Beginning with Educational Research

Beginning with Educational Research

1. 1. Concept

   • Like most researchers, action theorists seek to observe, analyze, and develop theories of social practices that can be applied beyond the immediate research context. In addition, they realize they have to work with local participants to improve local practices. Toward this end, they must take into account the ideas of the participants whose practices they hope to transform (Somekh 2006); these ideas form the starting point and context of the transformation process.

2. 5. Importance

   • PAR generates socio-political awareness among participants in the process-including both researchers and group or community members. Finally, PAR provides a concrete context for involving community or group members in the research process in a non-traditional way-as agents of change and not as objects of study. From an epistemological point of view, PAR first posits that experience allows participants to “learn how to learn.” This is a break with traditional teaching models in which individuals play a passive role and simply accumulate the information that the instructor offers them.

3. 2. Objectives of participatory action research (PAR)

   • The purpose is to teach people to discover their own potential for action, freeing them from previous states of dependence and passivity, and leading them to understand that the solution lies in the effort they themselves can make to change the state of things.

4. 3. Characteristics

   • Takes into account the problems and needs that the group of people is going through, in order to identify the possible means for a quick and effective solution to the problem. Links reflection with action. Promotes communication between all participants.

5. 4. Ethics in participatory action research (PAR)

   • The PAR has faith in people and their ability to participate in the research process. The problem is that their own history of exploitation and alienation does not allow them to take the initiative to transform their reality. This is a critical role that the external agent takes on during the initial process. It is about helping members of the community or group to develop a critical awareness of reality and realize their transformative potential.

6. Freire (1970) argues that the individual who acquires a critical vision of the world experiences a qualitative change that affects and transforms him for the rest of his life. Freire refers to the process of “humanization” that occurs when the individual begins to gradually free himself from all the social forces and previous experiences that turned him into an object and that did not allow him to realize his human potential.

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