Popular Education and Participatory Research: Facing Inequalities in Latin America

"The paper analyzes the construction of a pedagogical-investigative method, which has as its key element the development of strategies for overcoming inequalities in Latin American societies. Paulo Freire and Orlando Fals Borda, among others, provide elements for understanding the origins of a method which, in research, has a close relation to the educational dimension and, in education, integrates the investigative dimension as a part of the process of developing active subjects in their communities. The paper refers to research projects that were developed using participatory methodologies, attempting to identify some recent developments, advances and limits. Among these projects, special attention is paid to those that show the role of pedagogical mediations in participatory social processes in South Brazil (state of Rio Grande do Sul), particularly the activities of a garbage recyclying association and the implementation of the participatory budget in a municipality in South Brazil." (author's abstract