Systemic Indicators for Rural Communities in Developing Economies: Bringing the Shared Vision into Being

Community indicators have been a frequent focus of the scholarly literature. There has been little exploration, however, in relation to rural communities, especially in developing countries. This reflects the special challenges associated with the complexity of rural systems, and the difficulties involved in developing appropriate and systemic indicators for rural communities. Identifying indicators that help the community to monitor progress towards sustainable outcomes requires a framework that is both practical and holistic. This paper introduces a participatory systemic framework for identifying community indicators, which respects the principles of complexity and honours the sense of ownership present in the communities. This framework is an iterative, sharing, co-learning engagement process that extends from creating a shared vision and extracting its core messages, to identifying indicators of progress and determining what actions to try. Importantly, this framework enables us to rank the indicators identified by communities with reference to ‘leverage points’, the best places to intervene in the social-environmental system for transformational change. This framework provides a potential pathway for sustainable rural development and perhaps also for organisations and urban communities.     

Environmental Education: Enhancing Learning and Awareness Through Assessment

Environmental issues are rapidly gaining momentum globally as humans try to find sustainable solutions to the effects of climate change, carbon emissions, and the actions of human-kind (see Olver, Blacklist those who ‘greenwash’. Companies must walk the talk regarding climate. The Times, 2011a; The weather warriors’ war. Real change will come when a few good men and women say ‘enough is enough’. The Times, 2011b). To enhance learning and awareness of environmental issues among Environmental Education students and the community at large, this study situated assessments within communities of practice around the university. Using action engagement within action research students had to work with insiders from the community to identify, formulate action or intervention plans and find solutions to problem situations in the community. Using action engagement within action research in this study definitely enhanced student’s knowledge of their community’s problems. Their personal involvement and the cyclical approach adopted, enhanced students’ emotional understanding and gave them an insider perspective into the situations and problems that required intervention; and trust was built between the students and members of the community as they worked together to accomplish a common goal.     

Participatory Design and Technologies for Sustainable Development: an Approach from Action Research

This paper explores the relevance of the action research for design of technological solutions that lead to both systemic sustainable development and active involvement of the community. The paper shows how this idea was implemented in a project for water resource conservation with educational institutions of rural areas in Colombia. Through the use of technology, a reduction in water consumption increases in awareness about the use of this natural resource, and the active involvement of the community were sought. Additionally, social processes related to the conservation of natural resources were addressed through a socio-technical approach for analysis and design. During the application of the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), the participants and researchers created technological prototypes that allowed to: 1) give visibility to the community’s initiatives, and 2) save water in the households. This paper focuses on the importance of the design process of innovative solutions for social and environmental issues through the participative approach of action research.

     

Student Engineers as Agents of Change: Combining Social Inclusion in the Professional Development of Electrical and Computer Engineering Students

Community-based action research helps students link subject matter to everyday life and developing sense of responsibility to their community. While combining research and a development into teaching engineering software which has been vastly conducted in engineering disciplines such as Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science (CS), including inclusive participatory research is yet to be fully developed. We participated in the NGO by providing information technology (IT) and/or assistive technology (AT). This paper examines the practice of action research in service-learning projects that aim to introduce more socially responsible studies in the context of engineering education. It begins by exploring different forms of action research that may benefit engineering disciplines with a focus on action engagement to improve students’ involvement in marginalized communities. The article provides field-based reflections of the action research project and suggests ways in which practice of action research may increase socially responsive value in the professional development of student engineers.     

Systemic Intervention Practice at an Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Alcohol and Other Drugs Treatment Centre

The purpose of this article is to describe the use of systemic intervention research methodology at an Indigenous-specific Australian drug and alcohol ‘therapeutic community’ rehabilitation setting. Systemic intervention is a three step methodological framework belonging to the systems thinking discipline. Practitioners must be mindful of the boundaries of the systems with which they are working; the need to select appropriate theoretical and methodological approaches to the context of the research, and undertake interventions towards sustainable and desirable change. Three participatory methods are detailed to highlight the importance and value of reflective practice. The three methods ranged from consultative through to collegial levels of participant engagement. Systemic intervention is a useful methodology in the context of indigenous health research and could be a valued approach in other research contexts that are explicit in their intent to help close the gap on Indigenous health disadvantage.     

