Participatory action research and the construction of academic identity among postgraduate research students

Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Participatory action research and the construction of academic identity among postgraduate research students
 
Creator Tshelane, Molaodi David
 
Subject — construction; academic Identity; postgraduate research students; participatory action research
Description This paper discusses the construction of academic identity among postgraduate research students who emerged from a participatory action research (PAR) project. The article reports on how postgraduate research students constructed their academic identity deliberately, as they pursue their studies in a sustainable learning environment (SuLE) project. The aim is to contribute towards an understanding of the impact PAR has on research work of postgraduate students in the Faculty of Education, at the University of the Free State, in South Africa. This paper draws on the work of Yosso’s community cultural wealth to amplify how a relatively unexplored methodology in postgraduate research studies can change and contribute towards the social justice agenda, and give hope to an unequal society ruptured by apartheid. A critical emancipatory research theory of the Frankfurt school was used as the focal lens through which the literature was reviewed, together with a participatory action research process to generate data. Free attitude interviews were applied to focus groups, workshops, and meetings of Master’s and doctoral research students, as well as individual supervisory dialogues, so as to ensure the in-depth views of the construction of students’ academic identity. Video-tapes as an instrument in the generation of the data, which was transcribed into text and further analysed in line with the objectives of the study were used. Finally, a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) technique was used to arrive at the following findings: (i) ingenious commitment to social justice; (ii) genuine commitment to serve communities; and (iii) inter-centricity of humanity in relations.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2013-12-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/td.v9i3.188
 
Source The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa; Vol 9, No 3 (2013); 17 pages 2415-2005 1817-4434
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/188/155
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2013 Molaodi David Tshelane https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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