Participatory action research has emerged as a popular form of service

learning in distressed urban and rural communities. The successful

development of a community-owned farmers’ market in East St. Louis,
Illinois, illustrates the principles, methods, and challenges of this
approach to social science and community action.

Participatory Action Research as

Service Learning
Kenneth M. Reardon

Public and private colleges and universities have been subjected to a steady
stream of criticism throughout the 1990s, both for a lack of research that
addresses our major environmental, economic, and social problems and for a
failure to prepare graduates fully to meet the challenges of socially responsible
citizenship.
Increasing numbers of colleges and universities are responding by encour-
aging faculty to incorporate community service learning in their teaching and
research. By doing so, students have the opportunity to acquire important new
knowledge, skills, and civic competencies while providing services to dis-
tressed urban and rural communities. Several major universities, including
Providence College, Portland State University, and Rutgers University, have
gone so far as to make participation in service learning a requirement for bac-
calaureate graduation.
The establishment of ongoing university-community partnerships is one
means through which educational institutions have attempted to enrich stu-
dents’ educational experiences and encourage faculty to conduct research rel-
evant to the community. Although faculty, students, and administrators have
a growing interest in partnerships with communities, community residents and
leaders have not always shared this enthusiasm. Too many past projects with
universities have generally provided more resources for the campus than the
local community, a situation perceived as evidence of an unequal partnership.
When university research into the causes of social problems does not also
address potential solutions, it is viewed by the community as meeting cam-
pus research goals without responding to community needs. The professional-
expert research model, which restricts community input, still dominates most

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING , no. 73, Spring 1998 © Jossey-Bass Publishers 57
58 ACADEMIC SERVICE LEARNING

campus-community partnerships. In addition, leaders in low-income commu-

nities are painfully aware of the role local colleges and universities often play in
promoting uneven patterns of development through their policies regarding
labor, investment, purchasing, property management, and land acquisition.
In seeking to overcome these obstacles to resident involvement in local
service learning projects, university scholars are increasingly adopting partic-
ipatory action research methods (Hall, 1993). This emerging research para-
digm seeks to enhance the problem-solving capacities of community
participants by actively involving residents, business leaders, and elected offi-
cials in every phase of the research along with the university-trained profes-
sionals (Whyte, 1991).

Historical Antecedents
Three distinctive bodies of work laid the foundation for the emergence of par-
ticipatory action research as a major new social science paradigm and method-
ology for social change in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s (Whyte,
Greenwood, and Lazes, 1991). The first was the development of mutual self-
help networks among subsistence farmers in Tanzania and other developing
countries in the mid–1970s as an alternative to the largely unsuccessful United
Nations–funded “Green Revolution” that featured top-down agricultural tech-
nology transfer projects from the northern to the southern hemisphere. The
second was the creation of a series of labor/management committees on indus-
trial competitiveness and innovation initially organized by Einor Thursrud of
the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project and later by Eric Trist of the Tavi-
stock Institute. The third was the proliferation in the United States of tactical
research activities by direct action organizing projects representing low-income
families inspired by the grassroots organizing and empowerment philosophy
of the late Saul Alinsky (Boyte, Booth, and Max, 1986). These efforts led to the
development of a highly participatory form of community research in the
1980s that integrated the “local” knowledge of those most affected by a social
issue with the “expert” knowledge of university-trained professionals to create
innovative solutions to society’s most intractable social problems (Argyris, Put-
nam, and Smith, 1985).
One of the earliest examples of a successful university-based participatory
action research project took place in the mid–1970s when Eric Trist from the
University of Pennsylvania and William F. Whyte from Cornell University
assisted local labor leaders, plant managers, and municipal officials of
Jamestown, New York, in an effort to reverse the decline of their region’s fine
furniture industry (Meek, Nelson, and Whyte, 1983). Scholars were particu-
larly interested in this highly collaborative community assistance effort in light
of the perceived failure of the professional-expert model of urban research in
which outside consultants, who often have little prior knowledge of the com-
munity being studied, control the research and restrict the participation of local
residents to an advisory role during the final stages of the planning process.
 PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH 59

Key Characteristics
Participatory action research focuses on the information and analytical needs
of society’s most economically, politically, and socially marginalized groups and
communities, and pursues research on issues determined by the leaders of
these groups. It actively involves local residents as co-investigators on an equal
basis with university-trained scholars in each step of the research process, and
is expected to follow a nonlinear course throughout the investigation as the
problem being studied is “reframed” to accommodate new knowledge that
emerges. This research generally requires the examination of a number of
research questions in a serial fashion, and is best accomplished through
research designs that combine quantitative and qualitative methods.
Participatory action researchers intentionally promote social learning
processes that can develop the organizational, analytical, and communication
skills of local leaders and their community-based organizations. They place a
premium on the discovery of knowledge that can lead to immediate improve-
ments in local conditions and are willing to act on less-than-perfect informa-
tion in order to quickly address critical issues confronting the poor. They are,
therefore, interested in promoting the replication of social inventions that are
developed by local problem-solving teams through the widest possible dis-
semination in academic journals and the popular press.

