Transformative change in higher education through participatory action research: a capabilities analysis

Abstract

As a methodological approach, participatory action research (PAR), and its variant of critical action research in education, aims to further social justice and generate transformative change. Although this understanding of PAR is well rehearsed, there is still a gap in detailed explorations of the transformative impact of PAR projects in higher education settings beyond the classroom: how do we then know whether transformative change through PAR has taken place, in which ways, through which processes, and for whom. This article aims to address these questions through proposing the use of a participatory action research cube (PARC) as a human capabilities evaluative framework for personal and structural transformative change enabled by PAR projects. Evaluating transformative change from this perspective rests on both the normative nature of the capabilities approach in its justice concerns, as well as consideration for individual well-being, understood as the expansion of freedoms people have to live the lives they value. Evaluating change both includes personal well-being as well as broader social or structural impact in the direction of more social justice. To demonstrate this empirically, we report on an eight-month PAR project on one rural South African university campus, where 13 undergraduate students were involved in researching gender inequalities on their campus. The PARC analysis highlights the development of capabilities and agency through axes of participation, knowledge development, and public deliberation, as well as identifying the developmental impact of these axes on transformative change for the participants, as well as the university.

Keywords:

• Participatory action research
• higher education
• gender
• capabilities
• transformative change

Notes

1. PAR encompasses a broad range of approaches, one of which is action research in education. For convenience we mostly refer to PAR, and sometimes to action research in education. Our interest in these approaches is in how or whether they contribute to more, rather than less, justice in (higher) education.

2. Both Boni and Walker have since independently developed the PARC further and modified the dimensions, but for our purposes we stick to the original conceptualisation which we find helpful.