Published Monday, May 17, 2004
An Above PAR Experience
Reflections on an Excellent Course, Now Gone
By J. Jerome Hughes

I glanced over my e-mail in the Gutman lobby and then darted up three flights of stairs, anticipating our discussion for class.  I was slightly worried that my peers would arrive to class tired and unresponsive.  This was an early morning class.  Yet, I was excited!

Walking through the doorway of Gutman-440, I thought back to early December when another student first told me that there would be a new course with Donna San Antonio.  At that time, I had heard great things about Donna from various students of color-- past and present.  Seeing the description of her course “Participatory Action Research” on the course website at that time, I was convinced it would be an engaging course.

As I laid my backpack on the four-sectional table and prepared for our presentation, my other group members arrived into class.  Like me, they appeared excited, a tad sluggish, but ready to begin.  After greetings, we reviewed our lesson plans for the day.  While Donna had facilitated the first few weeks of class, introducing the central concepts and tensions of Participatory Action Research (PAR), students were now required to lead the discussion.   This included developing and presenting case studies relevant to the theme of the week.

In this week’s activity, our group hoped to surface issues of power and participation within the context of research and development.  We aimed to discuss whether those issues were important when intervening in systems through research and development.  But first our group would enact a scene to highlight the ideas central to our discussion.

Slowly, members of the class -- some who were from the HGSE, the School of Public Health, and the Law School – drifted in, with an obvious “this is too early” molded into their face. As part of our activity, we thundered for them to leave the classroom.  As each “native” entered the classroom, we immediately forced them out.  We wanted to establish that we had the power that we were in charge, that we knew what to do.  

Once all the “natives” were piled outside the door, peering in through the small viewing windows, we opened the door. With looks of puzzlement and concern in their eyes, they slowly drifted in, questions lingering on their lips.  We barked at them to hurry.  Their surprise heightened as they noticed the four-sectional table rearranged.  We had placed each of its sections in various locations and positions around the room.

We anointed one of the “natives” and instructed her to “lead” the group in arranging the tables in another unusual position. At the same time, one of the members of our facilitation team walked around the class, in his best lab scientist mimic, peering at the class of “natives,” taking notes, and making noises---“Ah,” “Oh,” “Wow”.  After the “leader” dutifully implored the “natives” to arrange the tables how we wanted, the natives grew intransigent and civilly disobeyed their anointed leader.

Questions and comments blossomed into discussion after this enactment.

Who guides the research or development agenda, insiders or outsiders?  Who decides what is problematic and what is not?  Are the goals of “good” research and “good” development culturally biased?  Is there a relationship between who the agents of research and development and the possibility of social change?  What is the effect of the funder’s identity and politics on research and development?  Do current research practices reinforce and reproduce current inequalities of power, knowledge, and resources?  Is it problematic that knowledge is created in universities by knowledge technicians rather than by the communities and practitioners who experience the problems everyday?  In such a situation, who maintains control over the research agenda?  Who really benefits?

In our discussion that day as well as throughout the entire semester, we wrestled with problems of power and participation in the dominant research and development agenda. We investigated and formulated alternative ways of thinking and doing research. We examined case studies, including some about teachers and students trying to improve education, community-based public health efforts, grassroots organizing, and participant-oriented development.

We also struggled to link research with community empowerment and social transformation efforts through practical work.  Students in our class supported diverse participatory research efforts with community groups, teachers, and students.  For example, I worked with an initiative that supported high school students in investigating their school and taking action on their findings.  I saw not only the slow change taking place within the culture and policies of the school, but also the rapid change that took place in the students as they reconstructed their own meanings of education and knowledge.

 All of these experiences enabled our class to map the possibilities of research practices that were empowering, critical, and transformative.

By the end of the semester I still struggled with the many tensions, yet I had reached some tentative conclusions.  Power imbued in authority, resources, and tradition predominantly controlled how research was conceptualized and conducted.  Dominant ideologies of “professional” knowledge production would attempt to keep my papers, discussions, and research mired within the narrow boundaries of “Academic” discourse.  But I now knew there were alternatives to thinking about “research.”  Though very limited in academia by the dictates of power, I had ways to liberate my thinking and practices from the dictates of the powerful. Once I moved beyond the boundaries of academia, I now had substantive tools to connect knowledge production with community-based efforts for social change.

 This year, I again looked at the HGSE course website. However, I didn’t see Donna’s Participatory Action Research Course. I wondered who decided that Donna San Antonio wouldn’t teach an amazing class on Participatory Action Research this year.

 J. Jerome Hughes, Ed.M. ’03, is a second-year student at Harvard Law School.