Co-Construction of Knowledge

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End date: 1999Has files: Yes

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    Description of the methods of participation research
    (1978) Le Boterf, Guy
    The 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.
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    A North-South convergence on the quest for meaning
    (Sage, 1996) Fals Borda, Orlando
    Personal 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.
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    Conscientizing the evaluator
    (1979) Etherington, Alan
    This 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.
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    Building in dialogue between consumers and staff in acute mental health services
    (Systemic Practice and Action Research, 1998) Wadsworth, Yoland; Epstein, Merinda
    This paper describes some aspects of the methodology, material, and findings from a lengthy participatory action research engagement by a consumer organization in Australia, which was undertaken in collaboration with staff at a major public psychiatric hospital and then went on to involve "players" throughout the local state, and national mental health services system. A small first phase established a dialogic methodology for the exchange of experiences and thinking between staff and consumers. The purpose of the second phase of the research was to explore how consumers' voices might be heard, and how staff-consumer communication about that feedback, might be "built in" to ongoing organizational structure and culture. Systems thinking about defensive routines, silences, and voice-as-discourse is reported as offering a possible way of cracking the puzzle of the closed-loop cycle of claim/blame-defense-and-counter-claim/blame-defense that has been characteristic to date.
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    Adult learning, global civil society and politics. October 15-17, 1997
    (1979-10-17) Hall, Budd L
    What 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.
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    Knowledge as a commodity and participatory research
    ( Prospects, UNESCO, 1979) Hall, Budd L
    What 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.
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    Transformative learning through environmental action: An overview of an IDRC sponsored project
    (1995) Hall, Budd L
    Dr. 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.
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    Social movements and the practice of citizenship: Learning in the canadian and global context
    (0000) Aggarwal, Pramila; Hall, Budd L
    How 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.
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    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, Wafa
    What 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.
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    From clarity to anarchy: Participatory research approach (A critique of "The methodology of the participatory research approach")
    (1979) Tandon, Rajesh
    In 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.