Training the next generation of community based researchers: A guide for trainers

Abstract

This guide by Rajesh Tandon, Budd Hall, Walter Lepore, and Wafa Singh addresses a gap in community-based research (CBR). While the field itself has grown quickly, little attention has gone into how to teach it. It opens by defining CBR against conventional research, positioning it as a route to knowledge democracy where community members, not only academics, hold research expertise. The guide then draws on the NextGen Project, a global study surveying how CBR is currently taught, to report findings on the gap between demand for training and its availability, and the reliance on self-directed learning over formal instruction. From these findings, it distills a five-part pedagogical framework, covering research ethics, power and partnership, multiple modes of enquiry, the balance between classroom and field, and the researcher's role as facilitator, illustrated throughout with training practices from institutions worldwide, including PRIA's own field-based, participatory methodology.