Co-Construction of Knowledge
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Item Description of the methods of participation research(1978) Le Boterf, GuyThe article describes a research method used to identify the basic educational needs of rural populations in six villages in Central America. The research method is an approach that combines experimental research with a participatory survey of the community to identify educational needs. The communities participated by defining the problems they were facing, discussing their situation, identifying their educational needs, and developing possible solutions. This is different from a typical survey, since community members were given an active role in the research activities. Moreover, they provided feedback and were actively involved in discussions at various stages of the study and research process. This allowed the researchers to discuss and analyse the results with the community and to use their feedback in understanding and addressing specific problems. The study began with an initial exploration of the community, followed by the identification and prioritisation of needs, setting educational goals, developing strategies, discussion with the community, and implementation of the strategies. Researchers and technical specialists acted as facilitators and educators rather than being the sole producers of knowledge. The study links research, education, and community action, which is intended not only to analyse the situation in the communities but also to contribute to solving the problems that were identified.Item A North-South convergence on the quest for meaning(Sage, 1996) Fals Borda, OrlandoPersonal experience in Latin America led the author from academic work to fieldwork in participatory action research (PAR). This type of research implies a quest for meaning not only in life experiences but also within the intellectual endeavor. A comparison is made between Agnes Heller's version of such a quest and a previous attempt made in Colombia during the period when PAR was being constructed.Item Conscientizing the evaluator(1979) Etherington, AlanThis document aims to discuss the political and social aspects of the assessment of non-formal education and community programs. The text claims that social research and evaluation are intrinsically linked to politics since determining goals, methods, values, and priorities is inevitably connected to power relations. This document tries to demonstrate that traditional or dominant forms of research are intrinsically linked to oppressive social relations because they simplify social change, separate individuals from their environment, impose quantification, and favor evaluators. Therefore, it is essential to take a more emancipating approach that would allow the participants to realize their values, judgment, and power through reflective dialogues, reciprocal conversations, and shared learning. Moreover, Freire’s approach requires engaging in action research, understanding connections and interactions through the lens of oppression and power, asking who benefits and who loses from the research, and taking a holistic view of the object of research. The text also mentions that evaluators should make their assumptions and power positions over the communities assessed clear, as community projects seeking social change require critical awareness of how their evaluators contribute to the change.Item Transformative learning through environmental action: An overview of an IDRC sponsored project(1995) Hall, Budd LDr. Budd L. Hall presents an overview of a research project on transformative learning in environmental action, carried out with colleagues at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, York University, and partner organizations in Brazil. The project grew out of work around the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the Treaty on Environmental Education for Sustainable Societies and focused on what people learn through environmental campaigns linked to food production, distribution, and consumption. Drawing on case studies from India, Sudan, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, and El Salvador, along with an international survey and a collective workshop, Hall and his co-researchers look at what needs to change in current systems, including life conditions, power relations, and ways of thinking, and set out ten principles of transformative learning, among them recovering a sense of place, reconnecting with nature, and recognizing historical struggles. The paper also describes practical methods used across the case studies, such as community meetings, learning from elders, and seed festivals, along with possible indicators of success. Hall notes that although computer networking was planned as a central tool, it ultimately played only a minor role in the project.Item From clarity to anarchy: Participatory research approach (A critique of "The methodology of the participatory research approach")(1979) Tandon, RajeshIn this paper, Rajesh Tandon responds to a critique of a paper on the methodology of the participatory research approach, presented at the African Regional Workshop on Participatory Research in Tanzania in 1979. A central fallacy runs through the original argument that the wide range of political activism within PRA produces naive idealism and methodological adhocism. Participatory research is not an invention of the seventies; only its label is new, since people organising the rural poor had long practised its elements without naming them. Two vantage points inform the approach, the activist's and the professional researchers, and reconciling them forms the real challenge. Classical research confines inquiry to thinking alone, while PRA treats feeling and acting as