Publications https://urbanresearchnetwork.org Urban Research-Based Action Network Thu, 08 Feb 2024 01:08:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.4 https://i0.wp.com/urbanresearchnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/cropped-URBAN.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Publications https://urbanresearchnetwork.org 32 32 Professor Dana Wright’s New Book: “Active Learning: Social Justice Education and Participatory Action Research” https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/professor-dana-wrights-new-book-active-learning-social-justice-education-and-participatory-action-research/ Tue, 17 Nov 2015 15:31:52 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=3096 Read more…]]> Active Learning: Social Justice Education and Participatory Action Research

Dana Wright (Routledge)

This new book was published in Routledge’s Teaching/Learning Social Justice series. It is endorsed on the back cover by Mark Warren and Pedro Noguera and includes a forward by Lee Anne Bell.

Here is the table of contents and link to purchase the book: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138821712[routledge.com]

Active Learning examines a participatory action research (PAR) project led by young people as a teaching and learning approach with implications for pedagogy, schools, educational policy and education reform and transformation.

In this PAR project, student researchers collaborated with a community and youth organizing group and two youth development organizations to answer the question, “What do young people really need in our community?” Through a participatory education model, student researchers address salient issues impacting their neighborhood community–hyper policing, race, gender and gentrification—to fight for a youth center and youth leadership programing in their neighborhood. The description of the book is below.

Book overview: While many educators acknowledge the challenges of a curriculum shaped by test preparation, implementing meaningful new teaching strategies can be difficult. Active Learning presents an examination of innovative, interactive teaching strategies that were successful in engaging urban students who struggled with classroom learning.

Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the book proposes participatory action research as a viable approach to teaching and learning that supports the development of multiple literacies. As Wright argues, in connecting learning to authentic purposes and real world consequences, participatory action research can serve as a model for meaningful urban school reform.

]]> Professor Ben Kirshner’s New Book: “Youth Activism in an Era of Education Inequality” https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/professor-ben-kirshners-new-book-youth-activism-in-an-era-of-education-inequality/ Tue, 17 Nov 2015 15:29:33 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=3094 Read more…]]> Youth Activism in an Era of Education Inequality


BEN KIRSHNER (NYU Press) ($27, paper).

The book is part of NYU’s Qualitative Studies in Psychology series. See below for a blurb. It is available for order from NYU Press[nyupress.org] or other fine stores.

This is what democracy looks like: Youth organizers in Colorado negotiate new school discipline policies to end the school to jail track. Latino and African American students march to district headquarters to protest high school closure. Young immigration rights activists persuade state legislators to pass a bill to make in-state tuition available to undocumented state residents. Students in an ESL class collect survey data revealing the prevalence of racism and xenophobia.

These examples, based on ten years of research by youth development scholar Ben Kirshner, show young people of color building political power during an era of racial inequality, diminished educational opportunity, and an atrophied public square. The book’s case studies analyze what these experiences mean for young people and why they are good for democracy. What is youth activism and how does it contribute to youth development? How might collective movements of young people expand educational opportunity and participatory democracy? The interdependent relationship between youths’ political engagement, their personal development, and democratic renewal is the central focus of this book. Kirshner argues that youth and societal institutions are strengthened when young people, particularly those most disadvantaged by educational inequity, turn their critical gaze to education systems and participate in efforts to improve them.

]]> New Book by Shawn Ginwright: Hope and Healing in Urban Education https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/new-book-by-shawn-ginwright-hope-and-healing-in-urban-education/ Fri, 28 Aug 2015 20:19:54 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=3002 Read more…]]>
Hope and Healing in Urban Education is the latest work by Shawn Ginwright, Associate Professor of Education in the Africana Studies Department and Senior Research Associate for the Cesar Chavez Institute for Public Policy at San Francisco State University.  The book proposes a new movement of healing justice to repair the damage done by structural violence in urban communities. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from around the country, this book chronicles how teacher activists employ healing strategies in stressed schools and community organizations, and work to reverse negative impacts on academic achievement and civic engagement, supporting their students to become powerful civic actors. Hope and Healing in Urban Education examines how social change can be enacted from within to restore a sense of hope to besieged communities and counteract the effects of poverty, violence, and hopelessness.

