TCCS 734 Community Based Participatory Action Research

Community Based Participatory Action Research has received growing attention in fields like public health, sociology, education, anthropology, and other disciplines over the past several decades. CBPAR is an approach to research partnerships and methodologies that has roots in popular education from South America, Asia, and Africa. CBPAR challenges historical power imbalances between the research institution and communities of study and between the researcher and the research participants. This course will encourage students to consider reflexive questions of power in research partnerships, of creating a collaborative research design process, of how to seek and share funding, of community accessible and peer-reviewed dissemination, and of creating sustainable change and relationships. The purpose of this course is for students to develop an understanding of CBPAR related theories, principles, debates, and strategies and how it may apply to their research projects. Students will also examine the advantages and limitations and necessary resources associated with CBPAR. The main text for the course, Community Organizing and Community Building for Health, edited by public health scholar, Meredith Minkler, approaches CBPAR through the lens of community organizing and sustainable capacity building. Her perspective on CBPAR will guide the framing of this course.

3 Credit(s)