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Community Inquiry
Ann Peterson BishopLibrary & Information Science
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Community-BasedResearch, Learning & Action
Uniting people from all walks of life in identifying, investigating, and taking action on conditions that affect the well-being of local residents.
Definitions and Examples
1) Participatory Action Research2) Participatory Evaluation3) Appreciative Inquiry4) Service Learning
Participatory Action Research/Participatory Evaluation
Incorporate local knowledge held by marginalized groups;
Gain the participation of marginalized groups in all stages;
Build capacity and achieve constructive social outcomes.
http://www.incommunityresearch.org/
ICR has used participatory action research as a capacity building and prevention approach for youth and adults in the greater Hartford, CT area. Issues that have been addressed include sexual identity and support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning youth, working with young girls and their mothers as a drug, alcohol and tobacco prevention model, and engaging residents around issues of community and family strengthening.
CURL promotes an innovative model of teaching and learning that reaches beyond Loyola's campuses and classrooms to develop equal partnerships between the university and Chicago's communities. CURL is guided by a mission which places strong emphasis on research that addresses community needs and involves the community at all levels of research. By working closely with activists outside the university, the Center recognizes and values the knowledge and experience of individuals and organizations in non-academic settings.
http://www.luc.edu/curl/projects/past/participatory.shtml
http://www.iisd.org/ai/default.htm
Appreciative inquiry turns the problem-solving approach on its head. It focuses on a community's achievements rather than its problems, and seeks to go beyond participation to foster inspiration at the grass-roots level.
http://www.servicelearning.org/
Service-learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity change both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content.
American Pragmatism
• William James (1675-1749)• Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-
1914)• John Dewey (1859-1952)• Jane Adams (1860-1935)
American Pragmatism andTheory of Inquiry
They all believed that ideas are not “out there” waiting to be discovered, but are tools - like forks and knives and microchips - that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves. They believed that the ideas are not produced by the individuals - that ideas are social.
Louis Menand, 2001
Characteristics of CIs
• Coming to understand, and to build upon, a range of different perspectives and points of view
• Thinking which is self-correcting, and thinkers who care for the procedures of inquiry
• Developing an environment in which all ideas are listened to and respected as potential sources of truth
Communities of Inquiry
Community of Inquiry theory understands knowledge as communally constructed and emergent, proceeding through the interaction of critical and creative thinking
Kennedy, 1996
The Cycle of Inquiry
Community Inquiry Labs
A place where members of a community come together to develop shared capacity and work on common problems.
"Community" = support for collaborative activity and for creating knowledge that is connected to people's values, history,and lived experiences.
"Inquiry" = support for open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement.
"Laboratory" = a space and resources to bring theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner.
A CIL is most importantly a concept…
Community Inquiry Labs
• Web-based suite of Open Source software tools to support collaboration and communication (e.g., bulletin board, document uploading, calendar, inquiry units)
• People create CILs (websites) on their own, to support their activities within and among groups
• Inquiry units = lesson plans, action plans, meeting minutes, research reports, journals, policy statements, etc.
The Challenge
• Theory adequate to account for the complexity and diversity of distributed collective practice
• Reflective action with actual communities facing historically-situated needs
• Process for developing shared capacity
• Social software to mediate the accomplishment of concrete tasks
Community Inquiry Theory
• “the desire to make the entire social organism democratic, to extend democracy beyond its political expression” Jane Addams
• "While what we call intelligence may be distributed in unequal amounts, it is the democratic faith that is sufficiently general so that each individual has something to contribute, and the value of each contribution can be assessed only as it entered into the final pooled intelligence constituted by the contributions of all." John Dewey
• “Community of inquiry … accepts crisis … because it is necessary for transformation” Paul Lushyn & David Kennedy
Community Inquiry Lab Goalshttp://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil/partners.p
hp
How can we:
a) connect learning & life?
b) support participatory design?
c) accommodate diversity & shared
values?
