Participate as a Pro

Connect with local actors and co-initiate action

Participation in community and urban development often emphasises the citizen’s role in shaping more inclusive and user-focused environments. However, less focus is on the organisations and professionals who initiate these participation tracks.

‘Participating as a Pro’ shifts this perspective by engaging professionals directly with those affected by improvement efforts. This approach fosters mutual understanding and respect, using participant observation to gather deep insights into the lived experiences of community members, including often overlooked voices.

This tool equips student teams to observe and actively contribute to local initiatives that enhance public well-being, moving towards meaningful participation and collaboration.

Learning outcome

The student is able to relate to a diverse range of people and serve public well-being

Students perform participant observation and co-initiate local collaboration for public well-being.

1.Identifying Locations and Actors

1 hr

Instruct students to identify key locations and actors relevant to their project, or the general theme they seek to address, along with any existing assumptions about these elements. First, students answer the questions below individually:

What questions and/or issues, relevant to the location, do we want to learn about?
In which places might we gain relevant insights on these questions and/or issues?
Who are the relevant actors in these places and connected to these questions and/or issues?
What do we currently know about these places and actors?

Then, students discuss their answers with the team to produce a collective written set of responses.

2.A First Sense

1 - 2 hrs

Students plan times and places for their first site visits, either individually or with their team members.

To get a first sense, students observe the site without a specific aim. The idea here is to observe and engage with people casually, avoiding formal research methods and suspending any goals and evaluations at this stage.

After the first visit, instruct teams to review the collective answers from Step 1 and check if they’d like to update any of their answers.

3.Participant Observation

2 hrs

The student teams plan more site visits and prepare to engage in participant observation. Share the Overview & Planning Sheet for Teams to assist with research preparations.

To participate actively in daily life, take up a practical role in activities that allow for casually spending (part of) a day with people of interest. Therefore, students can volunteer, initiate an activity or join in practical activities with the people they seek to learn about.

Ask the students to document and reflect on their observations and experiences in a field journal, following the instructions and guidelines.

Tip: remind students of the research aim of gathering insights on the lived experiences of relevant actors, including themselves and the currently “voiceless”, those whose viewpoints and experiences have been neglected so far.

4.How Might We

30 mins

While spending time in the field observing, talking, documenting and reflecting, students assess any present challenges and needs of local actors, and how public well-being can be served. Instruct each team to discuss:

If we consider the place with its inhabitants and users as a whole, what would be its most important message to us?
What change or changes would the place as a whole wish for?
What conditions might challenge such change or changes?
How might needed change or changes be brought about, and by whom?

While discussing, encourage each team to synthesise their insights into an accurate, action-oriented question. For this purpose, students can use the “How Might We” format:

“How might we help <actors/stakeholders> with <need> despite <challenges>?”

Tip: we recommend at least two of these discussions throughout the research process.

5.Organising for Action

30 mins

Having formulated a fitting “How Might We” question, teams can now seek to identify actors and/or stakeholders willing to participate actively in addressing identified community needs.

Students can use the map of participant involvement to consider what type of involvement fits best for each actor, given the circumstances. Some actors may co-produce certain project elements, while others may take on a part themselves or choose to remain involved passively as a manager or recipient providing direction or advice, for example.

Depending on the design of the course and the project scope, students can communicate their findings to relevant actors and step out of the project, or remain active participants and collaborate on future steps.

While participant observation research is ongoing (Step 3) and after the teams have synthesised their insights (Step 4), students reflect individually or in a one-on-one discussion with you, using the reflective questions. Students can use the questionnaire for self–assessment to reflect on their courage. To foster even deeper learning, ask the students to answer these questions about their experiences with each other.

Purpose

Assessment as learning aims to strengthen the learning process and the development of metacognitive skills. It empowers students to direct their learning and to become independent, critical self-assessors.

Roles

Self-assessment

Characteristics

Self-regulated learning

Materials

Reflective questions

Download Reflective questions

For those wishing to read up on this ethnographic method, Verloo (2020) provides a useful discussion of participant observation in urban contexts and Emerson et al. (2011) provide great guidelines for writing field notes.

Download more information on participant observation, personal field journal instructions (Step 3), the overview & planning sheet for teams (Step 3) and the map of participant involvement (Step 5) below.

Download Extended Introduction

Download Map of participant involvement

Download Personal field journal instructions

Download Overview & Planning Sheet for Teams

Emerson, R., R. Fretz & L. Shaw (2011). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Manzini, E. (2015). Design, When Everybody Designs. An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Verloo, N. (2020). Chapter 3: Urban Ethnography and Participant Observations: Studying the City From Within. In: Verloo, N., & Bertolini, L. (Eds.). (2020). Seeing the City: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Study of the Urban. Amsterdam University Press.