and formal connections in theirneighborhoods that would assist them in solving major problems. This is not aclaim that such projects should be abandoned completely but, instead, is a cau-tious note for those in collaborative research to understand and adapt to youth’sability to participate in research in a meaningful way. Otherwise, we are in dan-ger of romanticizing collaborative research (Zygouris-Coe et al., 2001) andoverlooking the instances where youth’s abilities can be better used. Instead ofexpecting 14-year-olds to grapple with complex social issues on a grandscale—both abstract and practical—it is more useful to focus on smaller pro-jects that would revolve around students’ own classrooms, streets, and neigh-borhood blocks. Although the research topic might appear trivial to adults, itcould be meaningful to teenagers. It is important that in working toward socialjustice, educators find a way to address the issues of race, power, and ideologythat reflect the age and interest of the participants. Otherwise, the impressionthat youth are going to form about social research will reflect the very attri-butes we are fighting to shed: a highly abstract, ponderous, and technicalendeavor that bears no meaning to youth’s lives.

• Invest more time and organize more meetings with participants to form astrong rapport. To achieve true collaboration, it is crucial to establish connec-tions with organizations that have the capacity to be fully involved in all thephases of research. In addition to fostering a close and mutual relationshipbetween the university and organization, participants should gather frequentlyat convenient and comfortable locations, chosen by all who attend. Although itmight sound obvious, it is crucial to plan ahead to prevent transportation and




meeting place problems. We experienced firsthand these constraints that seri-ously limited full collaboration. When these problems appeared, it looked only“natural” for the university staff to take responsibility in shaping and redirect-ing the project the way we thought appropriate. Only in the process of dedi-cated collaboration can the community partner truly challenge the dominantrole of university-trained researchers.

• We join with the researchers who critically address this era of “accountability”in which we live (De Lissovoy & McLaren, 2003; Eisenhart & Towne, 2003;Lincoln & Cannella, 2004). As Lincoln and Cannella (2004) noted, “The lan-guage of education has shifted from a discourse of equality of opportunity toone of blame and punishment of those who do not perform appropriately” (p.9). Randomized clinical trials, testing, and experiments are proclaimed scien-tific, leaving out contextually rich research. As critics have pointed out, thistrend of being academically accountable has turned the process of learning intoa cutthroat competitive capitalistic marketplace, pitting school districts and allthose involved against each other. Gaining knowledge should remain inher-ently good, as it stands, and various strands within critical pedagogy can help.Raising the issue of how knowledge becomes marketed should be a part offuture research with youth so that youth can become truly engaged in challeng-ing and changing the status quo.

Note

1. All programs and institution names are pseudonyms.

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Maya Miskovic is an assistant professor at National-Louis University, in the Department ofEducational Foundations and Inquiry, where she teaches general and qualitative research meth-ods. Her research interests include Eastern European and Balkan immigration, ethnic and racialidentity construction, education and cultural studies, and qualitative methods.

Katrina Hoop is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Loyola University Chicago. Her researchinterests include sociology of education, youth culture, social movements, and qualitativemethods.


