Participatory action research (PAR) as democratic disruption: new public management and educational research in schools and universities

Abstract

Pro-market and business approaches to management in the public sector (new public management – NPM) have created an audit culture in schools driven by top-down, high stakes accountability, and the fetishization of data. Within this context, authentic, qualitative, and democratic forms of inquiry, both in universities and schools, become easily co-opted. I argue in this article that the use of a community-based, participatory action research (PAR) stance has the potential to disrupt NPM and open up authentic and democratic spaces in which to engage in inquiry. The goal of democratization through a PAR stance is not an attempt to return to a pre-data driven past nor to make current neoliberal reforms more palatable, but rather to create more horizontal relationships among professionals, colleges of education, public schools, and low-income communities.

Keywords:

• Neoliberal
• new public management
• participatory action research
• action research

Notes

1. In the field of public health, PAR is relatively well funded because it has convinced funders that involving participants in the research leads to changes in behavior around chronic and intractable problems such as diabetes, HIV infection, and substance abuse. However, most large community-based participatory research (or CBPR as it is called in the public health field) is quantitative and typically includes some interviews, focus groups, and epidemiological, and GIS data. However, degrees of community participation at all phases of the research varies considerably.

2. Spaces for authentic inquiry in schools were rare under bureaucratic forms of ‘old public management’ as well. However, the advent of action research and professional learning communities (PLCs) were beginning to open up spaces for inquiry in the 1980s and 1990s (Lieberman & Miller, 2008). The move to high stakes testing forced this inquiry to focus less on questions emerging from PLCs, and more on ‘data utilization’ strategies imposed from above.

3. It should not be forgotten that schools as factory-model bureaucracies were the result of an earlier wave of corporate influence (Callahan, 1964).

4. In practice, these three traditions might all be present in a PAR project and some scholars see theoretical overlap between theories associated with PLCs and those associated with PAR (Cammarota, 2009–2010).

5. PAR exists across a continuum of more functionalist to more emancipatory approaches (see Whyte (1991) for examples of functionalist approaches). Some have used the term ‘critical’ PAR to indicate approaches that are more inspired by Freire. In this article, I use PAR as informed by the Freirean principles elaborated in this section.

6. Much of the appeal of test-driven accountability systems was the disaggregation of test scores by sub-group and the argument that this would shine a light on previously neglected groups. See Skrla and Scheurich (2004) for an elaboration of this position along with alternative perspectives.

7. Acknowledging that PAR may not have emancipatory goals or may be coopted in practice, Michelle Fine and others have started using the term Critical Participatory Action Research to distinguish it from more functionalist approaches.

8. See Miller (2017) for an anti-foundational critique of PAR’s tendency to essentialize ‘voice’ or ‘the oppressed.’

9. As noted earlier, because YPAR is research, organizing, and pedagogy, a participatory stance toward youth often results in youth wanting to take action. If teachers or researchers are not prepared for this, they should reject a PAR stance. This rejection can be the result of not wanting to place youth at risk in a hostile environment (see Herr, this issue).