Action Research to Improve Youth and Adult Literacy: Empowering Learners in a Multilingual World

“The challenge for education today is to adapt and respond to the complex realities of a linguistically and culturally diverse world, and to combat social disintegration and discrimination. We can use action research to reflect on this, moving from theory to practice and from practice to theory.”

This guidebook looks at how collaborative and participatory action research can be used to further quality in education and the promotion of literacy that supports youth and adults in multilingual and multicultural contexts. As explained in the book, “[Q]uality education does not mean importing a template or model, applying it wholesale, and watching it fail or remain alien to the social context. Such an approach is a waste of time for the people concerned. Action research by contrast, is an empowering and emancipatory approach which uses dialogue and reflection to offer tremendous opportunities for individual and collective empowerment and transformation through learning.”

Action research is described in the guidebook as “a special way of doing and using research; it is not a method or a research instrument like observation, interviews, mapping, etc. As the term suggests, action research is about researching action through action. Action research takes a systematic approach, as opposed to the more random ‘learning by doing’. In action research, we define the problem and question to be addressed, reflect on how to address it, plan a new way of dealing with it, monitor our alternative approach, evaluate our action, communicate the results, and, if they are satisfactory, change the practice.

Action research was invented to democratize research and knowledge generation. Action research abolishes the elitist tradition whereby only the systematic knowledge generation of university-trained scientists is accepted as research. In action research, practitioners can work as a team with researchers or conduct their own action research with other key stakeholders. Many community organizations, NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and educational institutions use action research to find their own solutions to questions that arise from their practice. They thereby improve their practice and further their professional development.” For example, the REFLECT (Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Technique) approach is a popular kind of action research in adult literacy work, and Participatory Rural Appraisal is a popular methodology.

This book is intended to provide guidance for those who train people in the field of youth and adult education, and who manage the implementation of non-formal education and curriculum development programmes for youth and adult literacy. It can also be useful for professionals who develop curricula for adult literacy programmes, and to train trainers, publishers, authors, and content and application developers for digital media.

The guidebook looks at action research from a meta-perspective, focusing on the essential steps and principles, not on how to conduct action research or the different methodologies. The aim is to help people understand why action research is used and how to use it to define and solve a problem.

Following an introduction explaining the purpose of the guidebook, the second chapter of the book discusses the theory of action research. It looks at the purpose and key features of action research, and outlines its origins and how it has been applied in different cultural contexts. It addresses the question of what is ‘good’ action research by introducing the reader to the quality principles that emerge from practice and theory.

In the third section, three case studies from Niger, Ethiopia, and Senegal illustrate how the principles of action research have been applied in practice to foster the creation of a multilingual literate environment and to support curriculum development and the training of trainers. The aim of this chapter is to enhance people’s understanding of action research and offer guidance into reflecting on what kind of action research could be useful in a particular context. The first case is about establishing multilingual publishing in Niger. Action research is used to serve multilingual education and a multilingual reading and writing culture that responds to local readers’ interests. The action research in this case entailed developing the capacities of the whole book chain. The second case describes a participatory literacy and numeracy curriculum development process for the capacity development of smallholder coffee producers in Ethiopia. The curriculum is context-specific and gender-responsive, and is based on prior knowledge as well as local practices. The third case is about an emancipated community in Senegal that needed help in researching some of the challenges they face. The involvement of action research in the process led to an effective adaptation of the research method and capacity development of the local community, which was then able to apply the research tools independently. New training tools were devised which also proved relevant for other communities in the sub-region that share socio-cultural features.

The fourth chapter suggests a framework that the publishers see as emerging from theory and practice, and that may help organisations ask questions about the quality of youth and adult literacy education and learning. This frame of reference is meant as a source of inspiration that is open for discussion and revision, because what matters ultimately is that an activity is adequate in a particular context. The discussion proposes five guiding principals or values for youth and adult literacy programmes which emerge from theory and practice: (1) inclusion; (2) lifelong learning; (3) literacy perceived from a multilingual and multicultural perspective and as an essential aspect of the human right to education; (4) a multilingual and multicultural ethos; and (5) sustainability.

Chapter five provides examples from Asia and Africa in order to give the reader some ideas on how the basic principles are reflected in concrete programmes and what quality criteria emerged.