Participatory Action Research (PAR) Resources

[Loretta Ishida <ishidalo@yahoo.com>]

Most people practicing and studying PAR cite the work of educator, Paolo Freire, as foundational.  Books that I found useful have been:

Fals-Borda and Rahman. 1991. Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action-Research. New York: Apex Press.

Smith, Willms, Johnson, eds.  1997. Nurtured by Knowledge: Learning to Do Participatory Action-Research.  New York: Apex Press.

Selener. 1997. Participatory Action Research and Social Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Participatory Action Research Network.

I don't have specific web resources to recommend, so one can do a web search for PAR.  There is a well-established group at Cornell University which you can access through www.parnet.org.

One important note:  there are a number of types of participatory research.  There are various terms, which are unfortunately used interchangeably at times: participatory research, action research, participatory action research.  When examining how people describe these, take note of how and to what extent people are participating.  This relates to the typology of participation that Dan Dozier presented.

I haven't pursued PAR much in a formal way for a couple of years, so there may be more up to date resources out there.  Thanks for the interest.

Loretta Ishida