Call for Stories: Diversity Challenges in Community Research and Action

Posted by on February 28, 2003

CALL FOR STORIES OF DIVERSITY CHALLENGES IN COMMUNITY RESEARCH AND ACTION
3/15/03 deadline

Project Goals
The primary goal of this project is to delineate “Principles for Diversity in Community Research and Action” that emerge from an analysis of the everyday stories of working with diversity in community contexts. The project is designed to solicit descriptions of challenges and dilemmas, share examples of the approaches adopted to deal with them, and draw out themes, best practices, and guiding principles. The final product is intended to be practical and useful to those who work in community settings. The first step in the process is to gather as many stories of ways that diversity has presented challenges in community research and action.

Background
This project emerged out of discussions within the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA; Division 27 of the American Psychological Association) regarding the need to bring together the collective experience of those working with diversity in community settings to distill a set of principles to guide their work. There is a need for more systematic study of diversity in community-based work. Everyday diversity challenges may be rooted in struggles over competing priorities and limited resources, deep historical conflicts between groups, backlash, organizational cultural norms, and other issues. Frequently, only successes are shared, and there is an attempt to tie up complex diversity issues into neatly packaged cases or recommendations. They believe that there is much to be learned from the problematic choice points in this work. It is here that the political, historical, social, and psychological dynamics of diversity are most evident.

Call for Stories
They invite you to share your stories. Challenges involving any of the following (and their intersections) are welcome: culture, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and disabilities. Stories can include within-group, as well as between-group, challenges. Settings can include school, workplace, neighborhood, CBO, healthcare service delivery, research project, faith community, grassroots organization, or other settings where community research and/or action occur. The research/action described may have diversity as an explicit focus of the work, or a diversity-related dilemma may have emerged in the course of other work. They are particularly interested in the difficult or “messy” challenges faced, where initial efforts may have failed, where resolution is not simple and straightforward. However, any and all diversity challenges are
welcome.

Submission Process
Send a brief statement of interest to Shelly P. Harrell, Ph.D.: email (preferred) ‘sharrell@pepperdine.edu’; FAX (310) 568-5755; or mail- Pepperdine University, Graduate School of Education and Psychology, 400 Corporate Pointe, 4th floor, Culver City, CA, 90230. Please include author affiliation and full contact information. Upon receipt of your statement of interest, they will send you a more detailed description of the project and author guidelines. They ask that you review these guidelines prior to submitting your story.

Once you receive the author guidelines, they ask that you organize your story submission into the following sections: (a) Context- describe the history, setting, goals, and activities of your project/intervention; (b) Challenge/Dilemma – describe one diversity-related challenge encountered including the nature of the challenge and initial reactions; (c) Response – describe how the diversity challenge was handled at the time the dilemma presented itself; (d) Reflections – provide an overview of your thoughts, analysis, and lessons learned. Length: 2-3 pages (approximately 500-700 words). Deadline for receipt of stories: March 15, 2003. For questions contact: Shelly Harrell: sharrell@pepperdine.edu (phone: 310-258-2844) or Meg Bond: Meg_Bond@uml.edu (phone: 978-934-3971).

After their initial review of the submissions, they will invite a subset of authors to develop their stories more fully as case studies to be included with a summary of principles in their final document. In addition, they may contact all authors for more information or follow-up prior to completing their analysis. They anticipate publication of this work as either a special issue of a professional journal or edited book.