Learning Together: Dialogue, Collaboration, and Reciprocal Transformation in a Nicaraguan Educational Program

• In Event: International Action Research: Sharing Public Scholarship in Diverse Global Educational Contexts

Abstract

This case study focuses on Semillas Digitales (Digital Seeds), an applied development program in Nicaragua that fosters educational improvement and innovation in coffee-farm schools through action research. The authors reflect on the Program and focus on shared responsibility, open and critical dialogue, multi-lateral exchange, and teamwork; they share what developing and operationalizing educational possibility within and across relational and socio-political contexts entails. The paper explores the challenges of co-constructing capacity in assets-based rather than deficit-oriented ways and how the program resists the expert-learner binary and impositional stance that undergirds the development world.
The theoretical framework is informed by post-colonial theories of development (e.g., Kenway & Fahey, 2009; Tuhiwai Smith, 1999), constructivist theory (e.g., Dewey, 1938; Jonassen, 1995a), critical ethnography (e.g., Escobar, 1995; Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004) and participatory action research (e.g., Chilisa, 2012; Fals Borda & Rahman, 1991), and is guided by principles constituting the Program’s Theory of Action and evaluation criteria. For example:
(1) Action-Based, Mixed Methods Research and Monitoring and Evaluation;
(2) Teachers as Experts, Leaders, and Researchers;
(3) Co-Constructed Curricular Enrichment and Pedagogical Innovation;
(4) Technology Integration as Catalyst for Educational Innovation and Transformation;
(5) Cultivation of Local, National, and International Partnerships.

With a critical action research approach (Freire, 1970, 1982; Fals Borda, 1991), the program challenges traditional conceptions of development (Escobar, 1999; Ferguson, 1990; Sen, 1999). The program complicates notions of ‘local knowledge generation,’ which often make the local a monolith and view data in decontextualized ways. It seeks a participatory rigor that is vital to program development and individual and collective professional development.

References
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Authors

• Sharon M. Ravitch, University of Pennsylvania

• Matthew James Tarditi, University of Pennsylvania

• Duilio Baltodano