Praxis Workshop Overview
Praxis trail diagram illustrates how this workshop praxis project evolved over time.
Praxis process
Praxis is the underlying learning for action process tool that was used throughout this project. Freire (1970 describes praxis as an iterative process of 'cycles of collective reflection & dialogue on lived experience of struggle to Inform collective action' and contends that action without this reflection leads to mindless activism. Typically, praxis occurs in speaking circles which can exclude some voices is not inclusive. In this project creative, experiential and embodied tools were used to enable the praxis process, a creative eco-embodied praxis approach.
Praxis cycles can occur over long or short-time spans e.g. in one hour, over a weekend, 3 years, or a lifetime.
Questions to stimulate praxis are open and reflective, such as, why are you here? what do you want to do, and why? And, what did you do, and why? In this research, co-researchers discussed issue regarding housing, mental health, climate change, isolation, war and the challenges they have encountered in taking collective action on these issues.
The workshop praxis is in four main categories:
1. Outreach workshops were used to gather a co-researching community together and gave to give would be participants information about the project by experiencing collaborative process in a short session.
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2. Core co-researching workshops: A smaller group of co-researchers formed from the outreach workshops and participated in four core workshops. These workshops narrowed down the focus of inquiry for people to decide what action they wanted to take.
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3. Co-Researcher Action Workshops:
The third category of workshops are those which occurred as a result of the core practice.
4. Other Lead Researcher Workshops
A fourth category includes workshops that occurred before the outreach phase, and include workshops designed by the lead researcher but not actioned out with a co-researching group due to operational issues within the PhD.
Praxis trails: Visual mappings of how praxis occurred in this project, the collective journey it took us on.
Praxis trails: Geographical mappings of this PAR praxis
Outreach workshop praxis summary
Examples of individual co-researcher praxis journeys
The research praxis as a social movement ecology
Resources