What is Participatory Action Research?
Reconnect and NAYSS use the Participatory Action Research model as a tool for reflective practice and continual service improvement. ‘Research’ simply means to find out – investigating an issue or issues you have noticed in your service. Action Research combines getting a better understanding of issues and using this understanding to change some aspects of practice. The participatory model of Action Research used in Reconnect and NAYSS means that all relevant stakeholders, including the clients themselves are involved in the process of finding solutions to address the issues facing them.
In the context of Reconnect and NAYSS, Action Research is used to answer two broad questions:
- What would it take to improve the outcomes for those you assist?
- Given the aims of Reconnect and NAYSS, what would it take to improve your practice?
Action Research builds on the everyday skills people use to make sense of their lives and improve their situation. It involves the capacity to observe what is happening, reflect on how it happened and how it could change, ask questions about how you might do things differently, plan how you might do things and put those plans into action. It involves people who are affected as active participants to bring about change and improvement in your services.
Here is what one Action Researcher said:
This sort of research is not a trained expertise, we can do it every day of our lives. We use our innate abilities to make choices, to make sense of our lives. We do it when we go shopping, we think about the TV adds we have seen, the feedback from a friend about a movie or an event about which we are curious. We notice, describe, listen, we make an explanation, we make our decision.
Expanding our way of doing things into the context of research (Participatory Action Research) involves a singular person or small group of people realising that something in our lives needs changing. A difference is noticed, an ideal is not met, a loss of quality, a foreshadowed change of direction, or perhaps the need for innovation
(Goff et al, 1998, p.65 in Reconnect Action Research Kit, 2000).