Appreciative Inquiry and Extended Language
Video Representations of Community and Future by Rural Costa Rican Youth
by
Candidate 38119
Word Count: 13,665
Acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the intellectual, emotional and material support that has allowed me to complete this research and dissertation. Firstly, I thank my wife, Erika for her constant optimism and support through the duration of this project. She encouraged my immersion in this project, tolerated my long absence to collect data, and proofread my final draft not once but twice. I would like to thank my family, particularly my parents who have always encouraged my education and so kindly sent care packages from abroad. I would like to thank my grandfather, who is the only person to have expressed interest in reading my dissertation: I appreciate your enthusiasm!
I would also like to thank Professor Cathy Campbell for her inspiring course and constant encouragement. I am also greatly indebted to my dissertation supervisor and originator of the theory upon which my coding framework is based, Dr. Sandra Jovchelovitch. I thank my fellow Health, Community and Development and Social Psychology institute classmates for their support and commiseration, particularly Hilde Bryhn and Martin Krengel, who were sounding boards for many of my ideas.
I would like to thank Casa de la Juventued, particularly Jeison Ariel Bartels for his support and coordination of the Costa Rican portion of my research. I absolutely could never have done this without his help. I would also like to thank the hospitable and inspiring communities of Berlín, La Ribera, Los Reyes and Los Vegas not only for their participation in this research, but also for housing and feeding me during my visit. I hope that they enjoyed the process as much as I did. I would also like to thank Alexander Steffler and Professor Patrick Humphreys and his London Multimedia Lab for their generous donation to Digital Roots, which made this project possible.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS …………………………………………………………….…….2
Table of Contents
Abstract
Introduction
Research Question and Hypothesis
Theoretical Background
Social Representations
Critical Consciousness
Appreciative Inquiry
Extended Language
Positive Consciousness: Combining AI and Extended Language
Research Design
Data Elicitation: Quasi-Experimental Method and Digital Video
Participants and Partners
Group Formation
Community Description
Introducing the Project
Filming and Editing
Data Analysis
Rational for the Coding Frame
Issues in the Construction & Application of the Coding Frame
Results
Commonalities
Narrative
Actual vs. Future Actions
Outside Donations vs. Local Resources
Protagonists
Environment and Infrastructure
Community Comparisons
Los Reyes
La Ribera
Los Vegas
Berlín
Discussion
General Trends
The Omnipresence of Hope
The Focus on Youth
Differences Between Prompts
Link Between Positivity and Strategies for Collective Action
Link Between Resources, Past Successes and Self-efficacy
Differences Between Communities
Limitations and Options for Future Research
Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendixes
Appendix I: Video Prompts
Appendix II: Community List and Project Dates
Appendix III: Example Participation Form
Appendix IV: Coding Frame
Appendix V: Coded Narratives
Appendix VI: English Coded Transcription, Audio and Visual Summary
Abstract
In this dissertation I explore the hypothesis that appreciative inquiry (AI) used in conjunction with a multimedia extended language methodology is better able to foster self-efficacy, empowerment and hope in participants than traditional critically-focused methodologies relying upon restricted language. I begin by building a theoretical framework for my hypothesis, drawing from the theories of social representations, critical consciousness, AI and extended language to construct a theory of positive consciousness, through which I argue that AI and extended language are able to inspire self-efficacy, empowerment and hope. I then use a narrative analysis of twelve participatory videos recorded and edited by youth groups in four rural communities in southern Costa Rica in response to three different prompts to explore the application of AI and positive consciousness. In general, my findings support the hypothesis that AI is better able to foster self-efficacy and empowerment than the neutral or traditional prompts, through all of the videos have consistently high levels of hope. The results from this limited application of the theory and methodology, while encouraging, suggest the need for future research.
All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This "outgrowing" proves on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the horizon and through this broadening of outlook the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.
- Carl Jung
Introduction
Traditional community development projects tend to arrive with predetermined, expert designed interventions that are imposed upon communities, usually with the best of intentions. These projects are often effective in achieving their quantitative goals—building the target number latrines, for example—but often fail to achieve sustainable development. The external nature of these interventions leaves communities out of the decision-making process, often resulting in projects that are ill-suited to the physical and cultural reality of the community and therefore either fail and or are abandoned soon after completion. These traditional projects are rarely sustainable because they are designed from the outside without consulting the community and often rely on outside resources and technical expertise.
More progressive community development projects arrive in communities with questions rather than projects; they work with the community to determine their needs and motivations, and take this information into account when designing interventions. By involving the community at least partially in the design process, these projects are often better able to meet both their process and outcome related goals than more traditionally designed projects. While the level of community involvement varies wildly, ranging from mere consultation to management and evaluation, some level of community participation is now the norm in development work. Yet despite the current widespread commitment to community participation, most development projects and health interventions arrive in communities with a needs-based approach and anegative attitude. They begin with the assumption that there is something wrong with the community that needs to be fixed or that the community is lacking something that needs to be provided. While it is true that many communities are under-developed and that there may be urgent necessities, I believe that critical needs-based development is limiting and possibly damaging to communities.
