Subjective perspectives on the community participation in educational activities

Abstract

The effective action research requests and involves innovative and sturdy strategies to discover and to understand social life. Visual methodologies (as Photovoice) can provide the novelty and the engagement to support the effectiveness of the research, to support the interpretative phenomenological analysis and to enable it for deeper understanding and a foundation for appropriate interventions also. As a participatory method, Photovoice is considered an innovative approach and its use in Republic of Moldova is unique, as it is the context: a community development and educational reform project happened in rural communities with various socio-economic profiles, with different degrees and on different levels of marginality, vulnerability, social and economic under-development. We have chosen individuals from four of the communities involved to find out how they see their role and the collective participation to support education. As the projects which is related to, the study gives insights on the functions of education and about how the things can be done. In all cases, for all the communities, the education (and the school also) seems to value the bond with the community, with its past (in terms of elders, customs and the habitat: nature, wildlife etc.), with the local identity. The emergence of community mechanisms to rediscover local identity creates the premises for a more consistent support from the community in future community development efforts or educational reforms.