Dissertation Abstracts
Community participation in non-formal education in a mayan locality of Yucatan
Author: Nayely M. Reyes-Mendoza, nm.reyes.mendoza@gmail.com
Department: Facultad de Ciencias Antropológicas
University: Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán , Mexico
Supervisor: Dr. Juan Carlos Mijangos Noh
Year of completion: 2016
Language of dissertation: Español
Areas of Research: Education , Community Research , Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change
Abstract
Based on the need to incorporate and construct new alternatives for understanding emerging socio-educational realities, this dissertation aimed to analyze the relationship between interculturality and community participation in non-formal education experiences in a Mayan locality of Yucatán by a multidisciplinary research group for over three years. To this end, different ways are described in which this process was developed among the inhabitants of the community and a group of students from different zones of the country. The ethnomethodological method was chosen with informal and semi-structured interview techniques, non-participant observation and discussion groups. In the analysis of the information discursive charts and review of field notes were used. The analysis was oriented to emphasize the explicit and tacit discourses that allowed putting together an alternative project of non-formal education. The results show that the community context combines elements that enable non-formal education, with a critical intercultural approach, if the educational action is centered on the activity and the construction of present and future meanings and purposes are defined by the participants themselves. Derived from the analysis, a theoretical proposal is presented that attempts to provide general elements to guide, from what was done in the community, the review of existing training experiences, or to encourage new proposals that allow explaining the interaction of elements linked to the education process. It is concluded that community participation in non-formal education makes it possible to claim new educational spaces by assuming the task of educational change as a bidirectional imperative, that is, from academy to community and vice versa, where the method has to follow a pedagogic path that highlights the relations between knowledge, authority and power. It is suggested to integrate community learning as a transversal element in the education of the academic and to promote horizontal methodologies of social research, with a respectful participatory approach based on relational ethics.