Knowledge Democracy / Participatory Research

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://192.9.200.215:4000/handle/123456789/123

Welcome to the Knowledge Democracy / Participatory Research Community. This community serves as a comprehensive repository of resources on participatory approaches, community-based research, and collaborative inquiry methods. Our mission is to foster knowledge sharing and support initiatives that empower communities to contribute to research, ensuring their voices shape the knowledge that impacts their lives.

Explore a wealth of materials, including case studies, policy papers, training guides, and research publications that highlight the practice and principles of participatory research worldwide.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 122
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    Learning from community-university research partnerships: A Canadian study on community impact and conditions for success
    (International Journal of Action Research, 2014) Hall, Budd L; Tremblay, Crystal
    This article by Crystal Tremblay and Budd L. Hall, published in the International Journal of Action Research, looks at community-university research partnerships in Canada. It is based on twenty in-depth interviews with university and community partners who held grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The authors describe how these partnerships have affected communities, through stronger relationships, greater organisational capacity, better services, policy change and extra funding. They also identify conditions for success, including shared governance, trust and mutual respect, flexible arrangements, participatory methods, and a fair sharing of power and resources. Drawing on knowledge democracy, the article points to a new architecture of knowledge and notes the challenges that remain, such as career pressures on academics and the limited research capacity of community organisation.
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    Starting from Nina: The Poetic Soul of Paulo Freire
    (Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE)., 2023) Hall, Budd L; Barndt, Deborah; Jackson, Edward; Martin, D’Arcy; Thomas, Barbara
    This collaborative, co-authored article by Budd Hall, Deborah Barndt, Edward Jackson, D’Arcy Martin and Barbara Thomas explores the poetics of the work of Paulo Freire, the legendary Brazilian philosopher and educator. All five authors are themselves poets or people who have used poetry in their work as adult educators and facilitators of social justice. They believe that this is the first English-language publication of the poem “Recife Forever,” written by Freire himself about the city of his birth. It was written in Chile during his years of exile by the Brazilian dictator.
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    Action research in universities and higher education worldwide
    (SAGE Publications, 2015) Boden, Rebecca; Greenwood, Davydd J; Hall, Budd L; Levin, Morten; Marshall, Judi; Wright, Susan
    This chapter, by Rebecca Boden, Davydd Greenwood, Budd L. Hall, Morten Levin, Judi Marshall, and Susan Wright, appears in The SAGE Handbook of Action Research. It looks at how action research has found a place in universities, whether in managing them, in building action research centers, or in training new researchers. The examples include Mondragón University, Danish universities under new financial controls, search conferences, centers in the UK and Norway, and doctoral programs in Norway. The authors show that action research struggles in universities shaped by managerialism, while it has a stronger and older presence in the majority world. They end by pointing to new global networks and to the possibilities that remain for more engaged universities.
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    Knowledge Democracy, Transformation and Higher Education
    (2013-05-15) Hall, Budd L
    In this paper, Budd Hall examines what the waning confidence in a one size fits all global economy and the Western canon means for higher education and its social responsibility. Drawing on examples from Durban’s shack dwellers’ university, South Africa’s traditional healers, and PRIA in India, he introduces knowledge democracy as an alternative to the “knowledge economy” and “knowledge society”. The concept rests on three ideas: plural ways of knowing, plural forms of expression, and the use of knowledge to deepen democracy. He then turns to the community-university engagement movement as a promising site for institutional change. The paper closes with the 2013 Barcelona meeting of global engagement networks, convened by Guni to advance a shared agenda for action.
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    Call for Afro-centric theory and practice in community based research and engagement closing remarks to African regional conference on university-community partnerships in Dakar, March 25-26, 2011
    (2011-03-26) Hall, Budd L
