Participatory Action Research in Higher Education Training

Abstract

By fostering a direct engagement of those involved in solving problems or needs in a context of real situations, participatory action research (PAR) offers great potentialities for the academic training of future and even current professionals. However, there is a weak implementation of PAR as a pedagogical training strategy in higher education. Hence, this paper seeks to be a contribution to answering the following question: What potentialities and challenges can arise from the implementation of PAR in higher education? To this end, the following elements are addressed: what PAR consists of, and the contributions it can offer for higher education training, concluding with the presentation of some challenges and difficulties that seem to emerge from the use of PAR at the institutional, students and teachers' levels, and which may help understanding its little use.

Effective participatory science education in a diverse Latin American population

“…Developing countries, and Bolivia in particular, have long been in the backwaters of research and technological innovation, despite a sizable population and GDP (Arauco et al, 2014;Villarroel-Mareno et al, 2012). It is not trivial to devise and implement measures to position developing countries on par with developed nations, where a rich history of prolific research and development has long been established (Kremer et al, 2013;Serpa et al, 2018;Eilks and Hofstein, 2014;Knamiller, 1984). Notwithstanding, we envision that our efforts to transform the landscape of science education in Bolivia may help reverse this trend.…”

“…Implementing education programs and performing research in the developing world has several challenges, even when structural and technological limitations are overcome (Serpa et al, 2018;Kremer et al, 2013). For example, implementation of the One Laptop per Child program in Peru did not significantly increase students' scores in mathematics (Cristia et al, 2012).…”

“…Project-based teaching has been shown to be particularly effective at transmitting scientific concepts (Bradforth et al, 2015;Waldrop, 2015), especially to students from underrepresented communities (Stark and Freishtat, 2014;Hrabowski, 2011). In this approach, students are given complex tasks to be resolved over a defined period of time and are expected to conclude with a finalized product or presentation (Barron et al, 1998;Serpa et al, 2018). Such 'hands-on' approaches would be particularly adapted to the needs of students in developing nations, yet their implementation has been limited (Sife et al, 2007).…”

Exploring Sociology of Education in the Promotion of Sustainability Literacy in Higher Education

“…According to Hedden et al [56], an active learning constructivist approach to the teaching of sustainability-related topics in higher education is critical. However, a more active teaching raises difficulties, inasmuch that it goes against the academic culture disseminated both among teachers, students, and even in the community itself, and can be a source of tensions [15,31,49,53,88,94,95,96,97,98,99].…”

STEM Education and Outcomes in Vietnam: Views From the Social Gap and Gender Issues

“…According to UNESCO Science Report (2015), in 2013, high-income economies account for 69.3% of global expenditure on research and development, while this figure is merely 30.4% and 0.3% for middle-income and low-income economies respectively (UNESCO, 2015). Ideally, these latter would be seeking to boost their STEMrelated research so that they could match the senior academic landscape among developed countries with a prolonged and prosperous history of research and development (Kremer et al, 2013;Serpa et al, 2018;Eilks and Hofstein, 2014;Knamiller, 1984). One means to this end -and not exclusive to this end, either -would be to develop STEM education, which proved to be both useful and challenging (Ferreira et al, 2019).…”