Women Reaching Women: a story of change. The role of narrative in building trust and commitment during an action research project

Abstract

Women Reaching Women was a three-year action research project aimed at raising awareness of world poverty, gender inequality and climate change. The project brought together the National Federation of Women's Institutes, Oxfam, the Everyone Foundation and a unique group of 28 women drawn from Women's Institutes across the country. The project explored what motivates us as individuals to act and how to overcome a limited sense of personal agency in comparison with the scale of gender and international development issues. Narrative was central to creating a strong sense of commitment to the project and building the necessary trust between the participants, enabling them to deal with the challenging content. In utilising personal and evocative narratives both within a series of workshops and through the action research cycle reports (produced annually), this paper argues that the women involved were more able to engage with the 'wicked problems' inherent in gender and international development. This paper also responds to an acknowledged gap in the literature in terms of gender, international development and climate change. The literature on wicked problems appears to focus on links with action research, policy development and networks, but there is little from the perspective of gender and action research in informal adult education.

Wicked problems: a mapping review of the literature

“…Similarly, Alrøe and Noe (2012) argue for the need of constructivist and perspectivist theories for addressing wicked problems. Other authors argue for the usefulness of, for example, postnormal science approaches (Batie 2008), social constructivism (Grint 2005), narrative inquiry and action research (Langley 2012), and pragmatism (Weber and Khademian 2008). These calls for a wide range of specific theoretical perspectives provide yet another illustration of the large diversity in epistemological, but also ontological and methodological, assumptions in the wicked problems literature.…”

Editorial

“…There are at least two ways in which trust is manifested in action research (Feldman 2015): issues related to the trustworthiness of action research (for example , Feldman 2007;Heikkinen, Huttunen, and Syrjälä 2007;Winter 2002); and issues related to the trust among those engaged in action research collaboratively (for example, Baskerville and Goldblatt 2009;Day and Hadfield 2004;Langley 2012). We can see both of these manifestations in the articles in this issue.…”

O Conflito No Jardim De Infância Como Oportunidade De Desenvolver Uma Cultura De Mediação E De Paz

“…Em ambas as investigações, os dados recolhidos foram submetidos à técnica de análise de conteúdo, tendo-se procedido à sua categorização segundo os princípios de Bardin (2011). (Baskerville, & Goldblatt, 2009;Maister, Green, & Galford, 2000;Langley, 2012;Zeni, 2009). No que concerne aos resultados, foi dada primazia às entrevistas quer iniciais, quer finais, sendo evidenciada uma evolução da consciencialização das educadoras sobre as implicações do processo de gestão dos conflitos entre pares no desenvolvimento social das crianças.…”