EDUCATIONAL DILEMMAS UNCOVERED

I have spent over 15 years in the field of teaching, teacher training and school management. I have been interested in observing and understanding how do educational initiatives make a difference in people's lives. When I decided to do my PhD research, it was clear for me That will study issues related to the impact of education on people's lives, well-being and status. This opened my eyes to the concept of “Empowerment”.  Empowerment, a buzzword that has been used and sometimes overused, especially in the field of international development. But to clear my mind from all the tens of definitio, I decided to stick to the World Bank definition: “the capacity of individuals or groups to make purposeful and effective choices in the interest of pursuing a better life for themselves” (Walton, 2003, p.3). Empowerment is a complex term with endless interpretations, due to its multi-contextual (political, socio-cultural, economic…) and multi-dimensional (individual, community,...

Over the past decades a paradigm shift took place, from a top-down conventional to a bottom-up participatory development agenda, envisioning empowerment as an outcome of participation, due to its respect for local knowledge and ability to facilitate local ownership (Chamber, 1994). New top-down participatory approaches, commonly referred to as ‘participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) emerged. PM &E approaches differ from the conventional approaches, in that they seek to actively engage project stakeholders, while assessing the project’s progress and results (The World Bank, n.d.) . According to Rietbergen-McCracken & Narayan (1998) , there are four main principles all kind of PM&E approaches follow: Local people are active participants, not just sources of information Stakeholders evaluate, outsiders facilitate Focus on building stakeholder capacity for analysis and problem-solving Process builds commitment to implementing any recommended cor...