Participation Approaches in Education for Social and Educational Work –- Analysis of Students’ Experience

Abstract

This paper presents students' experiences of participating in a course that was carried out using participatory approaches. The described course in the academic year 2020/2021 was attended by 79 students, including 56 women and 33 men. All students were second-year students of full-time undergraduate studies. The first part of the text, the history of participatory approaches developed in the Department of Social Pedagogy in Lodz is briefly presented. Then we move on to discuss the most important assumptions of participatory approaches, which refer to didactic/educational aspects. In the following part of the article, we describe the methodology of the research that accompanied the course sessions and present the research findings. The students' experiences were reconstructed through the analysis of their responses, which were given during two rounds of group interviews. The first round took place before the classes started, the second after the classes ended. All course participants took part in the interviews. During the analysis of their responses, we focused on several aspects that were most frequently mentioned by the students, which related to the advantages, challenges, and difficulties of work with the use of participatory approaches. We gave these aspects specific categories such as role blurring, empowerment, and critical thinking. The material result of these activities is this article, which was written together with the students.