Learn more about the book and how to save 20% here!

]]> Updated Guidelines for Peer Reviewing Community Based Research https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/updated-guidelines-for-peer-reviewing-community-based-research/ Wed, 26 Aug 2015 21:13:56 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=2997 Read more…]]> The URBAN scholar-activist network’s publications committee has drafted guidelines to aid editors and reviewers of sociological journals and conference papers in assessing community- based research submissions. The guidelines are also intended to support community-based researchers who are presenting studies for critical reviews.  Please send your thoughts and questions to charlotte_ryan@uml.edu.

Check out the relevant documents below!

Executive Summary

Full Guidelines

]]> New Book on Social Justice Education and PAR https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/new-book-on-social-justice-education-and-par/ Wed, 20 May 2015 23:06:49 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=2840 Read more…]]> Active Learning: Social Justice Education and Participatory Action Research examines a participatory action research (PAR) project led by young people as a teaching and learning approach with implications for pedagogy, schools, educational policy and education reform and transformation.  This book was written by Dana E. Wright and published by Routledge in March 2015.

In the PAR project explored in the book, student researchers collaborated with a community and youth organizing group and two youth development organizations to answer the question, “What do young people really need in our community?” Through a participatory education model, student researchers address salient issues impacting their neighborhood community–hyper policing, race, gender and gentrification—to fight for a youth center and youth leadership programing in their neighborhood. The description of the book is below.

While many educators acknowledge the challenges of a curriculum shaped by test preparation, implementing meaningful new teaching strategies can be difficult. Active Learning presents an examination of innovative, interactive teaching strategies that were successful in engaging urban students who struggled with classroom learning.

Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the book proposes participatory action research as a viable approach to teaching and learning that supports the development of multiple literacies. As Wright argues, in connecting learning to authentic purposes and real world consequences, participatory action research can serve as a model for meaningful urban school reform.

Click here to check out the table of contents and buy the book!  Click here for info on how to get a 20% discount!

]]> Civic Engagement, Civic Development, and Higher Education https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/civic-engagement-civic-development-and-higher-education/ Mon, 23 Feb 2015 01:51:10 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=2760 Read more…]]> How can colleges and universities build capacity for civic engagement and civic development? Previous monographs in the Civic Series have examined various ways of achieving this purpose—strengthening student learning, involving the faculty, and establishing campus-community partnerships. Civic Engagement, Civic Development, and Higher Education, the fourth in the series, focuses on the instrumental role of leadership and highlights the importance of individuals who are integral to the building process. Included among the authors are presidents, chancellors, deans, and distinguished professors who recognize the infrastructure required for implementation, and whose leadership takes the work to the next level. These are individuals who have stepped forward with ideas, fueled by values and visions, that provide direction and inspiration for the work, without which little change is likely to last. These kinds of individuals are not the only ones involved in the building process, as change can originate almost anywhere in an institution, but they are among the most important. The authors each operate in distinct types of institutions—including small and large, public and private, from community colleges to research universities—but, together, they recognize that individuals with ideas and inspiration are forces that help build capacity for the civic mission of higher education.

The above summary text is taken from the forward to the report and is written by Barry Checkoway, General Series Editor.

Read more here.

Author(s):

