Participatory Methodologies and Agroecology: networks, processes and strategies towards a food pedagogy

Abstract

This article, based on a theoretical and methodological approach, starts from the criticism made by the New Philosophy of Science and its influence on the Liberating Education in Brazil and Latin America, highlighting the growing relationship of popular participation and Agroecology. Going deep on the participation process and its strategies, the article goes beyond the “participatory tools” approach and the generality of participatory methodologies. From the convergence between critical science, liberating education, participatory action research and the agroecological paradigm, the text advances in the analysis of the relation of the dialogical process of the process of agroecological knowledge construction and academic action together with social networks, specifically agroecological networks. As part of the larger pedagogical strategy of participatory methodologies, it seeks the dialectic perspective of education, research and extension implicit in the approaches of Agroecology, Popular Participation and social praxis. The article also elaborates about the processes of group facilitation, which is an essential function to the participation exercise and the construction of a new professionalism in the Agrarian Sciences. Finally, this deepening is related to the multiplicity of pedagogical and social communication proposals that have been built by the agro-ecological networks, which considerably expands on the transformation of society in its relationship with nature, through Agroecology as a set of guidelines for Sustainable Rural Development and the Construction of a Food Pedagogy.