Benefits
Participatory action research has provided opportunities for faculty skilled in
its methods to conduct research relevant to community residents’ needs while
providing service learning opportunities for their students.
Involving local leaders with research enhances the problem-solving capac-
ity of community-based organizations. By actively involving local residents in
the problem-identification and definition phases of the research process,
researchers reduce the possibility that the central research questions will be
misidentified or ill-defined. By recruiting local residents to participate in the col-
lection of field data, action researchers increase the number of individuals will-
ing to share their knowledge and perceptions of the local community. Engaging
local residents in the analysis of field data can minimize the number of errors in
interpretation that occur when analyzing data. By actively involving residents in
each step of the research process and soliciting residents’ viewpoints regarding
optimal solutions to local problems, researchers are more likely to identify strate-
gies that will evoke broad-based citizen support as well as official endorsement.
This increases the potential for implementation of recommendations emerging
from these research efforts. By sharing control over the research process with
local residents, action researchers begin to overcome the distance established by
previous campus-controlled community work. Finally, by promoting social learn-
ing processes that generate considerable payoffs for both campus and commu-
nity participants, community research projects are likely to be more sustainable.
60 ACADEMIC SERVICE LEARNING

Regardless of how students become involved in action research, through

classes, volunteer work, or to complete the requirements for a degree, there are
rich educational benefits to be acquired. In addition to learning action research
methodology, they also learn about the opportunities and the dilemmas that
arise with campus-community partnerships. They obtain hands-on experience
working with local community leaders on the resolution of critical community
concerns, thus enabling them to be more skilled and confident professionals
when they enter the working world. They become more informed citizens by
facing, often for the first time, the harsh realities and limited opportunities of
life in very poor communities. In interdisciplinary projects, they learn to work
collaboratively with other students across traditional academic boundaries.

The East St. Louis Farmers’ Market

The proposal for an East St. Louis Farmers’ Market emerged from a three-year-
old community-university partnership involving the Winstanley/Industry Park
Neighborhood Organization (WIPNO) and the University of Illinois’s East St.
Louis Action Research Project (ESLARP), through which faculty and students
in urban planning, architecture, and landscape architecture work on com-
munity research and service projects. Community residents and university
students, having successfully collaborated on the development of a compre-
hensive neighborhood stabilization plan for this 120-block area, worked
together to complete a series of small-scale physical improvement projects.
Following their renovation of an existing municipal minipark, expansion of
a county-sponsored Head Start playground, and construction of a 23,000-
square-foot children’s play space, the members of this partnership decided to
focus their efforts on activities aimed at lowering the neighborhood’s high
unemployment rate, which was perceived to be at the core of many of the
area’s most serious problems, including crime, chemical dependency, child
neglect, and domestic violence.
In the fall of 1992, WIPNO recruited a small group of neighborhood res-
idents, religious leaders, municipal officials, and university students to form
an economic development task force to investigate a range of job creation
strategies (Reardon, 1996). The limited success of the City of East St. Louis’s
externally oriented business recruitment efforts prompted WIPNO’s task force
members to consider various import-substitution-based economic develop-
ment policies. Under an import substitution model, economic growth occurs
when an expansion of local retail opportunities allows residents and institu-
tions to purchase goods and services locally which they have previously bought
outside of the community. These recaptured purchases provide direct sales to
local businesses, enabling them to expand their activities and increase city rev-
enues from local sales taxes. In the fall of 1992, the economic development
task force worked with an introductory undergraduate planning class to design
a household purchasing survey to determine local consumer preferences, shop-
ping patterns, and satisfaction with products and services.
 PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH 61

