Community-Based Action Research

Philosophical Roots

The emergence of C-BAR in counseling parallels the increasing influence of constructivist, feminist, multicultural, social justice, and qualitative research perspectives. Community-based action researchers believe that truth is relative. They believe that perceptions of reality are shaped by social, political, and economic factors that impact individuals and communities and that these factors determine who gets the power and authority to speak, label, and define reality.

C-BAR is part of a family of action and participatory research, including participatory action research, community participatory action research, critical action research, feminist participatory research, classroom action research, and industrial action research. Adherents of action research debate among themselves about terminology, principles, ideology, goals, and change theories. Some of the disagreements [Page 91]can be traced to historical as well as philosophical differences.

Historical Roots

There are a number of founders or contributors to the action and participatory research family. The majority of action researchers today stem from the following traditions: (a) social psychologist Kurt Lewin, who coined the term action research in the 1940s; (b) the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in the United Kingdom, which was primarily involved in organization development; and (c) the social movements of the 1970s in the developing world, championed by individuals such as exiled Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire, author of the banned Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970).

Action researchers today have been classified in a number of ways, including along a continuum with Lewin and his followers at one end and Freire and his adherents on the other. Following the Lewin tradition, researchers engage primarily in problem-solving action research, such as in industrial psychology, and do not necessarily include the community as extensive collaborators in the research process. They also seldom conduct research with commitment to broader social change. At the other extreme of the continuum, in the Freire tradition, is research more typical of the movements of the 1970s and popular education, rooted in social justice and consciously linked to broader social change. These researchers see the community as the vanguard of social change and social justice, and they see themselves, the researchers, as catalysts and supporters of the change process.

...