Community Inquiry Labs for Community Organizations

1
Community Inquiry Labs forCommunity
Organizations

• Ann Peterson Bishop
• Andre Brock
• Library Information Science
• U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2
Community-BasedResearch, Learning Action
Uniting people from all walks of life in
identifying, investigating, and taking action on
conditions that affect the well-being of local
residents.
3
Participatory Action Research Participatory
Evaluation

• Incorporate local knowledge held by marginalized
  groups
• Gain the participation of marginalized groups in
  all stages
• Build capacity and achieve constructive social
  outcomes.

4

• http//www.incommunityresearch.org/
• ICR has used participatory action research as a
  capacity building and prevention approach for
  youth and adults in the greater Hartford, CT
  area. Issues that have been addressed include
  sexual identity and support for lesbian, gay,
  bisexual, transgender or questioning youth,
  working with young girls and their mothers as a
  drug, alcohol and tobacco prevention model, and
  engaging residents around issues of community and
  family strengthening.

5

http//www.luc.edu/curl/projects/past/participator
y.shtml

• CURL promotes an innovative model of teaching
  and learning that reaches beyond Loyola's
  campuses and classrooms to develop equal
  partnerships between the university and Chicago's
  communities. CURL is guided by a mission which
  places strong emphasis on research that addresses
  community needs and involves the community at all
  levels of research. By working closely with
  activists outside the university, the Center
  recognizes and values the knowledge and
  experience of individuals and organizations in
  non-academic settings.

6

http//www.iisd.org/ai/default.htm
Appreciative inquiry turns the problem-solving
approach on its head. It focuses on a community's
achievements rather than its problems, and seeks
to go beyond participation to foster inspiration
at the grass-roots level.

7
Community Inquiry Labs
A place where members of a community come
together to develop shared capacity and work on
common problems. "Community" support for
collaborative activity and for creating knowledge
that is connected to people's values,
history, and lived experiences. "Inquiry"
support for open-ended, democratic, participatory
engagement. "Laboratory" a space and resources
to bring theory and action together in an
experimental and critical manner. A CIL is most
importantly a concept
8
Community Inquiry Labshttp//inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil

• Web-based suite of Open Source software tools to
  support collaboration and communication (e.g.,
  bulletin board, document uploading, blog, inquiry
  units)
• People create CILs (websites) on their own, to
  support their activities within and among groups
• Inquiry units webpages in form of lesson plans,
  action plans, meeting minutes, research reports,
  journals, policy statements, etc.

9
Community Inquiry Lab Goals

• How can we
• connect learning life?
• support participatory design?
• accommodate diversity shared values?

10
Connect Learning and Life ESLARPESLARP Sample
Inquiry Unit
11
Support Participatory Design SisterNet
http//sisternetonline.org/ourinquiry.html

• New model for Black women's organizing
• Wholeness through physical, emotional, spiritual,
  and intellectual health
• Political strategy to resist oppression and shape
  livable communities
• Community health fairs, conferences, and
  learning/action circles

12
SisterNets CIL in Action Taking Action for Water
Quality
13
Spiritual Health Plan

• From the Create section --
• I would like to accomplish the following goals
  Once each week I would like to take at least four
  (4) hours of the weekend for my own enjoyment.
  This will include, but is not limited to, things
  like going to the beauty shop, going out to
  dinner or to the movies with my husband, reading
  my Bible or some other book, or just praying or
  meditating. I also will let my family know
  that I love and support them...

14
Accommodate Difference Shared Values Paseo
Boricua Community Library Projecthttp//www.prair
ienet.org/pbclp/community_inquiry_lab.htm

• Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago's
  Humboldt Park neighborhood
• Galvanizes neighborhood residents around
  community projects
• Addresses critical issues gang violence, AIDS,
  social and environmental justice, literacy, and
  economic development

15
Paseo Boricua Street Academyhttp//inquiry.uiuc.e
du/cil/out.php?cilid112
16
Participatory Inquiry and Information Systems

• Design through use or participatory inquiry aims
  to respond to human needs by democratic
  processes. Through creation of content,
  contributions to interactive elements, and
  incorporation into practice, users are not merely
  recipients of technology, but participate
  actively in its ongoing development.

17
Co-Evolution
Knowledge
Technology
Community
18
Equitable Relations, Then Tasks

• renders the progress of expertise in a community
  secondary to a relational and epistemological
  practice of confronting differences so that its
  participants can come to understand how the
  beliefs and purposes of others can call their own
  into question.
• Clark, "Rescuing the discourse of community"

19
Active Participation

• Every individual must be consulted in such a way,
  actively not passively, that he himself becomes a
  part of the process of authority.
• Dewey, Democracy Education

20
Resources
Bruce, B. C., Bishop, A. P. (2002, May). Using
the web to support inquiry-based literacy
development. Journal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy, 45(8). http//www.reading.org/publicatio
ns/jaal/index.html Clark, G. (1994). Rescuing
the discourse of community. College Composition
and Communication, 45(1), 6174. Dewey, J.
(1938). Experience and education. New York
Macmillan. Freire, Paolo (2002). Pedagogy of the
oppressed. 30th anniversary ed. New York
Continuum. Glassman, M. 2001. Dewey and
Vygotsky Society, experience, and inquiry in
educational practice. Educational Researcher,
30(4), 3-14.
21
Resources
Greenwood, Davydd J., Levin, Morten. (1998).
Introduction to action research Social research
for social change. Thousand Oaks, CA Sage.
Patton, M.Q. (1999). Some framing questions
about racism and evaluation." The American
Journal of Evaluation, 20(30), 437-444. Rinaldo,
R. (2002). Space of resistance The Puerto Rican
Cultural Center and Humboldt Park. Cultural
Critique , 50, 135-174. http//leep.lis.uiuc.edu/
spring03/LIS450PAR/Rinaldo.pdf Stringer, Ernest
T. (1999). Action research. 2d ed. Thousand Oaks,
CA Sage. Reardon, K. M. (1998). Participatory
action research as service learning. In R. A.
Rhoads and J. P. F. Howard, eds., Academic
service learning A pedagogy of action and
reflection (pp. 57-64). San Francisco
Jossey-Bass. Whitmore, E. (ed.). (1998).
Understanding and practicing participatory
evaluation. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.
22
Contact Information
Ann Bishop abishop_at_uiuc.edu 217-244-3299 Andre
Brock albrock_at_uiuc.edu