Creating Spaces For Civic Engagement: A Qualitative Action Research Study on Sustaining Engagement and Generating Power Through Relational Community Organizing

Author

Virginia Mata, University of the Incarnate WordFollow

Date of Degree

5-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Program

Education

Advisor

Alfredo Ortiz Aragón, Committee Chair

Advisor

Alison Buck

Advisor

Doshie Piper

Abstract

The purposes of this action research (AR) study were threefold. First, to explore the key ingredients that Communities Organized for Public Service and the Metro Alliance (COPS/Metro)—a broad-based community organization in San Antonio, Texas—uses to keep ordinary citizens civically engaged. Secondly, my AR study aimed to use a critical pedagogy approach to leverage and amplify the same COPS/METRO process to increase civic engagement, raise awareness of redlining, and engage in actions to address the present-day effects of redlining. My third purpose was to understand the connection between the two better—in other words, how COPS/METRO civic engagement and awareness-raising lead to concrete action and how AR might amplify that process.

There were eleven participants in this study, all of whom were members of COPS/Metro, including leaders from four institutions located in marginalized communities. My AR process drew from traditional qualitative research methods and formative processes focused on critical pedagogy and active change-oriented interventions:

• Qualitative methods: I used semi-structured interviews, journaling, photographs, artifacts, and field notes to collect data (Charmaz, 2014; Saldana, 2021; & Leavy, 2017).
• Critical pedagogy: I facilitated two civic academies to increase civic engagement and raise awareness of redlining (Freire, 2020; Leavy, 2017; Stringer & Ortiz Aragón, 2021).
• Participatory actions: I engaged in various participatory organizing processes to address the long-term effects of redlining in terms of public safety in neighborhoods (speed humps), met with our councilwoman to effect policy change, and participated in a gun violence awareness campaign (Stringer & Ortiz Aragón, 2021).

I engaged in both individual and collective analysis processes. Individually, I used an iterative process of open, in vivo, and process coding, then organized the data into a category system through a constant comparison analysis method (Charmaz, 2014; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2007). Throughout the process, I invited participation in data analysis through the co-creation of knowledge used to inform subsequent steps, including in the civic academies.

Four key themes emerged from the study that explain what keeps citizens civically engaged in COPS/Metro and how critical pedagogy and AR can enhance this process. Overall, I discovered essential ingredients to the COPS/METRO Secret Sauce that nourish the spirit, mind, and body. The first theme I labeled "The Truth Will Set You Free”—focuses on critical consciousness and the power of stories to enhance solidarity and co-create knowledge, thereby democratizing knowledge. Theme Two: The Secret Sauce that Sustains Civic Engagement. This theme consists of five key ingredients (subthemes) that nourish the spirit, mind, and body while sustaining civic engagement. These key ingredients are: Good Samaritans, Institutional Support, Spiritual and Personal Fulfillment, Social Networks, and Collective Action. A third theme—understanding COPS/METRO work as "A Power University for the Common Good”—deeply addresses how leaders create relational power that empowers citizen leaders to act collectively and publicly in their communities, thus reinforcing the COPS/Metro “secret sauce” and knowledge democratization. Theme Four: Challenges to Civic Engagement fundamental to community organizing. Based on these findings, I developed a holistic model called the Relational Power Generation Model that sustains civic engagement and generates power. Through an iterative dynamic process, this model shows that power is generated in spaces created by the collaborative actions of organizers and leaders. These ingredients reinforce each other, and each generates energy that ultimately transforms into power to act collectively, power for the community, power with each other, power within each of us, and power within the organization that creates staying power to sustain the organization (Gaventa, 2021; Christens, 2019). My study can also be considered a systematization of experience (Holliday, 2014; Ortiz Aragón & Hoetmer, 2020), representing the documentation of collaboration between community organizing and AR. Action research and community organizing processes were pivotal in enabling this study's findings and the conceptual model by providing a pathway for deep participation, reflexivity, relationality, and collective action.

Recommended Citation

Mata, Virginia, "Creating Spaces For Civic Engagement: A Qualitative Action Research Study on Sustaining Engagement and Generating Power Through Relational Community Organizing" (2025). Theses & Dissertations. 464.
https://athenaeum.uiw.edu/uiw_etds/464