Exploring Power and Privilege Using Participatory Learning and Action Techniques

Abstract

In contexts of extreme inequality in terms of resources, power and privilege, such as South Africa, students preparing to enter caring professions need to develop the capacity to become critical, thinking and caring people. This would include imagination, a desire for learning, respect and recognition, and democratic practice across racial and class differences. A Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) approach provides a valuable basis from which students can engage in experiential learning about differences and inequalities. In addition, the approach can encourage developing health and human service professionals to be critically reflective in relation to social, political and cultural assumptions they may hold about themselves and others, becoming effectors of social change. We examine how the use of PLA techniques in pedagogic practice provides an environment in which students are able to share their locations and histories across differences of race, class and gender. We describe a joint project involving senior undergraduate students of the Social Work and Occupational Therapy Departments at the University of the Western Cape, and Community Psychology at Stellenbosch University in 2006 and 2007. The article describes how the PLA exercises contributed to students' knowledge of self and others towards anti-oppressive professional practice.