Connect Learning and Life: ESLARP
ESLARP Sample Inquiry Unit
Support Participatory Design: SisterNet
http://sisternetonline.org/ourinquiry.html
• New model for Black women's organizing
• Wholeness through physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual health
• Political strategy to resist oppression and shape livable communities
• Community health fairs, conferences, and learning/action circles
SisterNet’s CIL in ActionTaking Action for Water Quality
Spiritual Health Plan
For the Create section --
I would like to accomplish the following goals: Once each week I would like to take at least four (4) hours of the weekend for my own enjoyment. This will include, but is not limited to, things like: going to the beauty shop, going out to dinner or to the movies with my husband, reading my Bible or some other book, or just praying or meditating. … I also will let my family know that I love and support them...
Accommodate Difference & Shared Values: Paseo Boricua Community
Library Projecthttp://www.prairienet.org/pbclp/community_inquiry_lab.htm
• Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood
• Galvanizes neighborhood residents around community projects
• Addresses critical issues: gang violence, AIDS, social and environmental justice, literacy, and economic development
Paseo Boricua Street Academyhttp://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil/out.php?
cilid=112
Participatory Inquiry and Information Systems
Design through use or participatory inquiry aims to respond to human needs by democratic processes. Through creation of content, contributions to interactive elements, and incorporation into practice, users are not merely recipients of technology, but participate actively in its ongoing development.
Co-Evolution
Knowledge
Technology Community
Equitable relations, then tasks
renders the progress of expertise in a community secondary to a relational and epistemological practice of confronting differences so that its participants can come to understand how the beliefs and purposes of others can call their own into question.
Clark, "Rescuing the discourse of community"
Active Participation
every individual must be consulted in such a way, actively not passively, that he himself becomes a part of the process of authority.
Dewey, Democracy & Education
Community Inquiry Track at GSLIS
• LIS 450 IBL: Inquiry-Based Learning http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil/out.php?cilid=29
• LIS 450 PT: Pragmatic Technology http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil/out.php?cilid=46
• LIS 450 SJ: Social Justice in the Information Professions http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil/out.php?cilid=72
• LIS450CI: Community Information Systems http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil/out.php?cilid=86
• LIS450PAR: Participatory Action Research http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil/out.php?cilid=85
Roles for CI Professionals
• Needs assessment and community analysis• Finding and organizing information• Design and evaluation of information
technology• Gathering and presenting data• Project planning• Co-teaching in service-learning courses
Collaborate in community-basedresearch, learning, and action!
Resources
Bruce, B. C., & Bishop, A. P. (2002, May). Using the web to support inquiry-based literacy development. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 45(8).http://www.reading.org/publications/jaal/index.html
Clark, G. (1994). Rescuing the discourse of community. College Composition and Communication, 45(1), 61–74.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.
Freire, Paolo (2002). Pedagogy of the oppressed. 30th anniversary ed. New York: Continuum.
Glassman, M. 2001. Dewey and Vygotsky: Society, experience, and inquiry in educational practice. Educational Researcher, 30(4), 3-14.
Resources
Greenwood, Davydd J., & Levin, Morten. (1998). Introduction to action research: Social research for social change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Patton, M.Q. (1999). Some framing questions about racism and evaluation." The American Journal of Evaluation, 20(30), 437-444.
Rinaldo, R. (2002). Space of resistance: The Puerto Rican Cultural Center and Humboldt Park. Cultural Critique , 50, 135-174. http://leep.lis.uiuc.edu/spring03/LIS450PAR/Rinaldo.pdf
Stringer, Ernest T. (1999). Action research. 2d ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Reardon, K. M. (1998). Participatory action research as service learning. In R. A. Rhoads and J. P. F. Howard, eds., Academic service learning: A pedagogy of action and reflection (pp. 57-64). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Whitmore, E. (ed.). (1998). Understanding and practicing participatory evaluation. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.
