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 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 Adult learning, global civil society and politics. October 15-17, 1997(1979-10-17) Hall, Budd LWhat role can adult education play in strengthening global civil society and advancing social transformation in an increasingly capital driven world? In this paper, Dr. Budd Hall situates this question within a context where globalisation has intensified the dominance of capital while deepening social, ecological and economic instability. He reflects on the contemporary political economy in which global markets appear powerful yet remain fragile and extractive. In response to this expansion of global capitalism, Hall posits that the presence and influence of global civil society have also grown, creating new spaces for resistance, cooperation and collective action. Engaging with debates on development, ecological crisis and democratic participation, and drawing on examples such as the 1992 Global Forum and emerging transnational networks, he examines how global citizens’ action is being shaped across diverse contexts. Hall invites readers to consider how more people can meaningfully contribute to these movements and emphasises the crucial role of adult educators in fostering critical awareness, building solidarities and deepening engagement with global civil society. He urges educators to remain clear that the world is not okay, and that adult education is essential for collective and transformative change.Item Knowledge as a commodity and participatory research( Prospects, UNESCO, 1979) Hall, Budd LWhat is knowledge? How is it formed? Who has the authority to “make” it? and who does it ultimately serve? These are the central questions Dr. Budd Hall raises in this article. He critiques the way traditional intellectuals such as scientists and scholars, often trained in elite universities and supported by international funding agencies, are institutionally positioned as the legitimate producers of knowledge. Embedded within particular class locations, this group often produces knowledge that serves its own class interests and maintains dominant social relations. In this process, organic intellectuals engaged in critical reflection and grassroots organising are sidelined as knowledge makers. Drawing on the works of Freire, Mao and others, Hall reflects on the role of intellectuals. He advances a systematic critique of survey research and outlines the guiding principles of participatory research. The article is a critical inquiry into the nature of knowledge within the new international order. It calls for moving beyond viewing knowledge as intellectual commodities such as papers and conferences and toward recognising and valuing local and indigenous knowledge systems, while developing more decentralised ways of legitimising people as producers of knowledge.Item Social movements and the practice of citizenship: Learning in the canadian and global context(0000) Aggarwal, Pramila; Hall, Budd LHow can learnings from social movements advance the practice of citizenship? In this paper, Budd L. Hall and Pramila Aggarwal argue that social movements are intensive sites of democratic learning where citizenship is not only claimed but actively practiced. They identify interconnected forms of learning. Informal learning among participants, intentional educational efforts within movements, and broader public learning that occurs as movements reshape public understanding. Knowledge generated in struggle travels beyond direct participants. Hall reflects, for instance, on how insights from the women’s movement transformed his own understanding of power even though he was not directly part of it. Drawing on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire, this paper situates social movements as spaces where learning, agency and structural critique converge. Movements generate new knowledge, identities and capacities for collective action, thereby expanding the meaning and practice of citizenship beyond legality and advancing adult learning as a lived, collective process. The authors posit that social movement learning can serve as vital sites for advancing adult learning and, by extension, deepening democratic citizenship.Item Challenges in the co-construction of knowledge: A global study on strengthening structures for community university research partnerships(0000) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh; Tremblay, Crystal; Singh, WafaWhat does it mean to institutionalise the co-construction of knowledge between universities and communities at a global level? This paper begins from the premise that knowledge democracy requires moving beyond expert driven models towards collaborative processes that recognise the knowledge generating capacities of each human being and of every community. Community university research partnerships are presented as a key pathway for this shift, as they create structures through which research questions, methods, processes and outcomes can be shaped jointly. Drawing on a global survey and national case studies across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, the authors examine the histories, discourses and institutional forms that support or constrain such partnerships. This paper further analyses models such as Science Shops, centers of community-based research and national policy frameworks, while identifying tensions and practical challenges in embedding such work within universities. It highlights the importance of facilitative structures, supportive leadership, transnational networks and sustained institutional commitment. In doing so, it argues that institutionalising community-based research is not only a technical exercise but a political and ideological process that reshapes how universities understand knowledge, partnership and their responsibilities to society.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 Asia