The Cyclical Process of Transformation in Participatory Action Research: Raising Consciousness Through Participation and Performance

• In Event: Courageous Conversations: The Power and Possibilities of Participatory Inquiry With Youth

Abstract

In (participatory) action research, scholars often cite outcomes of emancipation and empowerment, and performance in arts-based inquiry is sometimes used to facilitate or prompt such liberation or transformation. This paper highlights the conversations and participatory data gathering and analysis sessions conducted in our YPAR collective, as we sought to explore to what extent, and in what ways, performance provided participants with an opportunity for liberation, in turn, leading to greater self-determination and understanding of self and other. This manuscript is an attempt to learn about ourselves as creators of knowledge, as performers in and of the oppressor/oppressed relationship, and as humans.
We begin by exploring the onto-epistemological underpinnings of critical PAR (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Kemmis & McTaggart, 2007; Santos, 2015) to illustrate how these may implicitly and explicitly prompt participatory researchers to seek out or value predefined outcomes of transformation. We move from examining the foundations of PAR (Fals Borda, 1991; Freire, 2000; Levin, 1999; Martín-Baró, 1994) to exploring how researchers may interpret the academic literature on performance (Conquergood, 1998; Denzin, 2003; Goffman, 1959; Turner, 1986), highlighting the ethical and moral dimensions (Conquergood, 1985; Madison, 1998). We progress from a methodological examination of the transformative effects of performance (Langellier, 1999; Madison, 1998) to an exploration of interpretations of empowerment (Brion-Meisels & Alter 2018; Call-Cummings, 2018; Ross, 2017), including the struggle for and negotiation of meaning and identity (Butler, 1998; Butler & Athanasiou, 2013; Denzin, 2003; Nelson, 1999; Schlichter, 2011).
We move then to the words of our co-researchers, positioning their views and experiences of transformation in agreement, opposition, or neutrality toward the concepts we often take as assumed wisdom in academic literature. These thoughts emerged during open-ended discussions as we collaboratively reviewed transcriptions of and reflections on spoken word poetry (Endsley, 2016; Fisher, 2007) and Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1985) performed during the arts-based workshops that were a part of one aspect of our collective research project. We continued to both gather and analyze data with our co-researchers, refining research topics and questions through participatory data gathering and analysis sessions, which included card sorting (Chambers, 2002) to determine priorities.
Through a process blending constructivist grounded theory coding (Charmaz, 2014), critical ethnographic approaches to meaning making (Carspecken, 1996), and analytic maps for relational and discursive analyses (Clarke, Friese, & Washburn, 2018), we identified the core category of raising consciousness as a critical theme and process. This process of raising consciousness occurred: through performance (as act) → through self-understanding (as personal transformation) → through mutual understanding / communicative action (as group transformation) → for / towards change (undefined action). This cycle of transformation illustrates participants’ commitments to performance as pedagogy, building confidence, and various forms of understanding and action. Further research may yield insights into how and why participants perceive and value forms of transformation, outside of this specific YPAR collective. Understanding values toward transformation may improve how researchers design and conduct PAR in line with community commitments and priorities.

Authors

• Giovanni P Dazzo, George Mason University

• LeAnne Beardsley, George Mason University