Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an overarching methodology taken up across various disciplines. Rather than a specific approach, CBPR encompasses varied action-based methodologies. While many disciplines use CBPR methodologies in their work, Fat Studies has yet to broadly create research that uses CBPR methodologies. Fat Studies…

Students as partners (SaP) is becoming an increasingly common notion in higher education , but we continue to grapple with questions around how to best involve our students with the work we do as educators. Queries around responsibility, accountability and trust are raised when considering SaP. Participatory action research is presented from an…

In this paper, I discuss participatory action research (PAR) as a way to support social and political engagement and develop civil society. After a short overview of my personal journey to participatory action research, I describe a general structure that I have developed for organizing PAR projects and a short introduction to the state of civil…

The article demonstrates an action research approach for constructing Transformative Sustainability Pedagogy (TSP) to empower teachers for a sustainable future. The starting point for the TSP was a Transformative Education for Gross National Happiness (GNH) teacher action research project in Bhutan (2010-2013) -- a collaboration between the…

Learning spaces in higher education are fraught with colonial barriers such as teacher-centered, front facing, stark, feelingless, and unwelcoming classrooms that diminish students' feelings of well-being. For pre-service teachers, these are also the types of classrooms that they often inherit as they foray into the profession. Three Bachelor of…

In times of globalization we are facing a crisis of care. The invisibility of relations of domination and oppression against nature, women and girls, as well as the elderly, generate inequalities and structural problems that increase the unsustainability of life on the planet. The uncertainty towards the future, generated by climate change,…

Transformative approaches are essential for teachers, researchers, and teacher educators to rethink their identities and roles and to position themselves as both collaborators with and learners from immigrant families and communities. In this article, we share how Transformational Theory and Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) creates…

Reflective practice and inquiry are aspects of teacher professional practice that characterise teachers as learners. Reflective practice in some form is considered in contemporary education as an essential activity for teachers and teacher educators. "Inquiry as professional development" and "inquiry as research", on the other…

The senior year design students and I were dismayed when my linear teaching and their habitual rote learning failed in a Middle Eastern University. The gulf between the curricular objectives and our teaching-learning methods intrigued me. I turned this into an action research project that sought to answer the questions, 'What paradigm shift might…

Douglas and Ellis (2011, p. 175) suggest that institutionally universities and schools are required to work with different conceptual tool-kits. Seeking to minimise the potential standoff between academic and practitioner knowledge, and, therefore, to enhance the learning of student teachers, means, they suggest, rethinking both the social…

This article focuses on the deconstruction of an inter-university action research project that has allowed us to rethink our teaching and research, questioning the social, political and ethical dimensions of the university. Following the pre-assembly proposal to promote participatory convergence, organized within the framework of the 1st Global…

At a large, urban community college located in the Northeastern United States, a group of faculty interested in helping students assume agency in their own learning used the methodology of Collaborative Inquiry (CI) as a way to examine the factors that help or hinder this process. Unexpected was the epistemological shift they underwent as a result…

This paper discusses how major breakthroughs in generating, analysing and disseminating action research about problem-based learning were made through the medium of poetry. I used poetry in three ways: as data, as an interpretive device and as a reflective medium. Poetry helped me to disseminate my research in provocative, memorable and…

In 2009 we developed an experiential Research Writing course to help academics at our university to become more productive and successful writers. Our aim was to create a stimulating environment in which each participant's voice, knowledge and experience was valued, and where learning was characterised by optimism, creativity and energy. In this…

This article introduces the idea of Africentric schools to the Toronto School Board as a counter alternative to promote the idea of including the myriad identities of students in the learning process. The sociological and philosophical tenets of Africentric schooling are presented under the headings of: The Afrocentric Idea; Groundedness in the…