Curriculum-in-Motion: Bringing Community Education to Life through Community-Based Participatory Action Research

Irna Senekal

doi:10.25159/1947-9417/11124

Authors

Irna Senekal Nelson Mandela University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3687-7002

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/11124

Keywords:

curriculum, lived experience, community-based participatory action research , CPAR , community education

Abstract

This article presents a case study of the process of bringing community education to life as it was developed by the Community Education Programme at the Centre of Integrated Post-School Education at Nelson Mandela University. The article argues for a learning programme that co-creates learning starting from the experience of participants (curriculum-in-motion) as opposed to a learning programme and curriculum structured around systematised knowledge. The article describes in detail the process of developing a learning programme from the lived experience of marginalised and excluded communities through the process of community-based participatory action research, and argues for an approach to the development of community education and the curricula associated with its learning programmes as praxis—the process of engaged participation in intentional intellectual and practical work to construct an educational space for social change.

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