The form of positive development I favour is called appreciative inquiry (AI) and involves asking unconditionally positive questions in order to identify and replicate positive deviants within the community. This process is energizing and inspires hope, while seeking to maximize local resources and knowledge, resulting in increased sustainability and empowerment. I also believe that the use of spoken and written language can be intimidating and limiting to underdeveloped communities, less formally educated populations and marginalized groups such as women, children or indigenous people. I believe that the use of multimedia extended language can help to overcome the limitations of traditional or restricted language by encouraging confidence, creativity and new perspectives. Extended language can help both marginalized participants and researchers as “a combination of words, images, and music enlarges our consciousness and the possibilities for health promotion research and practice” (Chávez, et al., 2004). When used in combination, AI and extended language have the potential to reach out to and involve communities in their own future.
In order to investigate the potential of AI and extended language for improving community development projects, I conducted a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project working with digital video and youth groups in rural Costa Rican communities for two weeks, from 20 March to 6 April 2007. The goals of my PAR project where threefold: to conduct research on the effects of AI on representations, hope, empowerment and self-efficacy, to provide rural youth with an opportunity to use digital video and to provide communities with a resource to present their thoughts to the world, particularly potential founders of development projects.
Research Question and Hypothesis
I hypothesize that a methodology combining AI and multimedia extended language is better able to foster hope, empowerment and self-efficacy in participants than a traditional negatively focused needs-based intervention strategy conducted in restricted language. I theorize this is so because the aforementioned methodologies foster positive consciousness or empowerment, self-efficacy and hope among both the participants and facilitators. AI helps communities to dialogue with ‘expert’ knowledge, making its conventionalization into community life more likely. AI uses the anticipatory function of representations to utilize past successes to positively affect the future. Additionally, working with the creativity and freedom of multimedia empowers participants because it utilizes extended language to bypass the restrictions and epistemological hierarchy imposed by restricted language, allowing people to communicate more effectively and credibly while discovering previously unutilized resources and possibilities in a fun and potentially sustainable way.
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of AI and extended language methodologies’ impact on representations, empowerment, self-efficacy and hope, I conducted a quasi-experimental research project involving youth groups from four rural communities in Costa Rica. Each group developed a participatory video about their vision of community and the future in response to one of three different prompts: one positive (AI), one neutral and one traditional or needs-based. Each community split into three groups and they all used digital video, a multimedia extended language methodology, to develop their responses to one of these three prompts. I then conducted a qualitative narrative analysis of the twelve videos created, looking for the potential effects of AI and positive consciousness on empowerment, self-efficacy and hope.
Theoretical Background
Social Representations
At a broad level, my research is grounded in the theory of social representations developed by Serge Moscovici concerning social knowledge, both its production and transformation. Interested in the effects of social context on the development of everyday knowledge and the ways in which knowledge is communicated between contexts or lifeworlds, Moscovici developed his theory based on data collected from 1959 to 1960 in France regarding popular understandings of psychoanalysis by different social groups, including professionals, Catholics and communists. Social representations theory breaks with the traditional view of psychology, anthropology and many other disciplines, which arrange knowledge into a hierarchical procession ranging from lower or primitive to higher or civilized forms of knowing. Moscovici’s concept of cognitive polyphasia, the idea that individuals and groups possess different, sometimes contradictory, knowledge and logic simultaneously, provides an alternative to the traditional hierarchy of knowledge and provides a cornerstone for theories about the potential of multimedia to encourage dialogue between facilitators and participants in community development projects. Similarly, cognitive polyphasia is a key aspect of the theories of critical consciousness and AI, which hold that local, everyday forms of knowledge are not inferior to external or expert knowledge, supporting the idea that development strategies which work with local knowledge will be more successful than those that attempt challenge or displace it. Conventionalization, “the process whereby images and ideas, received from the outside by an indigenous group, assume a form of expression that is reconstructed as a function of the technical and cultural conventions of the receivers” (Jovchelovitch, 2006) is most likely when local knowledge is respected and blended with outside knowledge. Moscovici’s theory highlights how knowledge is distorted through the process of conventionalization, which informs my hypothesis that a multimedia AI methodology is able to illuminate and reduce the distortion of knowledge as it is conventionalized.