Editor: Jill N. Reich

Series Editor: Barry Checkoway

Publication Date:
2014

]]> The Formation of a Grassroots Movement https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/the-formation-of-a-grassroots-movement-the-association-of-latin-american-gardeners-of-los-angeles-challenges-city-hall/ Thu, 15 Jan 2015 23:04:44 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=2709 Read more…]]> When the city of Los Angeles banned gas-powered leaf blowers in 1996, the law sparked one of the most dynamic grassroots campaigns by Latino immigrants in recent history. Latino immigrant gardeners, working with a small group of Chicana/o activists, organized the Association of Latin American Gardeners of Los Angeles (ALAGLA), which pressured city leaders to reverse the ban. ALAGLA pursued its objectives by engaging in the political process, taking direct action, advocating technological adaptations, and reframing the gardeners and their tools in a positive light. Turning public opinion in their favor, they persuaded city leaders to void the draconian elements of the ordinance, which included a misdemeanor charge, a $1,000 fine, and jail time for gardeners using the blowers. ALAGLA’s movement can be compared in some ways to earlier immigrant-organizing efforts by organized labor, notably the United Farm Workers and the Service Employees International Union’s Justice for Janitors campaign, but it is also distinguished from them by ALAGLA’s nonbureaucratic grassroots structure. The association’s campaign for social and economic justice shows the potential for collective action among marginalized immigrant workers and petty entrepreneurs in the informal economy.

Read more here.

Author(s):

Alvaro Huerta and Alfonso Morales

Publication Date:

2014

Image by Alvaro Huerta

]]> Guidelines for Peer Reviewing Community Based Research https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/guidelines-for-peer-reviewing-community-based-research/ Tue, 26 Aug 2014 14:30:36 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=2507 Read more…]]>

The URBAN Publications Committee has drafted these guidelines for evaluating community- based research (CBR). In so doing, they hope to help researchers, editors, and reviewers seeking to identify high-quality community-based research to place in their journals. The Committee welcomes your feedback.  Please send your thoughts and questions to charlotte_ryan@uml.edu.

Check out the relevant documents below!

Executive Summary

Full Guidelines

ASA and SSSP Pre-conferences related to the guidelines

]]> Amnesty or Abolition? Felons, illegals, and the case for a new abolition movement https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/amnesty-or-abolition-felons-illegals-and-the-case-for-a-new-abolition-movement/ Sun, 20 Jul 2014 15:04:19 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=2461 Read more…]]> Nearly 10 percent of California’s residents are prisoners, parolees, felons, or undocumented immigrants. Although differently constituted, these groups form a caste of persons living in the Golden State for whom neither democracy nor freedom is guaranteed. Prisoners, parolees, and undocumented immigrants cannot vote. Parolees, felons, and undocumented immigrants are variously denied access to public housing, food stamps, educational loans, and employment. Prisoners, deportees, and immigrant detainees are forcibly removed from their families and communities, while undocumented immigrants, parolees, and persons under warrant live with the constant fear of arrest.

Disfranchised, denied core protections of the social welfare state, and imprisoned, detained, or under threat of warrant or deportation, the status of undocumented immigrants, prisoners, and ex-offenders in the United States pivots on shared exclusions from full political and social membership. This story of democracy denied and freedom unfound is one of clear racial significance across the country, with blacks and Latinos comprising an extraordinary 60 percent of the total prison population in the United States.  Home to a substantive slice of the nation’s undocumented and incarcerated populations, California is a heartland of racial exclusion in the United States today.

Read more here.

Author(s):

Kelly Lytle Hernández

Publication Date:

2011

 

Image by Amit Gupta

]]> Establishing and Evaluating Equitable Partnerships https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/establishing-and-evaluating-equitable-partnerships/ Fri, 03 Jan 2014 15:44:57 +0000 http://urbanresearchnetwork.org/?p=1982 Read more…]]> In this paper, the authors present two models for establishing and evaluating partnerships. They also provide a working definition of a partnership, propose strategies for identifying resources for starting and maintaining partnerships, and provide several methods for evaluating them. Their purpose is to increase understanding of the dynamics of building stronger, more equity-based partnerships. Models recommended are the Give-Get and Double Rainbow.

Read the article here or download the entire issue here

Author(s):

James E. McLean

Bruce A. Behringer

Publication Date:

2008

 

Thank you to the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship (JCES) for kindly allowing URBAN to share this resource.  JCES is published twice a year at The University of Alabama. It is a peer-reviewed international research journal through which faculty, staff, students, and community partners disseminate scholarly works. JCES integrates teaching, research, and community engagement in all disciplines, addressing critical problems identified through a community-participatory process.

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