Volume 2, No. 1

Bradley D. Olson, Leonard A. Jason

The Community Narration (CN) Approach: Understanding a Group’s Identity and Cognitive Constructs through Personal and Community Narratives

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Community program evaluations, visioning and assessments must always endeavor to attain useful information in the most sensitive way. Most community-based organizations form, grow and continue on their own without the help of outside experts. Participatory approaches should respect the historical evolution of these groups and understand the positive factors that underlie their organizational beliefs. A group’s mission, values and identity should inform any community program evaluation, consulting project, and the design of any research study. Narrative methods have been used with mutual-help groups and many other organizations to good effect (Harré, Bullen, & Olson, 2006; Rappaport, 2000). Such methods have great potential to avoid hierarchical and unidirectional forms of evaluation, encouraging the group’s collective psychology and identity-based constructs to emerge. We developed a participatory, narrative technique called Community Narration (CN), which is described here. The technique utilizes personal stories and community narratives as an entry into the evaluation process or other work involved in understanding an organization. The community’s participants were able to use the technique successfully, found it enriching, and the constructs obtained have led to many discussions and member-guided research related to the organization.

Cheryl M. Ramos

E Ho´i I Ka Piko (Returning to the Center): Positioning Local Culture in a Global Community Psychology

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As the demographics of communities become more culturally diverse, understanding the local cultural community context becomes increasingly important to community life and work. This paper presents an undergraduate community psychology course that positions local cultural and community perspectives alongside international and global perspectives. The author describes an undergraduate community psychology course that was developed as a part of a campus-wide initiative that aims to represent the Native Hawaiian culture and worldview across the curriculum. The course was designed around a framework that represented multiple layers or strands of knowledge representing the international, national, and local community worldviews.

This paper describes the development of the local strand of knowledge which included 1) considering the cultural, historical, social, political, and environmental context of the local setting, 2) engaging and collaborating with local scholars and cultural practitioners, and 3) selecting resources representing the local cultural and community context as it relates to community psychology principles and perspectives. Results of students’ course evaluations are provided and confirm the importance of including local cultural and community perspectives in community psychology courses. The application of the course development framework to other community contexts is discussed.

David A. Julian, Tammy Collins

Perceptions of Skills Needed to Engage in Collaborative Community Problem Solving: Implications for Community Psychology Practice and Training

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This paper provides a brief review of the results of a survey of Family and Children First Council Coordinators in Ohio. Sixty-eight (68) local Coordinators responded to a survey regarding their perceptions of skills needed to facilitate collaborative community problem solving. The authors argue that Council Coordinators fill a critical role in the collaborative community problem solving process. They refer to this role as “community support.” Analysis of survey data provided an opportunity to consider the skills Council Coordinators felt were important to their community support roles. In addition, the community support role and its importance are described. The authors also suggest that community psychology practitioners are ideal candidates for assuming such roles. Finally, implications for training community psychology practitioners are addressed.