International Doctoral Seminar Sunday, June 9-Wednesday, June 12, 2013 Sunday, June 9, 2013 5:00 7:00 Wine and cheese reception and Welcome (Social Sciences Café, Priory Road Social Sciences Complex this will be the site of all lunches and coffee/tea breaks throughout the course.) Dinner on your own (or, preferably, with one another!) Monday, June 10, 2013 9:00 9:30 Registration (Room 3F9 this will be the site of all regular sessions throughout the course.) 9:30 10:30 Welcome and Introductions 10:30 11:00 Coffee/Tea Break 11:00 12:30 Session I: Gunilla Härnsten and Lars Holmstrand Research Circles 12:30 1:30 Lunch 1:30 3:00 Session II Discussion Groups 3:00 3:30 Coffee 3:30 5:00 Session III: Ditte Tofteng Future Creating Workshops 5:30 7:30 Kitchen Stories with Gunilla Härnsten, Lars Holmstrand, and Anne Inga Hilsen Tuesday, June 11, 2013 9:00 10:30 Session IV: Lisa Vaughn Large Group Assessment 10:30 11:00 Coffee/Tea Break 11:00 12:30 Session V Student Presentation Cornell University 1
12:30 1:30 Lunch 1:30 3:00 Session VI: Anne Inga Hilsen Industrial Action Research 3:00 3:30 Coffee 3:30 5:00 Session VII Student Group Presentation Keele University Wednesday, June 12, 2013 9:00 10:30 Session VIII: Tom Wakeford Citizens Juries 10:30 11:00 Coffee/Tea Break 11:00 12:30 Session IX Student Group Presentation University of Cincinnati 12:30 1:30 Lunch 1:30 3:00 Session X Miriam Raider-Roth Structured Ethical Reflection 3:00 3:30 Coffee 3:30 5:00 Closing Session 2
Faculty Presentation Descriptions: Ethics in Research Circles: Building a framework for achieving genuine democratic knowledge processes Presenters: Lars Holmstrand, Ph.D. and Gunilla Härnsten, Ph.D. In our presentation we will first give a short overview of the dialectics of paradigm shifts and why the ethical dimension is fundamental in Participatory Action Research (PAR, the fourth paradigm). The Research Circle is an approach within PAR that contains some of the fundamental ethical values of this paradigm. Democratic knowledge processes is a concept that illustrates what can be achieved in Research Circles. This, however, demands that the researcher brings a deep understanding of the underlying epistemological and ethical perspectives to the circle work. Finally, we propose some guidelines for democratic group work that might be useful also for the group discussions at Bristol. Future Creating Workshops Presenter: Ditte Tofteng. In my presentation I will introduce the workshop method called Future Creating Workshops. This type of workshop holds a strong notion of democracy and participation when bringing forward both critique and utopian ideas of the people participating. I will not lead you through an actual workshop but give you an overview of the process of the workshop and of where and how to use it. Finally I will bring forward our ideas of a common third which holds our thoughts about ethics within the frame of the workshop. Group Level Assessment Presenter: Lisa M. Vaughn Group Level Assessment (GLA) is a participatory and qualitative large group method in which valid data is generated about an issue of importance through an interactive and collaborative process. GLA is easily adapted for use in evaluation, research, assessment, intervention planning, program development, and community-building. GLA involves the identification of needs and priorities within a large group setting where the participants have the knowledge and expertise to inform the research and results in participant-driven and relevant action-plans. 3
Industrial action research and ethics. A discussion on the ethical challenges of doing action research in companies Presenter: Anne Inga Hilsen The session will present the (main) Norwegian approach to action research, which Kemmis & McTaggart (Kemmis, S. & McTaggart, R. (2003). Participatory action research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Strategies of qualitative inquiry (pp. 336-396). London: Sage) titles as industrial action research and discuss some of the ethical dilemmas connected to doing this kind of change work in a workplace setting. As action research has a stated aim of making a difference, for whom do you choose to make such a difference? How do you protect the interests of the local participants and at what price? The session aim at engaging the students in discussions on such real ethical dilemmas. Citizens Juries Presenter: Tom Wakeford This session will explore an approach to action research that has become prominent particularly in the UK, Germany and the US over the last 30 years. Citizens juries (also called citizens panels) are a process of multistakeholder dialogue that involves a small group of people the jury deliberating on a particular set of issues in the light of evidence from invited speakers. Most juries aim at a process of action learning that is empowering for both the jurors and, if their perspectives are the discussion, the wider community. The process has undergone very different evolution in different cultural and political contexts. We will look at the process from the perspective of jurors, commissioners and, particularly, those who facilitate them. Structured Ethical Reflection Presenters: Miriam Raider-Roth, Amy Rector-Aranda, and Mary Brydon-Miller This session will offer participants an introduction to the theory and practice of structured ethical reflection, a participatory approach to defining a set of ethical principles to serve as a guide throughout the process of conducting an action research study. Beginning with a brief discussion of the theoretical foundations of this process in covenantal and feminist ethics, we will then offer perspectives on the teaching of this process in the context of practitioner action research and present one graduate student s experience in applying this approach in her own practice. We will also engage participants an exercise in using this approach. 4
Organizer and Presenter Brief Biographical Statements: Mary Brydon-Miller, Ph.D. directs the University of Cincinnati s Action Research Center and is Professor of Educational Studies in the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services. She is a participatory action researcher who conducts work in both school and community settings. Her recent publications focus on the development of new frameworks for understanding research ethics in community settings including chapters in the Handbook of Social Research Ethics and the Handbook of Action Research. She is currently co-editing the Encyclopedia of Action Research and has co-edited three earlier volumes related to action research and a Special Issue on Ethics for the journal Action Research. She is a member of the Responsible Conduct of Research Education Committee of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics and a faculty member of the Poynter Center s Teaching Research Ethics workshop. She is currently serving as a Fulbright Research Fellow at Keele University in the United Kingdom where her work focuses on developing new strategies to inform the ethical conduct of community-based research. Patricia Gaya is an action researcher and Lecturer in Management at the School of Economics, Finance, and Management at the University of Bristol. Her research, scholarly activism, and teaching focuses on the human and organizational dimensions of creating more inquiring, ethical, socially just and ecologically sustainabile organisations