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Abstract:
Popular education, political knowledge, and culture are very important components in community-based problem solving for social change. This article provides a historical background of the Highlander Research and Education Center, a comprehensive overview of its mission for seventy-five years, a reflection of the center's action research impact on social and economic justice in America, and a description of the practical change model used by social and civil rights activists to challenge racism, labor discrimination, sexism, gender inequality, and other inequalities in the United States. Group consciousness, collaborative research power, networking, and their ability to impact change in their lives contribute to ongoing participatory research at the Highlander Center. Action research is "learning by doing" and contributes to the practical issues that individuals experience in a problematic situation in their community. Action research assists social science, especially sociology in fulfilling its theoretical and methodological goals in research while collaborating with grassroots leaders in solving environmental and community problems.
Keywords: adult education; social change; participatory research; local governance; citizen participation; participatory democracy; public sociology
The Highlander Research and Education Center (formerly known as the Highlander Folk School) was formed in 1932 when the United States was in the middle of the Great Depression1 (Horton, 1989). The Highlander Center served as a "catalyst for grassroots and social activism in Appalachia and the South" (Highlander Research and Education Center, 2008c). The "founding principle and guiding philosophy of Highlander is that the answers to the problems facing society lie in the experiences of ordinary people" (Highlander Research and Education Center 2008c). According to Myles Horton, the Highlander principle was referred to as the "method of natural exposure" (Horton, 1990:16). Myles stressed that individual experiencing a crisis would eventually open their minds to alternative solutions which lead to social action (Horton, 1990; Heaney, 1995).
The "Highlander taught organized and educated unemployed workers in the Cumberland Mountains during the Great Depression; trained potential union leaders in the late 1930s and 1940s; promoted a southern farmer-labor coalition after World War II; and aided the civil rights movement through residence workshops on integration, citizenship school voter education classes, and meetings with college students sit-in leaders" (Glen, 1991). Myles wanted commitments from students to use their experience from the Highlander to "precipitate social...