Education Commons^™

Kinsey Dialogue Series #4: Claiming Global Space: Global Grassroots Movements, Srilatha Batliwala

Participatory Research & Practice

The influence of transnational civil society organizations and networks - both civil and uncivil - in global politics and unprecedented. Among them, those dedicated to greater social and economic equity and equality, to human security, ecological sustainability, peace, inclusion, and tolerance, have played a particularly effective role in restructuring the norms that inform policy and regulatory frameworks for the world. Some scholarly analysts grant that they have in fact effectively restructured global politics in visible and lasting ways. For this very reason, perhaps, their legitimacy, accountability and constituency base is being challenged by states, multinational corporations, scholars, and leaders of …

Kinsey Dialogue Series #3: Landscaping The Learning Environment To Create A Home For The Complex Mind, Jan Visser

Participatory Research & Practice

I am going to use the opportunity presented by the 2001 David Kinsey Lecture to bring together some of the ideas expressed in my recent work, and to reflect on my decades-long experience in creating the conditions for the development of learning in an international context that experience, and my reflections on it, has led me to recognize that learning is an immensely more complex phenomenon than most of our current practice to promote and facilitate it would have us believe. Consequently, I have come to the conclusion that the complex human mind is poorly at home in much of …

Landscaping The Learning Environment To Create A Home For The Complex Mind, Jan Visser

Participatory Research & Practice

I am going to use the opportunity presented by the 2001 David Kinsey lecture to bring together some ideas expressed in m recent work and to reflect on my decades-long experience in creating the conditions for the development of learning in an international context. That experience, and my reflections on it, has led me to recognize that learning is an immensely more complex phenomenon than most of our current practice to promote and facilitate it would have us believe. Consequently, I have come to the conclusion that the complex human mind is poorly at home in much of the environment …

Kinsey Dialogue Series #2: Participatory Research And Action: Flower, Weed, Or Genetically Modified Monster?, Eileen Kane

Participatory Research & Practice

Over the last fifteen years I have been using participatory research in many areas, and especially to look at problems and opportunities for girls' education in developing countries. In this paper, I want to share some ideas about what I think needs to happen if participatory approaches are to grow and flourish in the future. The questions I am asking are, "what is participatory research? is it a sunflower, getting stronger as it pushes toward enlightenment? Is it kudzu, omnipresent and sometimes out of place? Is it a rootless creation, a carbuncle grafted on to the conventional trunk of research? …

Kinsey Dialogue Series #1: The Origins And Challenges Of Participatory Action Research, Orlando Fals Borda

Participatory Research & Practice

Participatory research as we now know it, with its emphasis on practice in conditions of exploitation and poverty, originated in Third World countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico, Tanzania and Colombia. Participatory research emerged around 1970, when socials scientists who shared a particular concern about life conditions among the rural poor, became dissatisfied with our training. Our conceptions of Cartesian rationality, progress, and "normal" science had been challenged, and we sought alternative emancipatory modes of research and action. This included looking for conceptual elements to guide our fieldwork that would take us beyond our tentative first steps with social psychology, …

Participatory Research: An Annotated Bibliography, Center For International Education, Peter Park, David Kinsey

Participatory Research & Practice

Participatory research is an approach to community education that involves local people in defining and analyzing their own problems, and then taking action to change them. While people have been doing this for thousands of years, this particular approach arose out of efforts in East Africa in the 1970s when development workers realized that people learn more, solve problems more efficiently, and feel a greater sense of power when they actively participate in research and action projects - not passively, as in the traditional development model. Participatory research grew out of this goal, namely to make everybody researchers and development …

Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach, Patricia Maguire

Participatory Research & Practice

Doing Participatory Research does not begin with a pretentious clarion call to action but with a personal narrative enclosing the sharp edge of her critique of male chauvinism in participatory research. As graduate students, we often see the inconsistencies in the theories and practices of the current generation of respected scholars and activists, but we rarely find the courage to own these criticisms fully. In Pat's case, she was astonished that the great "men" of participatory research could simply ignore women's voices while claiming universalist and humane values and liberationalist practices. She simply saw with a clear feminist eye that …

"Dialogue Is Not A Chaste Event." Comments By Paulo Freire On Issues In Participatory Research, Paul Jurmo

Participatory Research & Practice

This booklet offers a candid glimpse of Paulo Freire's thought in action as he reacts to specific issues raised in a field experience. The case is one of a nonformal education program in Africa that includes an attempt to encourage participation of villagers and lower level staff members in evaluating and planning the project. This effort runs into problems which in turn pose questions for the practitioner. How do you deal with a lack of interest in participation on the part of villagers or staff? What about the resistance of authorities to real participation and its implications? How ethical is …

The Participatory Process: Producing Photoliterature, Bonnie J. Cain, John P. Comings

Participatory Research & Practice

This note describes a step-by-step process for involving learners in the development, production and evaluation of various types of photoliterature including fotonovellas. Technical information on photographic techniques is presented to assist educators in the participatory process.

In this manual, we have given suggestions on how to combine participation and the development of photo-literature. First, we consider the rationales for learner-produced materials. In the second section we discuss the participatory process and focus on the relationship of the facilitator (probably you) to the participants and how the facilitator can enhance or inhibit the process. The third section is designed to answer …