Participatory Education As Empowerment: A Case Study On Loss, Grief And Empowerment

Year 2015, Special Issue 2015 I, 51 - 60, 30.11.2015

Keith Miller

https://doi.org/10.17275/per.15.spi.1.5

Abstract

As
Freire indicated, for education to be successful, it needs to be participatory
where both student and teacher recognise the educational capacity within each
other. In order for education to be participatory, there needs to be
empowerment of the recipients of the education. This is particularly true when
the education is delivered cross-culturally and in a community setting. A
community can be defined as a group of people who live and work cooperatively
together. Education in a community setting empowers both individuals but also
the community as a whole. Delivery of education to a community comprises both
insiders and outsiders. Insiders are the community members who know intuitively
how the community operates. Outsiders do not know experientially how a
community functions. When outsiders bring expertise into a community, it is the
insiders who can adapt that expertise and make it relevant to that community.
Seasons for Healing was an educational loss and grief program implemented in
Aboriginal communities in South Australia. Incorporating an interpretive, yet
also critical and reflexive ethnography, expertise from outsiders combined with
experiential insight from insiders enabled people from Aboriginal communities
to be empowered through participant education. As people within communities
participated in their own education through the Seasons for Healing Program, an
awareness of their own empowerment developed.

Keywords

Participant education, empowerment, Seasons for Healing, community, insiders, outsiders

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