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Participation and Participatory Action Research (PAR) in Environmental Education Processes: For What Are People Empowered?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Lesley Le Grange
Lesley Le Grange*
Affiliation:
Stellenbosch University
*
†Faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland 7602, South Africa. Email: llg@sun.ac.za
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Abstract

Participatory action research (PAR) derived from anti-colonial struggles in the third world in the 1960s. Traditionally it has been a method of the margins because of its commitment to linking social justice to research. Because of its counter-hegemonic tendency it has had great appeal among environmental educators advocating a socially critical approach to environmental education. However, with the ascendancy of neoliberal politics in recent years, PAR has become co-opted by international organisations such as the World Bank, IMF, OECD and UNESCO. In this paper I wish to critically examine the notion of participation in PAR, and its changing nature as a consequence of its cooptation into mainstream discourses. I explore “vectors of escape” from its assimilation into mainstream environmental education discourses. In exploring the notion of participation in participatory research processes I draw on South African case studies, which might find resonance in wider contexts.

Keywords

Action researchdeterritorialisationenvironmental educationneocolonialismparticipationreterritorialisation
Type
Research Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 25 , 2009 , pp. 3 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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