240161 FS FM1 - Research Seminar (Part 1) - Research Design (2023W)

How can learning, teaching and research be done in such a way that the world is not only understood in the process, but also changed, in an emancipatory sense of solidarity? This question is at the centre of this research seminar - and it was also the central question of some critical intellectuals of the Global South, among whom Paulo Freire and bell hooks play a central role. Oscar Jara or Orlanda Fals Borda are only two of the numerous intellectuals who have critically received Freire's work and made it fruitful for new contexts. Learning, teaching and research are understood as a unity in the sense of Freire and bell hooks, just as action and reflection are always thought of together by Freire. The aim of the seminar is to identify and examine educational initiatives and institutions and ev. research groups that implement the claim of transformative education and liberating research - precisely a critical educational practice.

Within the framework of this FOSE, research partnerships are used or formed with institutions in Austria (and possibly neighbouring countries) that see themselves in the tradition of critical education. The students design a transdisciplinary research design with reference to critical education and research concepts and bring it to a stage ready for implementation. In this process, the specific possibilities of qualitative research as well as the concept of transdisciplinarity are reflected.

In the sense of a self-critical and reflected research approach, this FOSE is conceived as a "hermeneutic double helix": Two spirals of research reinforce and promote each other, which is why the process of research itself is reflected upon in parallel, documented and insofar also researched within the framework of the accompanying research supervision. At its centre, the following questions will be addressed:
- What pre-assumptions, expectations, fears and projections do the students bring with them into the research work? How does their own previous educational path shape their view of other, alternative educational and research concepts? How do we deal with the fact that our own mental concepts are sometimes obstacles to understanding the world?
- What individual skills and what desires do students bring to their research work? How do we deal with each other as a (research) group? How can we achieve good and effective collaboration?
- How do we involve researchers in our projects? What role can they and their knowledge play? What is the value of non-academic knowledge? What is the value of written knowledge compared to knowledge acquired through practice or oral tradition? What is the value of embodied knowledge?
- How political can researchers actually be? Is research allowed to explicitly pursue political goals?
- How can the opposition between researchers and researched be eliminated in a transdisciplinary research process? How are processes of "othering" reflected? How can discourses of postcolonial cultural theories be made fruitful?

The transdisciplinary research aimed at in the course is oriented towards Participatory Action Research of the Global South as well as transdisciplinary research as it has developed in Europe since the 1990s and seeks to combine these with the principles of education and research according to Paulo Freire.

Goal: The students design an independent, transdisciplinary research design in research groups with reference to concepts of critical education, interventional research and transdisciplinarity and bring these to a stage ready for implementation. In this process, the specific possibilities of qualitative research are reflected upon as well as the concept of transdisciplinarity and methods of transdisciplinary research.