Community-Based Research with Marginalized Populations for Transformative Adult Education

Abstract

In South Africa, community colleges were founded to offer free or low-cost skills training to adults from marginalized populations who could not find employment or access higher education. But these institutions have not fulfilled their envisioned purpose and are unlikely to do so in the near future. Without proper provision of this training, millions of people are unable to improve their chances of providing for themselves or their families. This chapter argues that community-based research (CBR), as an educative process, is an untapped approach to adult education. Being experiential, participatory and beginning from peoples’ own experiences, it empowers the disempowered to see themselves as agents of socio-environmental change. CBR provides people with opportunities to explore, understand, challenge and ultimately transcend the constraints placed upon them by dominant ideologies, structures and cultural practices, which are both part of and apart from the learner. Thus, it is, to all intents and purposes, transformative adult education. The chapter explains how CBR partnerships between university and community stakeholders could result simultaneously in participants’ acquisition of technical skills and learning for personal transformation. Ideas are also presented about how such learning can be assessed and accredited to increase its currency in the knowledge economy.KeywordsAdult educationCommunity-based educationCommunity collegeCommunity–university partnershipsEmployabilityTransformative learning