Participatory and transformative social intervention with the mothers in a school

Abstract

In a neighborhood in the city of Valencia, two groups of Romani and non-Romani women, together with teachers and families from the local public school, began a journey of knowledge and mutual transformation. The school management team positively responded to the request to participate in a socio-cultural innovation project to be undertaken in their area. In the El Cabanyal neighborhood, problems of co-existence between groups of different cultures were detected. The project was based on a pedagogy committed to the participatory and transformative research activity of the community rooted in narratives, reflections and transforming practice. During the project design and follow-up, an ethnographical methodology was applied to analyze the social reality, the regenerative relationship among social stakeholders and knowledge co-production as the basis of social action. This research model was linked with the context by contributing to identify and solve specific problems. To do so, resources like interviews, participative observation, field notebooks, photography, representation, etc., were employed. Of the results, the following stand out: linguistic and communicative intersubjectivity between stakeholders; preparing a narrative account with dialogue and co-participation experience in democratic life to promote education for citizenship both individually and collectively. Due to the nature of the applied methodology, we must continue to reconceptualize with new projects. The adopted strategies favor an emotional bond between people in a specific context, characterized by segregation and conflict. The objective was to create relationships, cultivate values of peaceful co-existence and recover the territory’s own resources as a basis to develop critical consciousness and conceptualizing difference as a common good.