    In these closing remarks to the African Regional Conference on University-Community Partnerships, held in Dakar in March 2011, Budd L. Dr. Hall argues that community-based research and engagement have African roots. He opens with a poem, “Creation Song”, and then recalls African thinkers and activists, including Senghor, Cissé, Kane, Diop, Nyerere and Cabral, whose work laid the ground for participatory research. Hall also points to the damage done to African higher education by World Bank policies and by the recruitment of African students into northern universities. He calls for universities in Africa that rest on African history, knowledge and languages, and for an Afro-centric theory and practice of community-based research and engagement.
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    Imagine/Learning: Thoughts from Two adult educators
    (Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, 2014) Hall, Budd L; Clover, Darlene E.
    Does it matter where the academic home of the study of adult education is? In this paper we share our reflections on the implications of the institutional location of the discipline of adult education within universities in Canada and elsewhere. We speak of the historic tensions between the less structured and often transformational vision of adult education and the highly regulated learning contexts of schooling, and we suggest adult education theory and practice can be found in many other disciplinary clusters in all our universities. Wherever the formal study for adult education is located, its purpose is always to strengthen capacity for resistance and transformation.
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    Learning to listen: Foundations of teaching and facilitating of participatory and community based research
    (University of Toronto Press, 2014) Hall, Budd L
    This chapter by Budd L. Hall was published in Learning and Teaching Community-Based Research: Linking Pedagogy to Practice, edited by Catherine Etmanski and Teresa Dawson. Hall looks back on how he learned and later taught participatory and community-based research (CBR). It draws on his early work in Tanzania in the 1970s, where the evaluation of a health education campaign exposed the limits of conventional survey methods. The chapter outlines five learning objectives: knowing who we are, learning to listen, the centrality of values and commitment, openness to multiple ways of creating and representing knowledge, and the meaning of action. It uses exercises like the Power Flower and poetry to help students listen better. The chapter concludes that CBR is a set of principles rather than a fixed method and that its results should belong to the community.
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    Inequality, Higher Education and Knowledge Democracy
    (Newsletter of Association of Commonwealth Universities, 2020) Hall, Budd L
    In this article, published in the Spring 2020 newsletter of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, Budd L. Hall looks at inequality and what it asks of higher education. It begins with the scale of poverty and homelessness in places as different as Victoria and India, and with research by Wilkinson and Pickett showing that both rich and poor fare better in more equal societies. The article then asks what a knowledge democracy movement might look like, drawing on John Gaventa’s idea of a knowledge strategy and on the work of Nyerere and Freire. Such a movement is kept apart from the knowledge economy, community engagement and open access to information, which are treated as supports rather than the movement itself. It closes by asking how community-university partnerships can strengthen knowledge democracy.
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    Book review on Global Inequalities and Higher Education: Whose Interests are We Serving?
    (2010) Hall, Budd L
    This book review by Budd L. Hall discusses Global Inequalities and Higher Education: Whose Interests are We Serving? edited by Elaine Unterhalter and Vincent Carpentier. The book grew out of a 2007 conference in London and asks whose interests are served by a globalised higher education system. The editors frame the challenge as a “tetralemma” of economic growth, equity, democracy and sustainability. The chapters cover internationalization, the neo-liberal university, pedagogy, university rankings, student mobility, gender and the exclusion of Indigenous knowledge. Hall finds the book timely and describes it as an essential text for higher education classrooms
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    Book review on Public Sociology as Educational Practice: Challenges, Dialogues and Counterpublics
    (2021) Hall, Budd L
    This book review by Dr Budd L. Hall discusses Public Sociology as Educational Practice (2020), edited by Eurig Scandrett, which brings together about 40 activist scholars to link public sociology with social movement education and learning. The book is organised into three sections, Publics, Knowledges and Practices, covering topics such as gender justice, domestic abuse survivors, class, participatory research, community engagement and trade union education. Hall finds that the book makes a convincing case for public sociology as a way of challenging exploitation and oppression, and describes it as a major contribution. He also points out that its high price limits access for the very communities it engages with, and encourages readers to request it through their libraries.

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