“Nothing about us without us”: Tending to emancipatory ideologies and transformative goals in participatory action research partnerships

In this paper, a collaborative group of university researchers and a community organizer who participated in a 2-year participatory action research (PAR) partnership reflect upon their inquiry process and analyze its effects. Authors examine the benefits, challenges, and potential of using PAR to advance educational justice and transformative goals amidst austere neoliberal education reforms, such as public school closure and state sanctioned privatization. Authors consider ways PAR can reflect emancipatory ideologies, enable social and political change, and disrupt oppressive dynamics that many urban education organizers and activists oppose. Insights pertain to cultivating community-based norms that foster collective learning, agency, and social action, while also confronting methodological tensions in the work. Such tensions pertained to varied ideas about emotionality in research, research design, and the layered power dynamics of university-community relations. Authors highlight implications for implementing justice-oriented PAR in urban education arenas affected by intensifying neoliberal political contexts.

在本文中，一个由大学研究人员和一名社区组织者组成的合作小组，他们参与了一项为期两年的参与式行动研究（PAR）合作项目，对他们的研究过程进行了反思，并分析了其影响。作者探讨了在严峻的新自由主义教育改革（如公立学校关闭和国家批准的私有化）背景下，运用参与式行动研究来推进教育公正和变革性目标的益处、挑战和潜力。作者思考了参与式行动研究能够反映解放思想、促成社会和政治变革以及打破许多城市教育组织者和活动家所反对的压迫性动态的方式。见解涉及培养基于社区的规范，以促进集体学习、能动性和社会行动，同时也涉及应对工作中的方法性矛盾。这些矛盾涉及对研究中的情感性、研究设计以及大学 - 社区关系中多层次权力动态的不同看法。作者强调了在受新自由主义政治环境加剧影响的城市教育领域实施以公正为导向的参与式行动研究的意义。