The use of popular theatre to overcome community development problems in underdeveloped countries through adult education is introduced and its relationship to the concept of participatory research is explored. Material is arranged in four sections. The first of these presents an introduction to popular theatre and participatory research. Stemming…

The first article in this report emphasizes the importance of user participation at the planning, decision-making, and production levels of small-scale instructional development in developing nations. Four subsequent articles also centered around user participation in Third World instructional development discuss folk theater as effective 2-way…

Case studies and seminar reports are provided that were presented at an international seminar to examine field experiences in using a culture-based approach to nonformal education. Part I, containing an introductory paper and nine case studies, focuses on indigenous institutions and processes in health, family planning, agriculture, basic…

This report examines a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Ecuador Ministry of Education which used puppet and "campesino" (folk) theater as a creative form for the presentation of numeracy and literacy programs and for introducing social consciousness concepts. It focuses on the use of the puppet theater in…

A 13-day workshop was conducted in Nigeria to train 60 community development workers in the educational use of popular theater for community-based adult education. Key goals were conscientization (a gradual learning process in which people look critically at their social situation to gain deeper understanding of the root causes of their problems)…