Action research a Handbook for Students
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ActionResearchaHandbookforStudents
participatory research is attributed to Swantz [Park 1992].
A ction R eseARch A h Andbook foR s tudents 36 Tanzanian community, having been adopted as a daughter of a local shaman who included her in his family and enabled her identification with norms, values and cultural patterns of the locals. This allowed her to understand how impor- tant for participatory research it is to identify with the native group with which the research is conducted, and to avoid the way of thinking derived from the researcher’s own culture. After conducting a series of pilot research, carried out by Swantz and local students who were educated for this purpose at the Tanzanian Dar es Salaam University, in 1975 she initiated a large-scale project commissioned by the Finn- ish Ministry of Culture and Youth and the Academy of Finland [Swantz 2008]. The research conducted in the Bagamoyo district concerned mainly people’s resistance to being moved to new villages. The government’s intention was to improve people’s access to healthcare and education, but due to a strong attach- ment to their living places, they preferred to stay where they had always lived. Researchers wanted to learn the opinions of the studied population about the future and their own development. For this purpose, they lived among the locals, sharing their homes. They organised workshops during which the locals worked in groups with researchers and with the representatives of the local gov- ernment, or other events where local historians shared their knowledge on the village’s past. A lot of attention was paid to the integrational character of these meetings, by organising dance events and other artistic activities. The outcome of the research was the increase in the critical awareness of the local inhabitants in terms of opportunities provided by access to education or healthcare. Not everyone made the decision to move to better situated villages, but as Swantz remarks, thirty years after the research was carried out it is pos- sible to note significant development of the system of managing resettlements to more civilised places in Tanzania [Swantz 2008] Furthermore, the researcher discovered that both students and locals were much more effective in collecting information from people than specialised and educated social studies researchers working in her team. According to the scholar, the process of data collection should be based on local knowledge and local practices. Both researchers and the local population are at the same time practitioners and theoreticians who Download 0.96 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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