Coproduction in Practice: Participatory Action Research to Develop a Model of Community Aged Care

Coproduction has become synonymous with innovative approaches to public service delivery in European Union countries as well as in Australia. Coproduction has the potential to bring together individuals, communities, and organisations in a process to collaboratively develop new models and services which improve public services. Yet, Australian policy makers and practitioners who would like to deploy coproduction within the context of older adult social care can only draw on a handful of papers and reports that could guide implementation. This paper fills this gap by reporting on the implementation of a multi-stakeholder coproduction approach to the development of a consumer directed care model for older people with complex health issues. The paper describes and critically highlights methodological challenges encountered during the 12 month-long participatory action research phase of a larger project involving older people with complex care needs, their carers, and government and non-government stakeholders. The paper outlines key considerations regarding (1) the involvement of older people with complex needs, (2) collaboration with industry partners, (3) engagement of government representatives, and (4) reflects on implementing participatory research projects within a context of outsourcing and interlinked supply chains. While not all challenges encountered could be resolved, the coproduction approach was successful in bringing together a wide range of stakeholders with competing agendas in an iterative process geared to resolve a plethora of concerns raised by older people, carers and services providers. This paper provides an example for others seeking to use coproduction and participatory methods to provide person-centred care services for older people.     

Meta-Action Research on a Leadership Development Program: A Process Model for Life-long Learning

Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to the field of systemic practice by sharing a process of professional learning based on meta-action research. The process emerged as we engaged with evaluation data from a leadership development program (LDP). The aim of this LDP had been to help leaders design their team projects on poverty reduction through action research methods in six African countries. As facilitators of the program we discuss our experiential learning based on critical reflection. We explain how meta-action research can transform understandings of ways to improve professional practice in future applications. We present three process models: (1) a model of reflection on action, (2) a meta-action research model, and (3) a model for lifelong learning through meta-action research. These models may be of benefit and interest to readers who facilitate systemic practice and action research in education, higher education, communities, industry and government.     

Feminist Systems Theory: Learning by Praxis

Feminist Systems Theory (FST) is an emerging theory grounded in cultural ecofeminism and critical systems theory. FST’s contribution is in a set of principles that contain implications for community development and social research. FST brings to the fore the importance of valuing and considering the voices of people at the margins of social research and community development projects and is an effort towards a new ontology and language of person and nature to adequately address environmental marginalization. The ‘systems’ theory contribution to FST enriches our repertoires of methods and tools with an emphasis on systems thinking characterised by the use of boundary analysis. FST is ideally situated to enhance systemic intervention practice, an application of action research and participatory research practices. This paper will examine ‘process philosophy’ necessary to understand the nature of boundary analysis and the implications for FST and praxis with relevant examples drawn from case studies of current applications of FST in action research settings; (1) economic analysis and transition pathways; (2) policy analysis of the Close the Gap strategy for Indigenous equality and equity in Australia; (3) a community food distribution system; and, (4) a community health and diabetes prevention program.     

Designing a Management System for a Rural Community Development Organization Using a Systemic Action Research Process

This paper describes the first phase, 'finding out', of a systemic participatory action research intervention in the management systems of a rural community development organization in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The aims of the intervention were to (a) improve the management system of this organization, and (b) evaluate the usefulness of particular systems methodologies for the improvement of management systems of organizations involved in community development in under-resourced rural contexts. The second phase, "implementation," needs to be completed and thoroughly evaluated before any final conclusions can be drawn about the suitability of the chosen systems framework for Third World type rural contexts. However, the second phase is, at the time of writing, underway and all indications are that an interpretive ('Soft') Systems Methodology, combined with insights from a more functionalist ('hard') approach (with methods chosen through a Critical Systems Thinking framework) holds much promise for participatory systemic interventions in these contexts.     

