CRISJAN MADRIDANO

BEED III BLOCK1

The Participatory Learning Approach engages students as active participants in the full life cycle of
homework, projects and examination. PLA’s core idea is that students design the question or projects,
execute them, and then assess and grade their peers’ solutions.

Also, participatory approaches to learning are active approaches that encourage people to think for
themselves. Participants actively contribute to teaching and learning, rather than passively receiving
information from outside experts, who may not have local understanding of the issues.

Some aspects of the participatory approach:

- Problem-solving is elicited by the teacher. The teacher will pose a problematic situation, backed
up by some visual stimuli, and ask the students to solve the situation.
- Brainstorming solutions is the crucial part of this method. The students will present their ideas,
and they can discuss them on the spot.
- Group work/project consists of collaborative work in order to create a solution that is accepted
by the whole group. Educators usually do it in form of a letter, story, or a science project.
- Students complete the self-assessment at home, through the project revision.
- Discussion happens when the students bring their revised projects. They will describe their
corrections and evaluate their own learning in front of the group.

Advantages of Participatory Approach:

- See people as subjects (“active agents”)

- Includes a dimension previously not applied on other approaches (perspective of the poor
themselves)
- Provides a way of solving some of the problems encountered with the other approaches.
- Poor people’s views are elicited to shape plans and contribute to developmental strategies.
- Small scale surveys are done on a regular basis
- Use inexpensive resources
- Can be used in any physical setting
- Interesting and fun helping to involve people in the subject
- Help people to build self-confidence
- Help people to learn about themselves
- Help people to understand the perspective of others.