Conference Agenda

The purpose of methodology in social research is to be able to understand research methods and their reasoning. The word method comes from the Greek: meta ta hodos, “to follow a path”. While in empirical social research the path was usually thought out and planned before the start of a journey, Participatory Action Research (PAR) cannot plan this path in advance, because the purpose of PAR is to find ways collectively in the double hope that the path was feasible in terms of the research, but above all that this path can initiate the desired change through the research.

While after the years of 1968 the focus of the research communities was on changing the world, the focus was on the word ‘Action’. So questions like, how to change the world as social scientists or what role social scientists play in changing the world. The new uprising of the last decade of the then so called action research (Lewin, 1946) placed the focus on the participation of non-academics in academic research (Lenette, 2022). Questions, like whose knowledge is present at the universities, who has a role in picking or producing knowledge in academia, came up front. The panelists came together in last years ECER events around a shared interest in such questions around PAR and social inequalities and continued to exchange afterwards. This panel is hence a collaborative reflection of different dimensions of participatory research as an articulated need for an alternative way to do research on co-creating a process with groups in participatory research while we manoeuvre academic demands- a part of the research journey which is not usually shown in conferences. We hope to display this juggling of priorities that we do as academics, area experts, teachers and/or students while we navigate societal/ institutional hierarchy, power relations, expectations, and unwritten rules.

Through perspectives of different research projects across Europe, all of us are tracing considerations in those processes - not just the conscious decision but also making sense of influences, positionalities, localities, etc. At the same time, we seek that our reflections can resonate with the audience's experience, contributing to unravelling their hidden journey as researchers.

Constanza Cárdenas Alarcón will develop the idea of uncertainty and vulnerability as a researcher in her study about inclusive curriculum made by teachers in Chile. How do we comply with the plan before you have a plan?

As Lingyi Chu's narrative research on cross-cultural youths’ transitional care leans onto the community as co-researchers, she questions how space, context, and identity play together in shaping her intercorporeality over her status of a shifting “in-out-sider” (Zhao, 2017)”. An ongoing concern: How does the researcher being a visible minority influence multicultural encountering when researching identity and belonging matters in a homogeneous context?

As Jacqueline Hackl uses Collective Memory Work (Haug 2000) - a hegemony critical research, education and political method using memory scenes to work on transformatory possibilities in a collective - when researching discrimination experiences in education, she reflects on how her methodological/methodical choices and considerations are linked to her positionality. One question that follows: How can we widen or intervene in what is possible with(in) educational research?

Michael Doblmair seeks opportunities for participation of co-researchers in research collaboration in political struggles. As an activist researcher (Ulrich 2019) he addresses the notion ‘Action’ in his PAR. He will focus on grouping processes in Action Research. As in voluntary political activities groups are seldomly consistent, we constantly have to ask: How can we achieve participation, continuity and consens in constantly changing groups?