ERIC Number: EJ1207614
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Feb
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1925-993X
EISSN: N/A
Can Participatory Action Research Empower Participants in Adult Education Studies?
Zhu, Yidan
Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, v31 n1 p63-73 Feb 2019
Participatory action research (PAR), as a research methodology, challenges conventional, positivist, and scientific approaches. Recent adult education studies on PAR have explored how to develop PAR to enhance research practice and further the "democratizing aims of adult education" (Joyappa & Martin, 1996). Historically, as a part of adult education movements, PAR has been developed for social justice and social change (Glassman, Erdem, & Bartholomew, 2013). Yet while conducting PAR in adult education with the commitment of empowering the oppressed, researchers sometimes overlook unequal social and power relations behind PAR, restrictions from institutional power, and tensions between local practice and currents of global neo-liberalization. This reflective paper adopts a Marxist-feminist theoretical framework to review the historical development of PAR in adult education, and analyzes the limitations of PAR in empowering adult participants. I argue that PAR should be understood as a praxis that could be used to mobilize social transformations. Researchers should be aware of separations between the commitment of empowerment and actual practices that reproduce unequal social relations.
Descriptors: Action Research, Participatory Research, Adult Education, Empowerment, Power Structure, Research Methodology, Social Influences, Educational Research, Foreign Countries, Immigrants, Mothers, Asians, Neoliberalism
Mount Saint Vincent University. e-mail: cjsaerceea@gmail.com; Web site: https://cjsae.library.dal.ca/index.php/cjsae
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Adult Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A