Community-Owned Knowledge : The Promise of Collaborative Action Research

Community Owned Knowledge encourages educational institutions across grade levels to incorporate all members into knowledge production, arguing that developing shared understandings, skills, dispositions, and reflective practices together as an organization fosters a shared sense of purpose that better delivers on the promises of a stated mission.

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.