Abstract

Participatory development methods are used in international development work to assure local and grass-roots initiation, design, implementation, evaluation, and ownership of development programs. A tacit assumption is that a participatory process is more likely to yield a successful and sustainable program, for such a process starts with the people’s needs, mobilizes local resources, and strengthens local capacity. Thus, participatory processes have been designed to bring out the best of each individual, facilitate exchange of ideas and collaboration, and result in a much better product than any one team member could have produced alone. In turn, adult educators and other teaching and learning scholars are empirically demonstrating that college education can be improved by further involving students in the planning and evaluation of their learning. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential of participatory development methods in supporting the shift from a teacher-centered to a student-centered learning environment in higher education. In particular, one method, the problem/solution tree, is analyzed in-depth. Some of the contributions to teaching of the problem tree, as emphasized in the paper, include: 1) enhances group processes and cooperative learning, 2) promotes active learning, 3) nurtures multidisciplinary analysis, 4) improves student motivation, initiative, and individual work prior to class meetings, 5) promotes student development of higher order thinking skills, and 6) addresses the needs of particular students who would typically not participate in traditionally-designed group exercises.

Keywords: Participatory methods, student-centered education, student participation, problem/solution tree, collaboration, higher education.

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