Social Transformation and Participatory Research

Abstract

Participatory research has now been in existence as a term for about 15 years. It began with the practice of adult educators in the countries of the south Africa, Asia, Latin America. These adult educators were confronting the contradictions between their philosophy of adult education and their practice of research methodology. Their philosophy of adult education placed learners in the centre and focussed on learners' control over their learning process. The major element of this philosophy is based on the premise that adults are capable. They are capable of learning, of changing, of acting, and of transforming the world. It is this essential faith in people as an integral part of the philosophy of adult education that was being contradicted through the adult educators' training as professional researchers. When these adult educators began to examine the problems related to the reality in which they were situating their practice of adult education, when they began to evaluate the impact of their adult education efforts, and when they began to study the learning process of adults, they realized their research methodology was alien to the adult learners and unilaterally controlled by these adult educators as researchers treating their learners as objects of manipulation in the research process.