Multiple seeds in the process of germination – Journal da USP

I’ll start by declaring three possible places for a researcher to help present and clarify our explanation:

• Look for
• Search
• Search with

Three legitimate and necessary places where the researcher takes different places. There is no hierarchy or value judgment between these positions. All three positions seek to expand the knowledge base of the particular topic at hand. However, there are distinct peculiarities and intentions.

Perhaps the radicalization of participatory research lies in the fact that “theresearch question(Research question) will not be ‘a a priori”, but a construction agreed upon and negotiated in the process of research between “scientific” and “non-scientific” actors on topics of vital meaning to the “non-scientific” partners. This assumes a greater balance in the exercise of power between the partners, as well as fissures in monoculture. for knowledge.

The University of New Mexico is one of the world leaders in developing participatory health research and is called CBPR there. participatory community research – It is largely in keeping with the Brazilian Freire tradition of folk education and another method also widely practiced in Brazil, “hands-on research”.

Encounters between approaches of common intent with respect to the knowledge of societies, grounded in a genuine attitude of cultural humility, were the core element of the concept of the Múltiplas Sementes project, with strong formative inspiration for the dissemination of the evaluative basis and methodologies for participatory research in health.

The Summer Program (PV) of the School of Public Health (FSP) at the University of the South Pacific, now in its 29th edition, in 2022, has an established career expanding the teaching and learning community throughout Brazil and Latin America, and has been the privileged partner of the Múltiplas Sementes project.

On January 26, during FSP PV 2022, this partnership took place again, in six days of meetings with nearly a hundred participants from different states of Brazil, with 23 facilitators from Múltiplas Sementes, in another edition of the course Participatory work and empowerment researcha device for germinating seeds that produce trees and produce delicious fruits for further participatory research across Brazil.

Participatory research is a group exercise. In this sense, approximately one hundred participants, at the beginning of the course, were divided into eight thematic working groups to practice participatory methodologies directed at the themes/themes/agents of each group: intersectoral policymakers, multiplier educators, children and adolescents, riverside populations and public policy observatories and the indigenous and displaced persons.

This practical strategy places trainees and trainers on an equal footing in the practice of intermediate listening, and the respective focus topics in each group, through participatory methodologies.

Motivated by this seeding, the University of the South Pacific School of Public Health and the participants in the Múltiplas Sementes project are betting that this methodological approach can be replicated in different contexts and, above all, affirm their intent to act – think – act, like a training device and transform practices Social.

* Nina Wallerstein, of the University of New Mexico (USA), and Roselda Mendes, of Cibidoc Cidades Sudaves and Univsp Baixada Santista, are partners in this initiative, with the support of a 31-person facilitating team from Brazilian universities: Ufop, UNB, Fiocruz, PUCRJ and UFPE and UEBA.