Social representations theory is concerned with meaning and symbols rather than information and processing, buttressing my argument that the use of video can encourage dialogue. Video is a medium that utilizes the power of images and symbols to encourage and facilitate the dialogue necessary for conventionalization, potentially lessening the misunderstandings between different knowledges and lifeworlds. The development of multimedia narratives by community members can help to illuminate a community’s social representations, collective memory and social identity, which often remain unconscious, thereby complicating dialogue. I am also interested in the anticipatory function of representations, the idea that representations of the past and present cognitively, socially and emotionally influence the construction of the future. “Cognitively they do so through the construction of projects, which correspond to cognitive anticipations of things to come; socially, through the construction of utopias, which correspond to the projection of vision about how things should be in times to come, and emotionally through the experience of hope, which corresponds to the emotional field in which anticipation operates” (Jovchelovitch, 2006). The anticipatory function of representations is key to my hypothesis that AI prompts will result in more positive representations of past and present actions and therefore are likely to encourage hope, empowerment and self-efficacy in the future. Because “storytelling is one of the fundamental media though which communities understand their past and present and project their aims for the future” (Jovchelovitch, 2006), positive video narratives have the potential to influence future making.
Critical Consciousness
Paulo Freire’s theory of conscientização, or critical consciousness, is the basis for a key aspect of the theoretical foundation of my research. Freire’s concept highlights the importance of local knowledge, empowerment, dialogue and collective action for community health and development. In Education for Critical Consciousness, Freire makes a distinction between education and massification. He argues that massification is a paternalistic and disempowering act, often disguised as education which attempts to domesticate people into conforming to the status quo of those with power. For Freire, massification is the extension of knowledge from those with power to those without. Massification and extension are inherently hierarchical and characterized by dominance, lovelessness, arrogance, hopelessness and mistrust (Freire, 1973). Education and the development of critical consciousness, on the other hand, are encouraged through facilitation rather than teaching. Participants are encouraged to think for themselves and relationships are horizontal rather than vertical. To apply his theory, Freire developed an innovative model of teaching literacy designed to encourage “fresh contributions” through dialogue rather than focusing on the transfer of “inert ideas” as is common in traditional teaching methods (Freire, 1973).
Freire demonstrated the importance of utilizing local knowledge as the basis for the development of critical consciousness. In order for people to truly understand their situation, they must be able to locate their new knowledge within their lifeworld. In other words, new knowledge should fit with existing knowledge in order to facilitate conventionalization. The development of critical consciousness takes place through a dialogical process, where the facilitator and participants exchange, combine and discuss local knowledge and outside ideas (Freire, 1973). Both parties are changed in the process and no one knowledge displaces another, but rather both knowledges are combined to form a third, hybrid knowledge. This idea is inline with the theory of cognitive polyphasia. Critical consciousness is a process of empowerment which allows participants to critically examine their present situation, identify the obstacles to change and ultimately take collective action to achieve change.
Freire’s theory is important both as a technique and for its emphasis on the connection between the individual and social aspects of change and collective action. The distinction between education and extension, along with the focus on the dialogical interaction between local and external knowledge is crucial to developing empowerment and achieving collective action. I diverge from Freire’s theory of critical consciousness because I believe it over-emphasises rationality and negativity while downplaying the importance of emotion, dismissing it as the basis for “naïve rebellion”. Additionally, it encourages people to identify and organize themselves against obstacles rather than for the development of pre-existing strengths and resources. I believe that Freire’s concept of conscientização can be utilized more effectively by dropping the critical of critical consciousness and replacing it with the unconditionally positive focus of AI and the freedom and creativity unleashed by the use of extended language and community narrative. My modification of Freire’s theory, positive consciousness is further outlined below.
Appreciative Inquiry
The theory of appreciative inquiry comes from the field of organizational development and was developed by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s in an attempt to positively address the physical and psychological effects of social inequalities and underdevelopment. AI is based on social constructionism and believes that “knowledge is an artefact of the culture, myths, traditions, values and languages of people in systems… thus there are multiple ways of knowing, multiple realities and no one way has primacy over another” (Finegold, et al., 2004). AI attempts to avoid the negative psychological impacts of disempowerment, a common by-product of the displacement of local knowledge by traditional health and development interventions, by asking positive questions. When people become overwhelmed by their problems and lose hope, the resulting emotional state “reduces creativity [and] thus lessens human potentials, skills and capacity” (Chapagai, 2000). Therefore, instead of asking what is wrong AI asks what is right, attempting to locate positive deviants, such as well-nourished individuals in a malnourished community. AI uses local knowledge by seeking to replicate what is working in the community rather then investigating what is wrong and importing outside ‘expert’ solutions. “As an alternative approach, the appeal of [AI] lies in its premise that communities can drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilizing existing (but often unrecognized) assets…” (Mathie, 2002). By asking positive questions, AI is able to build hope and pride, empowering communities by showing them that they already have the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their goals. By asking “unconditionally positive questions the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiralling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design” (Chapagai, 2000). AI seeks to identify and replicate successes rather than ‘think critically’ about problems. AI’s focus on the use of local knowledge and past successes as the basis for development and behaviour change helps to ensure that interventions work within the local lifeworld, eliminating the distortions of translation suffered when external knowledge is imported.