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Community Inquiry Labs for
Community Organizations
Ann Peterson BishopAndre Brock
Library & Information ScienceU. 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.
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.
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 Labshttp://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil
• Web-based suite of Open Source software tools to support collaboration and communication (e.g., bulletin board, document uploading, blog, inquiry units)
• People create CILs (websites) on their own, to support their activities within and among groups
• Inquiry units = webpages in form of lesson plans, action plans, meeting minutes, research reports, journals, policy statements, etc.
Community Inquiry Lab Goals
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
From 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.ht
m
• 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
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.
