PEDAGOGIES OF PRAXIS：COURSE-BASED ACTION RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Pedagogies of Praxis is about employing course-based action research (CBAR) in building public interest partnerships between institutions of higher education and local community-based organizations. Researchers have linked the use of CBAR to students gaining a greater sense of social responsibility by increasing their level of civic engagement. It motivates them to become passionate about social justice and produce new—and challenge existing—knowledge.

Pedagogies of Praxis documents how CBAR, particularly within the social sciences, functions as an effective way of establishing and reinforcing partnerships among students, academic officers, and local communities. It compiles case studies—stories of successes, failures, and implications from such partnerships—from students practicing CBAR in Chicago’s corner stores to how the model was applied in Liverpool, England. Students and faculty, guided through CBAR, learn how to develop advocacy strategies for marginalized communities through firsthand exposure to local-level politics and power imbalances in these communities.

Contents include

• Participatory action research and the university classroom in a project on gender-related oppression in a racially diverse urban neighborhood
• An exploration of an anthropological service-learning program with premed students paired with inner-city youths
• Youth Take Charge: social action in a university-community partnership
• Discussion of students’ experience with an urban geography project to help protect a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood
• Discussion of community-based learning while having to erase the boundaries within a university between traditional and nontraditional students
• Action research in a visual anthropology class
• Collaborative action research at Interchange: a UK model
• The outcomes of course-based action research in the community and what we can learn about how to do them well

Nila Ginger Hofman is assistant professor of anthropology at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. She has been teaching and conducting research amongst hidden urban populations in Chicago and in Zagreb, Croatia. She is the author of Renewed Survival: Jewish Community Life in Croatia (Lexington Books, 2006) and a number of articles that record the lives of hidden populations including undocumented immigrants and injection drug users in Chicago.

Howard Rosing is an anthropologist and executive director of the Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. He has conducted research on issues of food access in the Dominican Republic and the United States.

About the Authors.

Introduction.

1 Food for More Than Thought: Course-Based Action Research on Corner Stores in Chicago (Howard Rosing).

2 Participatory Action Research and the University Classroom (Beth Skilken Catlett and Irene Clare Beck).

3 Healthy Wednesdays in Our Hood: An Exploration of an Anthropological Service-Learning With Premeds (Sam Beck).

4 Youth Take Charge: Social Action in a University-Community Partnership (Joan Arches).

5 Practicing Active Learning: Introducing Urban Geography and Engaging Community in Pilsen, Chicago (Winifred Curran, Euan Hague, and Harpreet Gill).

6 Paradoxes of Praxis: Community-Based Learning at a Community-Based University (Daniel Block and Mark J. Bouman).

7 Action Research in a Visual Anthropology Class: Lessons, Frustrations, and Achievements (S. Elizabeth Bird, Jess Paul Ambiee, and James Kuzin).

8 Collaborative Action Research at Interchange: A U.K. Model (David Hall and Irene Hall).

9 Checks and Balances: The Aftermath of Course-Based Action Research (Nila Ginger Hofman).

Index.