2025 Theses Doctoral

Impeaching Reality: An action-research study exploring the development of a democratic pedagogy for community-based learning in a context of poverty in the Dominican Republic

Pérez, Juan Miguel

This dissertation examines how a community-based learning program within the context of poverty can educate adult learners about their social realities and motivate them to take organized action for social change. The main issue identified in this study was the participants' social precariousness, which affected their involvement in community affairs, including the initiative conducted for this thesis. Additionally, their lack of social support and belief in overcoming the inertia of their circumstances further restricted their engagement. With a Neighborhood Council that typically operated during individual or collective emergencies and minimal hope for change in their lives and environments, participants often adopted a general attitude of resignation and civic passivity (Bourdieu, 1981). This thesis contends that this reality can be challenged and proposes a strategy to encourage participants toward social action.

Using a sociological lens, this action research study took place in El Progreso, a small, impoverished neighborhood in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Over the course of five weekly workshops, the adult education program encouraged participants to inquire into and reflect on their realities, learn effective methods to assess community needs, discuss and understand their rights regarding public institutions, and plan organized actions based on principles of equity for social justice and compassionate leadership.

At the conclusion of this research experience, several findings emerged: (1) It confirmed that individuals living in historical poverty and social marginalization often channel their vulnerabilities into civic engagement; (2) when participants were encouraged to transform their experiences into an inquiry process that provides names, concepts, numbers, and voices to their realities, their awareness and motivation towards the potential for social action increased; (3) through organized discussions about community issues, participants developed the ability to envision new possibilities and innovative methods for achieving their goals; (4) when the program facilitated dialogue among state agencies, participants, and the PI’s sociological perspective on the community's status, the official narrative was enriched, leading to a deeper understanding of people's perspectives and the validation of social science findings; (5) by positioning participants as the program's protagonists, grounded in their legitimacy as local residents and their experiential knowledge tailored for the occasion through various adult education strategies, their individual and collective dignity was recognized and promoted.

The significance of this study lies in the fact that (1) social learning, which integrates adult education strategies with sociological knowledge and techniques, can enhance social inquiry both as a method and as a goal of empowering adult learners’ awareness and reconstructing shared beliefs; (2) this sociologically informed pragmatism may assist populations from impoverished backgrounds in developing and enhancing community social organization and compassionate leadership, which strengthen local policy perspectives to advance comprehensive local democracy practices and promote social change.