Abstract
This chapter focuses on the training of community-based health workers from a participatory organizational perspective. Tashina Vavuris argues that health practitioners receive a significant amount of training before and after they enter the field. But often, this education is mostly pragmatic, that is, focused on how to conduct needs assessments, evaluate interventions, or implement accreditation standards. Of course, these tasks are important. But this education does not necessarily begin with the philosophy that sustains community-based work. When beginning with the principle that community knowledge matters, training must be initiated with how to enter the world constructed by a community’s members. Every task, accordingly, must be thought of as a mode of engaging a community, instead of simply gathering data or making observations. Valid knowledge, communities, and norms, for example, must be rethought in the training process to produce persons who can work effectively in community-based interventions. This shift in orientation is not often currently the centerpiece of training.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Buber, M. (1958). I and thou. New York, NY: Scribner.
Cahill, C. (2007). Repositioning ethical commitments: Participatory action research as a relational praxis of social change. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 360–373.
Cahill, C., Sultana, F., & Pain, R. (2007). Participatory ethics: Politics, practices, institutions. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 304–318.
Chambers, R. (1997). Whose reality counts? Putting the first last. London,UK: Intermediate Technology Publications.
Darder, A. (1994). Institutional research as a tool for cultural democracy. New Directions for Institutional Research, 1994(81), 21–34.
Delgado, R. (1989). Storytelling for oppositionists and others: A plea for narrative. Michigan Law Review, 87(8), 2411–2441.
Fals Borda, O. (1979). Investigation reality in order to transform it: The Colombian experience. Dialectical Anthropology, 4(1), 33–55.
Fals Borda, O. (1987). The application of participatory action research in Latin America. International Sociology, 2(4), 329–347.
Fals Borda, O. (1988). Knowledge and people’s power. New York, NY: New Horizons.
Ferreira, F. (2017). Critical sustainability studies: A holistic and visionary conception of socioecological conscientization. Journal of Sustainability Education, 13.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1996). The enigma of health: The art of healing in a scientific age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Gutiérrez, K., & Vossoughi, S. (2010). Lifting off the ground to return anew: Mediated praxis, transformative learning, and social design experiments. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 100–117.
Kretzman, J., & McKnight, J. (1993). Building communities from the inside out. Chicago, IL: Acta Publications.
Krieger, N. (2011). Epidemiology and the people’s health. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Long, J., Ballard, H., Fisher, L., & Belsky, J. (2016). Questions that won’t go away in participatory research. Society and Natural Resources, 29(2), 250–263.
Lykes, M. B. (2013). Participatory and action research as a transformative praxis: Responding to humanitarian crises from the margins. American Psychologist, 68(8), 774–783.
Medin, D. L., & Bang, M. (2014). The cultural side of science communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(Supplement 4), 13621–13626.
Munck, R. (2014). Community-based research: Genealogy and prospects. In R. Munck, L. McIlrath, B. Hall, & R. Tandon (Eds.), Higher education and community-based research (pp. 11–26). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Murphy, J. W., & Casanova, F. (2018). Community-based work and the accompanying changes in sociology. Unpublished Manuscript, Department of Sociology, Miami University.
Murphy, J. W. (2014). Community based interventions: Philosophy and action. New York, NY: Springer.
Parsons, E. R. C. (2017). Interfaces between critical race theory and sociocultural perspectives. In I. Esmonde & A. Booker (Eds.), Power and privilege in the learning sciences: Critical and sociocultural theories of learning sciences (pp. 24–46). New York, NY: Routledge.
Schutz, A. (1967). The phenomenology of the social world. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. New York, NY: Zed Books.
Torre, M. E., & Ayala, J. (2009). Envisioning participatory action research entremundos. Feminism and Psychology, 19(3), 387–393.
Tuck, E. (2009). Re-visioning action: Participatory action research and indigenous theories of change. The Urban Review, 41(1), 47–65.
Tuck, E., & Guishard, M. (2013). Uncollapsing ethics: Racialized sciencism, settler coloniality, and an ethical framework of decolonial participatory action research. In T. M. Kress, C. S. Malott, & B. J. Portfilio (Eds.), Challenging status quo retrenchment: New directions in critical qualitative research (pp. 3–27). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Tuck, E., Smith, M., Guess, A. M., Benjamin, T., & Jones, B. K. (2014). Geo-theorizing Black/Land: Contestations and contingent collaborations. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 3(1), 52–74.
Wallerstein, N., & Bernstein, E. (1994). Introduction to community empowerment, participatory education, and health. Health Education Quarterly, 21(3), 141–148.
Whitman, G. P., Pain, R., & Milledge, D. G. (2015). Going with the flow? Using participatory action research in physical geography. Progress in Physical Geography, 39(5), 622–639.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vavuris, T.J. (2019). Training Community-Based Health Workers. In: Arxer, S., Murphy, J. (eds) Community-Based Health Interventions in an Institutional Context. International Perspectives on Social Policy, Administration, and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24654-9_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24654-9_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-24653-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-24654-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)