SEAMEO CELLL PARTICIPATES IN UNESCO WORKSHOP ON PARTICIPATORY AND COLLABORATIVE ACTION RESEARCH

Hamburg, Germany, 24-26 March, 2015. SEAMEO CELLL attended the international workshop on ‘Participatory and collaborative action research to empower youth and adult literacy learners in multilingual and multicultural contexts’ organized by UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and Abuja UNESCO Multi-Sectoral Regional Office. Participants were from various countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. 
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Dr. Arne Carlsen, UIL Director, welcomes the participants

The workshop offered participants an international platform for exchanging experiences of integrating participatory and collaborative action research (PAR) into initial and continuing training of adult educators for youth and adult literacy in multilingual and multicultural contexts and provided opportunities to develop jointly a draft policy brief on creating an enabling environment for PAR for youth and adult literacy in multilingual and multicultural contexts. ​

Dr. Arne Carlsen and the participants pose for a group photo

The participants agreed that empowering youth and adult literacy learners in multilingual and multicultural contexts requires that non-formal education receive more attention from relevant government bodies, and for improvement in this sector to take place, PAR must be a tool for applying new practices and evaluating them. The workshop also agreed that a protocol for PAR must be established to ensure validity and reliability no mater where it is done, and that PAR must result in some concrete actions, not in reports written according to rigid formats only to be shelfed in libraries.