I am a community psychologist at Indiana University South Bend and the
director of an action research project called the Social Action Project
(SOCACT). The project has a strong service-learning component; students make
an 18-month (three semester) commitment to work in the field. The SOCACT has
sites in three communities: one each in Indiana, Michigan, and Abia state in
Nigeria.
The SOCACT is designed as a service learning experience for psychology and
related disciplines. Course credit is available, but required for
participation on the project. I also strongly encourage students to take the
community psychology course prior to joining the team, but do not require
that they do so. Students join one of the three teams, attend weekly
meetings, and work in the field on their projects. The number of hours/week
varies dramatically as a function of the exigencies of community-based work.
In the classroom, we cover theories of community development and social
change as well as applied research methodoligies. Team members design and
implement their own mini-projects within the larger SOCACT effort. These are
written up and presented at undergraduate research conferences as well as
professional conferences.
The research chronicles and analyzes how communities react to and grow with
change. It is a logitudinal project, established in 1990; the projects we
have designed will be monitored over the next 7-10 years. The theoretical
basis of the SOCACT is networks and how they function to spread an
innovation. In addition, I am looking at how culture (social norms about the
way society functions) influences the creation of an intervention. The
parameters examine who talks to whom and about what. Early findings have led
us to focus on the role of women and children as change agents. Theoretical
considerations for each of the projects are in the areas of efficacy,
identity, and ethnicity.
The SOCACT is composed of on-going projects designed following extensive
needs assessments in each community. In the US it is an intergenerational
theater project involving youths and elders who write and perform plays. As
an intervention the theater is a mechanism for those w/o a voice to express
themselves. As a research project the theater provides a window into self-
identity, self-efficacy, and citizen participation. In Nigeria the SOCACT
project involves curriculum realignment working in an elementary school (K-
6). As an intervention the project updates the curriculum to remove elements
that malign the indigenous culture without jeopardizing students' performance
on the national standardized tests. (The present curriculum is a legacy of
British colonization.) As a research project the curriculum realignment
analyzes various stages of change to find out the types of people,
institutions, and processes that are at work. We are especially interested in
the impact of culture on those processes.
If you have other questions, feel free to contact me at
DBryant@vines.IUSB.edu.