How Systemic Inquiry Releases Citizen Knowledge to Reform Schools: Community Scorecard Case Studies

Despite the relevance of systemic practice for repairing broken public systems, documented instances where it empowers marginalised groups en masse to be action researchers are rare. Public school systems that fail to educate millions of pupils are ripe for systemic inquiry. Using evidence, this article identifies conditions under which such inquiry fosters school system accountability and increases pupil learning. By tracing the emergence of a type of community scorecard practice called Citizen Voice and Action (CV&A), it explains how and why marginalised groups use CV&A’s systems-enhanced participatory research to engage with and reform unresponsive public systems. It also shows how soft systems thinking and further action research enhanced scorecard methodology. Brief case studies of CV&A use in Ugandan primary schools illustrate and explain how communities reform schools by using CV&A to systematically foster accountability. Discussion identifies how processes free them to create and use systemic knowledge. This theorising helps explain conditions under which systemic inquiry into school and other public systems is being generalised and scaled up.     

“Think Like an Ecosystem”—Embedding a Living System Paradigm Into Participatory Planning

The European Union Water Framework Directive offers an unparalleled opportunity for improving river basin management and moving towards a sustainable future. It is widely accepted that the concept of sustainable development itself can be understood in fairly simple terms, but that implementation, making the concept practically operable, is difficult to achieve in practice. There is a need to animate this process, making it more engaging and comprehensible for participants. This research examined the emerging role of active stakeholder participation in planning for sustainability. The DesignWays planning process, developed by the author, was tested in the context of waterside regeneration in the Mersey Basin Campaign. The overall aim of this research was to explore the use of a systems thinking paradigm to inform participatory ecological design. It has demonstrated that a process consistent with a living systems paradigm can contribute to the development of more integrated, ecologically sound plans.     

A Link-Based Similarity for Improving Community Detection Based on Label Propagation Algorithm

Community structure is one of the most best-known properties of complex networks. Finding communities help us analyze networks from a mesoscopic viewpoints instead of microscopic or macroscopic one. It helps to understand behavior grouping. Various community detection algorithms have been proposed with some shortcomings in time and space complexity, accuracy, or stability. Label Propagation Algorithm(LPA) is a popular method used for finding communities in an almost-linear time-consuming process. However, its performance is not satisfactory in some metrics such as accuracy and stability. In this paper, a new modified version of LPA is proposed to improve the stability and accuracy of the LPA by defining two concepts-nodes and link strength based on semi-local similarity-,while preserving its simplicity. In the proposed method a new initial node selection strategy, namely the tiebreak strategy, updating order and rule update are presented to solve the random behavior problem of original LPA. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on artificial and real networks. The experiments show that the proposed algorithm is close to linear time complexity with better accuracy than the original LPA and other compared methods. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm has the robustness and stability advantages while the original LPA does not have these features.     

The Role of Action Research (AR) in Environmental Research: Learning from a Local Organic Food and Farming Research Project

We expand on the FMA model of inquiry elucidated by Checkland and Holwell (Syst Pract Act Res 11:9, 1998) and identify three kinds of research: interactive Action Research (AR), extractive participatory research, and traditional science, that were integrated into an interdisciplinary agro-environmental research project involving researchers from eight countries around the Baltic Sea. The research project held the goal of creating scientific understanding of the ecological, economic and social effects of the sustainable development of local food systems, while also having the explicit goal of implementing change in the studied systems. Based on our experience working as action researchers in the project, we highlight the role that normative goals and facilitation process competence play in complex interdisciplinary research projects. Our reflections focus on project design, including the relation between AR and other kinds of research when employed in a single project, and includes reflections on preconditions for stakeholder participation in AR projects.     

