[Tps] TPS/ECPR Policy Network - Participatory research Interpretive analysis

[Navdeep Mathur]

>From Dvora Yanow
 
-----Original Message-----


Colleagues, 
 
I am forwarding this request because some on the TPS list might be able to help out here.
 
Please direct replies to Warren Yoder [wyoder at ppcms.org]
 
Best,
Dvora
 
From: interpretationandmethods-bounces at listserv.cddc.vt.edu [mailto:interpretationandmethods-bounces at listserv.cddc.vt.edu]On Behalf Of Warren Yoder
Sent: donderdag 22 februari 2007 22:33
To: interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu
Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Request
 
The Public Policy Center of Mississippi has received a grant to organize a child care quality improvement campaign in our predominately low-income, African American community. Are there 2 or 3 people willing to volunteer an hour to help us think through the process of incorporating into this campaign the lived experience of mothers who received limited educations, now work in dead end jobs, and have children starting through the educational process?
 
Gunilla Dahlberg and Peter Moss have shown that developmental psychologists constructed the child development discourse that underlies this view of child care quality. The ideas of these experts have become the dominant discourse in the field and are now being institutionalized around the world, closely following the process first described by Maarten Hajer.
 
Peter deLeon has pointed out that government programs constructed without citizen participation tend to have limited effectiveness. In our experience as practitioners this is especially true for programs developed by experts without regard for the lived experience of the disadvantaged communities. The way the problem is named and framed, the identities and norms specified for the participants, the narratives and metaphors used all make sense to those with power and expertise, but they are foreign to the "target population." We fear our campaign will fall into this trap.
 
We plan to expand on participatory poverty research techniques developed for the World Bank. But we are trying a "self-focusing group" technique we piloted in another setting. The convener welcomes the participants, explains the general topic, and asks an open-ended topic question carefully worded to avoid invoking the dominant discourse. The group then chooses its own leaders, negotiates a joint response with minimal follow-up questions from the convener, and composes its own summary. We are listening for the names, frames, identities, norms, narratives, and metaphors embedded in what Dvora Yanow calls the local knowledge.
 
As you can tell, we've gotten many of our ideas from the interpretive policy analysts who hang out on this list. I can answer questions on this list, but our funder has asked I not release too much information in public just yet. Any wise people with a little spare time to review our plan and then our findings?
 
Warren Yoder
Public Policy Center
of Mississippi