In the spring of 1993, the task force, assisted by University of Illinois stu-
dents participating in a community development workshop, completed a door-
to-door survey of 550 households that identified food as the largest consumer
spending item in the average East St. Louis household budget. The majority of
city residents surveyed had been forced to make their weekly food purchases
outside of East St. Louis, and many were very dissatisfied with the product
selection and prices offered by nearby suburban food stores. Over time, the
task force became increasingly interested in the economic development poten-
tial of a community-owned farmers’ market that would expand business and
employment opportunities for East St. Louis residents while improving their
access to high-quality, low-cost, farm-fresh fruits and vegetables.
In the fall of 1993, teams of local residents and students from a neigh-
borhood planning class visited municipally operated farmers’ markets in twelve
Midwestern cities where the basic demographic profile mirrored that of East
St. Louis. They conducted interviews with customers, vendors, and market
managers regarding perceptions of their own market and the general require-
ments for a successful community-owned farmers’ market. They learned about
the importance of a central location, a low-cost structure, the variety and pric-
ing of farm-fresh items, skillful market management, an ongoing advertising
and public relations program, and attractive facilities. The results of this
research led the task force to recommend the establishment by WIPNO of a
community-owned and -controlled farmers’ market in or near the East St.
Louis central business district.
In the spring of 1994, the task force, with the assistance of a graduate
planning student and faculty member, developed funding for such a facility
(Whetten, 1994). The task force collaborated with three graduate architecture,
landscape architecture, and urban and regional planning studios to identify the
most appropriate site for the market, design an attractive yet inexpensive mar-
ket structure, and secure the necessary local and state building and health per-
mits to establish a facility where fresh foods could be sold. With the students’
help, WIPNO was able to mobilize a large number of community and campus
volunteers, who donated more than 43,000 hours of time to transform a long-
abandoned used car lot into an attractive, open air, retail food market. When
the physical rehabilitation of the market structure was completed, these grad-
uate students helped the task force recruit fourteen local residents interested
in operating stands in the new market, and worked with WIPNO to design and
offer a sixteen-hour small business training program to provide would-be mer-
chants with basic skills in purchasing, marketing, merchandising, pricing, cus-
tomer relations, and accounting.
The East St. Louis Farmers’ Market was opened by WIPNO on May 4,
1994, with fourteen of its forty stalls rented. Seven of the eight merchants in
this first season were East St. Louis residents. The market has generated
approximately $395,000 in direct sales during its 1994, 1995, and 1996 mar-
ket seasons, which helped the city capture an additional $961,824 in import
substitution benefits that would have, in the absence of the market, gone to
62 ACADEMIC SERVICE LEARNING

suburban stores. The market has also become an important new site for com-
munity and civic activities in the East St. Louis central business district.

Research and Service Learning Outcomes

The Farmers’ Market project produced significant community research and ser-
vice learning outcomes during its first two years of operation. As a participatory
action research project, it enabled community residents, local institutional lead-
ers, and university students and faculty to develop a clear analysis of the city’s eco-
nomic problems as well as a forceful critique of its business recruitment approach
to economic development. Along with the results of the household purchasing
survey, this led the task force to devise an alternative economic development strat-
egy based on the principles and methods of import substitution, resulting in the
development of a local farmers’ market that has generated important new busi-
ness, employment, and educational and cultural benefits for local residents.
The research process pursued by the task force provided its participants
with valuable participatory action research experience, which many of them
have subsequently applied to a series of increasingly ambitious neighborhood
improvement projects. The City of East St. Louis communicated its support
for this type of community research by providing the University with $190,000
to establish a Neighborhood Technical Assistance Center, which opened in
August, 1996, to offer participatory action research and other forms of tech-
nical assistance to community-based organizations involved in neighborhood
improvement.
The project also provided University of Illinois undergraduate and grad-
uate students with important service learning opportunities. Five graduate stu-
dents participated as campus representatives in all phases of the task force’s
organizing, research, design, and development activities. In addition, three
graduate studios, involving seventy-five architecture, landscape architecture,
and urban and regional planning students, gained invaluable hands-on devel-
opment experience assisting the task force with site selection, site planning,
landscape design, building design, zoning review, building inspection, volun-
teer mobilization, proposal writing, physical rehabilitation, and small business
training. Three students completed their master’s thesis requirements by con-
ducting a market feasibility study, devising a retail marketing and merchan-
dising curriculum for new merchants, and evaluating alternative funding
sources for the market’s expansion. Over one hundred undergraduates gained
valuable community outreach experience by collecting household spending
data for the task force in East St. Louis’s residential neighborhoods. Fifteen of
these undergraduates assisted the task force in conducting field trips to a dozen
successful farmers’ markets sponsored by public agencies. Many additional stu-
dents gained valuable experience as volunteers, working with community res-
idents to help build the market and prepare it for its opening.
Consistent increases in the number of students enrolled in classes involv-
ing participatory research in East St. Louis, from eleven in 1990 to three hun-
 PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH 63

dred in 1996, demonstrate the enormous value students place on these field-
based learning experiences. The large number of visits to the East St. Louis
Action Research Project web site by domestic and international students also
emphasizes the widespread interest these projects have stimulated.

