Community-Owned Knowledge: The Promise of Collaborative Action Research

This book aims at providing the framework and the tools for the transformation of the workplace. The core framework here proposed to teachers, school administrators, counselors, parents, and education leaders from kindergarten to college consists of building domestic knowledge. Unearthing and fostering an organization's own knowledge, the book posits, translates into collectively shared understandings, skills, and dispositions which, in the aggregate translates into local capacity. The more members of an organization become involved in knowledge production, the denser its ability to deliver its stated mission. When an organization systematically implements a critical, intentional, and collective action to dig into its own day-to-day practices and brings up to the surface knowledge that has not been systematized, the higher the chances for the organization to create a shared sense of purpose and the know-how to deliver its promises. Thus, the book walks the reader from the very first to the last step of this knowledge making through an innovative approach to collaborative action research.

Gilberto Arriaza (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Professor at California State University, East Bay where he teaches research methodology. Arriaza is the coauthor of The Power of Talk: How Words Change Our Lives and Collaborative Teacher Leadership: How Teachers Can Foster Equitable Schools as well as numerous scholarly articles around social and cultural capital, community empowerment, and school reform.

Lyn Scott (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Professor at California State University, East Bay. A bilingual educator, Scott serves on the Board of Californians Together, a coalition championing the success of English learners, and is a past president of the California Association for Bilingual Teacher Education.