equally valid modes of knowing. A genuine risk of subjective, superficial analysis remains, addressed through joint analysis between researcher and people. PRA's apparent anarchism reflects unfamiliarity and variety rather than incoherence.Item Asian regional participatory research network: A note(1985) Tandon, RajeshDr. Rajesh Tandon's 1985 note reviews seven years of the Asian Regional Participatory Research Network, outlining its theoretical orientation and administrative structure. He argues participatory research in Asia has become part of the organized struggles of local people, challenging expert authority and helping communities build their own strength. The work has centered on five group-, workers, the rural poor, tribals, women, and urban slum dwellers, approached from a clear position alongside the oppressed rather than through debates over methods. On the administrative side, he records decisions from the December 1983 Manila meeting: regional coordination staying with the Society for Participatory Research in Asia, New Delhi, and patchy communication between regions. The note closes by asking someone else to take over as international coordinator after his three years in the post and calls for more inter-regional collaboration, possible residency exchanges, and a better networking system.Item Knowledge and social change: An inquiry into participatory research in India(Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1985-10) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)This report is about an inquiry into participatory research, evaluation, and training efforts across India, carried out by the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) with seven collaborating organizations from different parts of the country. It grew out of a shared unease among researchers and trainers about the distance conventional social science placed between the expert and the people that research was meant to serve. The study set out to document ongoing experiments in the field and to draw out what these scattered efforts had in common. The cases move from training sessions with rural and urban women to inquiries carried out jointly by professionals, activists, and forest dwellers, each showing people affected by a problem taking part in investigating it themselves. The report works through how such processes build confidence and collective awareness among participants and how the person facilitating a group must stay close enough to its concerns to be useful while keeping enough distance to see clearly. The seven cases differ widely in setting and scale, yet common threads run through them around mobilization, skill-building, and the sharing of authority over knowledge, questions that the study returns to through each case.Item Participatory research international networking memo, March 15, 1985(Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1985-03-15) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)The March 1985 issue of the Participatory Research International Networking Memo, circulated by PRIA, reflects on the Bhopal gas tragedy and PRIA's efforts to document it for educational purposes through its collaboration with the Highlander Center. . A regional update reports on participatory research developments across Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America. These include the formation of the Senegalese Association of Participatory Research, PRIA's own work on a participatory research and evaluation study, a workshop on the Koel-Karo dam project in India, and ongoing Bhopal-related investigation and mobilization. Other updates cover a databank on participatory research literature in Italy, a planned handbook on self-reliant development, a new Participatory Research Exchange in the UK, the use of participatory research within Quebec's feminist movement, and a proposed workshop on knowledge, education, and power in Canada. The memo closes with a list of new publications, including studies from Taiwan, Bangladesh, and Norway, and two videos, one on community responses to Bhopal and another featuring a conversation with Rajesh Tandon and Ganesh Pandey on the origins of participatory research in AsiaItem Participatory research international networking memo, August 1, 1987(1987-08-01) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)The August 1987 issue of the Participatory Research International Networking Memo, circulated by PRIA, reports on the May 1987 arrest of Vincent Cheng Kim Chuan and fifteen others by Singapore's Internal Security Department. It presents the network's response to the arrests and includes an appeal for letters of support. The issue also announces the International Forum on Participatory Evaluation, planned for New Delhi in March 1988 with the International Council for Adult Education and ASPBAE, seeking regional input on structure, case studies, and funding. A regional update section surveys developments across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, and North America, including the founding assembly of the African Association of Literacy and Adult Education, an Indonesian action research network, a Philippine community project, the 1986 J. Roby Kidd Award to Anthya Madiath, and the planned CEAAL assembly in Mexico. It closes with notices of new publications and a proposal for an international anthology on participatory research.Item Notes on participatory research methodology for forest studies(1982-09) Tandon, RajeshThis document outlines a participatory research framework for studying the impact of forest legislation on forest-dwelling communities in India. It emphasizes involving local activists and residents directly in data collection, analysis, and reporting so that research becomes both documentation and a tool for mobilization.