TTIX2015

1. BEYOND VOICE
Action Learning Case Studies
An improvised version of Action Research to engage
community in research
Udan Fernando, PhD
Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA)
Sri Lanka

2. The Setting

3. The Setting
• Active Citizens’ Development Network (ACDN)
• ACDN = Three clusters of community level
groups from three Provinces : North, East and
Uva - agriculture, fisheries
• Various forms of engagement with Local
Government Authorities: collaboration,
resistance, combination

4. What ACDN wanted know research
questions

5. What ACDN wanted know : research
questions
• What have we done? Take stock of various interventions
(change processes)
• How have we done? Patterns of action  Reconstruct
strategies (change strategies, abstraction)
• What worked (and did not work) and why ?
Failures/successes: context, conditions, factors (discern
dynamics of change, analysis)
• How to do things better? Learning  Improved Practice

6. The Process

7. The Process
• Community functionaries and CEPA
collaboratively formulate the research questions
and methodology
• Community carries out the research : data
gathering, processing, analysis and
interpretation
• CEPA facilitates, (research) quality assures, and
documents the research process

8. The steps

9. The steps
• Collaboratively finalize purpose, research questions and
design
• Organize existing data: records from community group,
key person interviews (KPIs), Focus Group Discussions
(FGDs) with representatives of the community
• Story Telling Workshop – a multi-stakeholder exercise to
construct the narrative for preliminary analysis and
interpretation [a variety of tools used]
• Triangulation and validation: secondary data, extra KPIs
and FGDs

10. So what?
the value addition

11. Knowledge for change – enabling
communities to address/solve problems
that matter them

12. Demystifying knowledge and
research

13. Democratizing knowledge

14. Blurring the divide between the
‘researcher’ and the ‘researched’

15. Revisiting (new) orthodoxies of
research

16. So what? the value addition
• Knowledge for change – enabling communities
to address/solve problems that matter them
• Demystifying knowledge and research
• Democratizing knowledge
• Blurring the divide between the ‘researcher’ and
the ‘researched’
• Revisiting (new) orthodoxies of research

17. Thank You
www.cepa.lk