and communities. She is cofounder of ARCIO, the University of Bristol s Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations. Members of ARCIO are committed to researching in participative and capacitybuilding ways in organisations and communities, and to using arts-based, narrative, and feminist methods in our research and scholarship. She is Associate Editor of the international, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal, Action Research, and also serves on the Editorial Board of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Action Research, published by Sage. Gunilla Härnsten and Lars Holmstrand. We are both now senior professors who for a long time have been working in cooperation with different groups of people to create knowledge in a mutual way. As a special form for deepening this kind of work we have used and developed the Research Circle which we are going to talk about in Bristol. Our focus has more and more come to be on using all the participants' experiences in order to see, understand and change the conditions that diminish people s lives. Our roots are in critical social science. Anne Inga Hilsen works as a researcher at Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research in Oslo, Norway. Research areas: Enterprise Development through broad participation, Industrial Democracy and Tripartism, Restructuring processes in industries and public sector, Work 5
environment development and the social dialogue, Social inclusion and active ageing. Responsible for projects in private and public sector in Norway. Mary Phillips is a founding member of ARCIO and has been its Director since the beginning of 2013. Working closely with other ARCIO members, she is planning a series of exciting and interesting research and other activities that focus on a number of aspects of critical inquiry and this International Doctoral Workshop on participatory action research forms an important part of that programme. Her own research interrogates gender relations in the workplace, both current and historical, but also the gendered nature of organizational research itself. Its distinctive contribution is the additional focus on bringing method and theory from studies in the humanities. She has been published in leading journals such as Organization Studies, Organization and Gender, Work & Organization and has contributed book chapers to well-regarded collections. Her current focus is on the development of ecofeminist theory in relation to organization through the use of poststructuralist feminism and feminist ethics. She is editing a book on ecofeminism which includes contributions from leading scholars in the United States, Australia and Europe and across a range of disciplines. Miriam B. Raider-Roth is an associate professor of Educational Studies and Educational and Community Based Action Research, and the director of the Center for Studies in Jewish Education and Culture at the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on the relational context of teaching and learning; children's and teachers' conceptions of their relationships in school; use of descriptive process in teacher professional development; action research and feminist qualitative research methods. She is the author of Trusting What You Know: The High Stakes of Classroom Relationships (2005) and Rupture and Repair: Episodes of Resistance and Resilience in Teachers Learning, with (V. Stieha and B. Hensley, 2012) in Teaching and Teacher Education. She is currently studying how teachers engagement with collaborative text study shapes their understanding of learning and teaching. Amy Rector-Aranda: My undergraduate studies in Philosophy brought many issues of ethics and social and environmental justice to the forefront of my mind, and always at the center of these issues was the need to educate people. As a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, I chose the field of Educational Studies so I could explore the educational foundations of ideas and customs that shape how a society thinks and who we are as individuals. I have just completed my M.A. and entered the doctoral program in Educational Studies: Educational and Community-Based Action Research. My specific work has been around supporting student agency and voice, and I also hope to explore how teacher and parent agency and voice factor into this mix. I am more broadly interested in how educational systems 6
advocate or neglect the educating of non-academic life skills--such as ethics, empathy, compassion, tolerance and peace, as well as critical thinking, dissent, and activism--and how this education contributes to personal, societal, and global well-being. Ditte Tofteng: Ditte has a background within actions research and sociology. Research areas will be working life, democracy and participation in workplace development and notions of creating equality in labor markets. Ditte currently works as a senior researcher at University College Copenhagen. Here the research focus is transdisciplinarity and participation between professions. Lisa M. Vaughn: My career goal is to promote the health equity of marginalized and underserved families and children through improvements to their health status and increased access to quality and culturally relevant health care. To reach this goal, I use a communitybased participatory research (CBPR) framework which is a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process. I am currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC)/ University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (UCCOM) with a joint appointment at the University of Cincinnati College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services (UCCECH) in the Educational Studies, Educational and Community-Based Action Research Ph.D. concentration. I am formally trained as a social psychologist, counselor, and medical educator. I have specific training and experience in qualitative research methodologies and community-based participatory research with a focus on understanding health disparities of Latino immigrant families and more broadly with marginalized and underserved populations. Over the last 12 years, I have worked as both a researcher and practitioner with underserved populations here in the states and internationally. In the last two years, I have taken on the role of director for community research and consulting at the Action Research Center of University of Cincinnati. In this capacity, I am able to further utilize my skills to direct research teams conducting community-based participatory research projects with local health and human service agencies and institutions. I also have experience conducting programs in community building and service learning in Guatemala and South Africa and have been a visiting faculty member at a number of international universities and institutions. Tom Wakeford: I have spent many years learning about and facilitating participatory action research processes. I am particularly interested in the power relations that always lie behind PAR and how we can address the dilemmas this presents. In my current practice, I am exploring how to maintain solidarity with those with whom we research particularly those affected by current economic and ecological crises, while also ensuring the social movements we build together remain self-critical. I am a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. 7