Requirements for Successful Participatory

Action Research
The farmers’ market case illustrates how students from a variety of disciplines
with differing levels of educational preparation were successfully involved in
an ongoing participatory action research project that produced significant ben-
efits for both community and campus participants. The case highlights the re-
ciprocal learning that occurs in participatory action research projects in which
the local knowledge of community residents is joined with the professional
knowledge offered by university faculty and students to arrive at innovative
solutions to community problems.
The development of similar projects on other college and university cam-
puses will require faculty from a variety of disciplines to be trained in basic
experiential education, community service learning, and participatory action
research methods. To encourage faculty to participate in action research in
communities requires that institutions value this emerging research method-
ology in promotion and tenure processes.
Local residents and leaders participating in such projects with university
students and faculty must receive training in the same subject areas as the stu-
dents to enable them to participate on a more equal basis. Associate degrees in
organizational and community development technologies through community
colleges could train residents to assume leadership positions in these projects
and staff positions in community organizations that would be responsible for
implementing project plans. State universities with Cooperative Extension Ser-
vices might revise their Citizen Leadership and Volunteerism curricula to pro-
vide local leaders with a grounding in these subject areas.
As colleges and universities become more involved in projects in low-
income areas, they must be sensitive to a number of issues. If innovative solu-
tions emerging from participatory action research projects are not implemented
in some form by local authorities, colleges and universities may become light-
ning rods for community protests. If, on the other hand, marginalized groups
begin to receive a substantially larger share of public resources as a result of
these research efforts, colleges and universities may be criticized about the
redistribution of resources resulting from the empowerment process. Campus
administrators must also anticipate a certain amount of political turbulence as
their students and faculty become involved in controversial issues around
which there may initially be little community consensus.
Finally, faculty and students must be cautious in expanding their participa-
tory activities too quickly in a given distressed community to avoid overwhelm-
ing the small core of seasoned leaders who often hold these neighborhoods
64 ACADEMIC SERVICE LEARNING

together. While we would all like to see the full range of environmental, eco-
nomic, and social problems of low-income communities addressed in a holis-
tic and systematic way in the shortest possible time, we must acknowledge the
long-term disinvestment and outmigration of the past that has undermined the
quality of life in these communities. The organizational capacity of primary
agencies serving low-income areas requires careful, incremental development;
if the process is moved along too quickly, local community leaders, on whose
shoulders community revitalization rests, may become overwhelmed. Students
and faculty participating in participatory action research in low-income areas
can learn a great deal from the patience that indigenous leaders bring to their
work as agents of social change.

References
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Research and Intervention. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985.
Boyte, H. C., Booth, H., and Max, S. Citizen Action and the New American Populism. Philadel-
phia: Temple University Press, 1986.
Hall, B. “From Margins to Center: The Development and Purpose of Participatory Planning
in the United States and Canada.” American Sociologist, 1993, 23 (4), 15–28.
Meek, C. B., Nelson, R., and Whyte, W. F. “Cooperative Problem Solving in Jamestown.”
In W. F. Whyte and others (eds.), Worker Participation and Ownership: Cooperative Strate-
gies for Strengthening Local Economies. Ithaca, N. Y.: ILR Press of the New York State School
of Industrial and Labor Relations, 1983.
Reardon, K. M. Pursuing a Local Development Strategy Based on Import Substitution: The Case
of the East St. Louis Farmers’ Market. Champaign, Ill.: East St. Louis Action Research Proj-
ect, 1996.
Whetten, M. K. The Development of the East St. Louis Farmers’ Market: A Community-Owned
and Operated Public Market Seeking to Address the Family Nutrition and Economic Develop-
ment Needs of a Low-Income Community. Champaign, Ill.: East St. Louis Action Research
Project, 1994.
Whyte, W. F. Participatory Action Research. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1991.
Whyte, W. F., Greenwood, D. J., and Lazes, P. “Participatory Action Research: Through
Practice to Science in Social Research.” In W. F. Whyte (ed.), Participatory Action Research.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1991.

KENNETH M. REARDON is associate professor of urban and regional planning, Uni-

versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he conducts research and teaches in
the fields of neighborhood planning and community development and serves as the
faculty coordinator of the East St. Louis Action Research Project.