Systemic Evaluation Methodology: The Emergence of Social Learning From Environmental ICT Prototypes

This paper investigates why and how systems approaches can help in evaluating the design of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as social learning platforms. It focuses on the prototypes created by the research project Virtualis, whose objective is to promote social learning on environmental concepts and practices amongst a variety of stakeholders. The paper presents the principles of systems thinking and practice that did help in formulating such evaluation processes. It illustrates how both a peer systemic evaluation process (within the research team) and a participatory evaluation process (involving potential future users of the ICTs) were carried out.     

复杂网络中的社团结构

对复杂网络社团结构问题进行了综述。介绍了无权无向网络中社团结构的定义、探索社团结构的算法及算法的评价标准和检验网络。重点总结与类比了具有代表性的算法及其在检验网络上得到的结果,并依据这些结果和评价标准对算法进行了评述。部分地概括了原有算法在加权无向网络中的推广方法。最后对部分社团结构算法的特点进行了横向的比较,对社团结构与网络功能的研究进行简略介绍,并对社团结构研究的发展做出展望。     

Action Research as a Bridge Between Two Worlds: Helping The NGOs and Humanitarian Agencies Adapt Technology to Their Needs

This paper reflects upon the process of introducing social media systems into supported employment programs for peoples with severe mental illness in Taipei. Such intervention represents the encounter of two different worlds that are often-unknown to each other, i.e. IT student engineers and job coaches in NGOs. With the participatory and cyclic feature of action research approach, the process can be divided into three stages: technology-led stage, mutual infusion stage, and service-led stage. The focus of this research is to illustrate how action research provides a site for the infusion of two different horizons, that is technology experts in academia and social service providers in NGOs. The existing problems in the use of IT within NGOs were studied and changes through co-inquiry and interventions were implemented towards better utilization of IT and higher levels of service qualities. The researchers utilized an action research approach to investigate the problems, plan the actions, intervene, assess the effectiveness resulting from the actions, and specify learning outcomes.     

Systems Pluralism in Infrastructure Decision-Making for Socially Connected Greenfield Communities

The problem in planning for relevant infrastructure in new communities is that the community doesn’t yet exist and is not engaged in the planning process. As such, planners draw on available housing and demographic information and essentially ‘best guess’ the future community’s infrastructure and social connection needs. This situation spotlights a gap in the planning literature concerning ways to ‘better determine’ a future community’s infrastructures that enable social connection between residents. In seeking to help address that knowledge gap, the purpose of this paper is to theoretically argue for the process of and illustrate the value of, pursuing a hybrid systems thinking approach to the identification and deployment of the physical infrastructures that may help better facilitate the social connectedness of a future community in new greenfield development areas. This approach combines aspects of Soft systems methodology and system dynamics. Such a process informs the development of a decision support model for Planners’ that incorporates multiple user perspectives in these local planning decisions and contributes to the structural advancement of socially connected communities.     

Promoting Entrepreneurship through a Community Learning Model – Case Study: Green Businesses

This article presents a community learning model formulated by Engineers Without Borders Colombia with the aim of providing communities with tools to create sustainable productive solutions which have relevancy for members and for potential customers. The goal of this formulation is to promote learning processes that are guided by decisions made by community members to propose sustainable and replicable initiatives. The model applicability is evidenced through a case study devoted to strengthening community-led green businesses in the Guavio Province, Colombia by collecting lessons and conclusions. Ultimately, this collection will prove useful in replicating the learning model in other similar rural communities.

     

Quality in Action Research: Reflections for Second-Order Inquiry

One of the current debates in action research concerns the quality of these practices. Up to now, many contributions have focused on defining specific criteria based on action research epistemology. This article sustains (1) that prior to dealing with these questions, it is necessary to define for what purpose and for whom we are making the evaluation; (2) that this leads us to make a distinction between different evaluation models; and (3) that the quality strategies and criteria will be different for each model. In particular, the article confronts an academic evaluation model as a form of external control over the quality of action research and an internal, participatory evaluation model as a quality strategy aimed at establishing feedback for the process. Final considerations are given about the implications of both models for academia.