Resources

This article reports on research carried out in case study schools from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and India, to investigate the use of agriculture as a medium for the development of young learners' basic skills of literacy, numeracy and other life skills. The findings were aimed to provide decision-makers at national and international level with information for future planning and implementation of primary education programmes. PRA methods were used to learn more about the formal environments of primary schools, through facilitating the analysis of the school situation by teachers, pupils and parents.

This article reports on an innovative secondary school environmental awareness initiative designed to complement a program to develop village level aquatic resource management. Students were provided with discussion questions on past, present and future issues regarding local aquatic resources resand encouraged to use semi-structured interview techniques to investigate the issues in their own villages with elders and relatives. Essays were then written by the students based on this research and the best essays presented at ceremonies where district government officials, village chiefs and members of the school parents committee attended. One of the best essays was also published in the Lao language newspaper. The process increased awareness levels regarding aquatic resource management not only amongst students but also amongst teachers, those who helped supply information and the village leaders and district government officials attending the ceremonies.

This article argues that theatre has featured highly in the tool kit of PRA yet there are many other forms of creative art which could be utilised, including dance, story telling, poetry and creative play. The article suggests that these other tools should be considered alongside theatre and the appropriate one selected according to the cultural environment and objectives of the exercise.

The paper is on using participatory action research to identify the research needs of street children. The paper mentions the difficulty faced by the authors in starting research with children, since prior to that there had not been any research in which children had been actively involved in all stages of research. The authors started a series of workshops and seminars that helped in setting goals and priorities for the research programme with street children. Also, a dialogue was started with people who were in constant dialogue with children. It was realised that there was a huge gap between children and the experts who work with them, and that this could only be closed through on-the-job training of street educators. The paper discusses the design of a project to meet this need, and the training of the street educators. It mentions that children and educators are sources of knowledge and have their own tools which they use in understanding the world.