Knowledge and transformative social action: the encounter of selected traditions of participatory (action) research

Is there life beyond neoliberalism? Critical socio-educational alternatives for civic construction

“…This can be seen in any of the social movements and popular initiatives for civil construction, regardless of their level of detail and depth. If we analyse all these social movements, we will find the same characteristics which Streck (2014) recognises in social transformation processes from different European (England, Scandinavia and Germany) and Latin American (Brazil and Colombia) experiences. From these experiences, promoted from the actual practice of citizen movements, he concludes that there are recurring features in all of them.…”

“…Therefore, we still have a long way to go. Streck (2014) poses the challenge of how to build that participatory worldview oriented to social transformation. This idea is linked to the felt needs of certain groups which collectively become aware of their oppressed situation and the need to change their living conditions, that is, to become empowered.…”

The Use of Participatory Action Research within Education-Benefits to Stakeholders

“…MacDonald (2003) stated this hierarchy is present within a traditional positivist research approach as positivist epistemology holds the researcher as the sole producer of knowledge, operating in an autocratic relationship, and that one single reality exists which can be observed measured. Contrary to this, PAR postulates that the researcher/observer not only impacts the phenomenon being researched (as they bring their values to the research process), but also that there are multiple realities present in the data due to the collaborative and social aspect of knowledge creation associated with PAR (Baum, MacDougall, & Smith, 2006;Ozanne, & Saatcioglu;Streck 2014).…”

Local perceptions of land-use change: using participatory art to reveal direct and indirect socioenvironmental effects of land acquisitions in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania

“…Integrating arts into research can be a way to synthesize complex issues, improve communication, and construct new integrative narratives by engaging audiences from different cultural contexts (Curtis 2011, Heras and Tàbara 2014, Streck 2014. The use of art in research is often discussed as a matter of finding new ways to close the gap between awareness and behavior, as art has the potential to emotionally, intuitively, and cognitively evoke change and thus "speed up" sustainable societal transformation, as hypothesized by Heras and Tàbara (2014).…”