Transforming identities and enacting agency : the discourses of participatory development in training South African adult educators.

• This paper explores the ways in which adult education can contribute to increased agency in development and under what conditions. It draws on a study of an educator training programme in the Northern Cape at a time of rapid social change and theorises the uneven realisation of reflexive agency in participants' practices. The analysis of interview data draws on Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital, habitus, legitimate language and reflexivity to probe the connections between local discursive practices and broader systemic relationships of power. The findings suggest that a key contribution of the programme was a set of discourses that enabled participants to engage with the processes engendered by new forms of governance and state/society/economy relations. However, the ability to bring about new identities and increased reflexive agency depended on the interaction of five framing factors. In this way, reflexivity emerges as contextual, embedded within differing sets of power relations, and not necessarily transformative.  

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

adult education

adult literacy

agency

identity

participatory development

teacher education

popular education

South Africa

reflexivity

language

Languages and linguistics

Språkvetenskap

pedagogik

Education

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)