Learning from Difference: An Action Research Guide

The project ("Understanding community initiatives to improve access to education") aimed to investigate ways in which community members can be helped to think about, reflect on, record, learn from and share their own valuable experiences in the area of inclusive education.

The project was based on EENET’s belief that many of the solutions to the challenges of inclusion can be found within local experiences or within the experiences of people living and working in similar contexts. Reliance on advice and documentation from ‘experts’ in other (Northern) countries is often neither appropriate nor sustainable.

EENET strives to ‘create conversations’ between Southern practitioners and stakeholders, and to give a voice to these people who are often the real experts in their own contexts. The action research project was part of this ongoing commitment by EENET.

The Guidelines presented in this document were originally developed as an interactive CD-ROM. The Guidelines provide ideas for methodologies and activities (based on the lessons learned during the action research project) that others can try or adapt in order to facilitate similar reflection, recording, learning and sharing within their local communities.