INVESTIGATING AND INTERVENING TO TRANSFORM: STIMULUS AND METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES TO ACTION RESEARCH

Abstract

In a research process that was developed within the scope of a doctoral program in Social Work, in which the action research methodology was privileged to capture the cultural, political and social essence of a rural community, how can researchers deal with the challenges posed to participatory methodologies that promote research and action, in an attempt to reconcile the proximity required to know with the distance they must maintain to be able to investigate? In the broader research project, which took place at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Coimbra and at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Portuguese Catholic University, an action research project was designed through a diagnosis that was essentially supported in Vozes da Folgosa, a newspaper that has existed in Folgosa do Douro since 2014 and has been collecting narratives and life stories from people belonging to that community. As the history of Folgosa do Douro is recovered through the oral expression of the participants, a set of data is constructed using the biographical method that not only reports knowledge about the community context, but also highlights some needs and problems that each one of the participants has. How can this knowledge of reality be returned to subjects and what hermeneutic processes are applicable to it? This research project aimed to solve problems, increase critical awareness and transform the lives of the participating subjects.