Participatory action research – a critical study within the field of socio-family mediation for the development of transformative parenting

Abstract

Participatory action research presupposes a critical and reflective practice that favors transformative changes in the institutions' social and educational responses. In this article it is our purpose to present a theoretical and critical reflection of a participatory action-research project on social and family mediation, which explored the transformative parenting construct. With this construct, the ambition was to commit the families to the life projects of the children and young welcomed people, to train them to exercise parenthood and to promote a closer dialogue between them and the residential shelters, sometimes responding to informational gaps in the welcoming process and the need to raise awareness of what generated the separation. To this end, a qualitative intervention-research was carried out, in the context of a residential host house, aligned with participatory action-research, where its importance was explored to answer real life questions, both in the inclusion of the parties involved and in the clarification of the transformative parenting construct, which expands social and family mediation. Participatory action-research emerged structured by a multidisciplinary dynamic, suitable for exploring, designing and sustaining processes of change in diversity that characterize places of parenting and residential care.