Bio-learning Based on Community Experiences in a Rural Territory of Colombia.

Objective: To base bio-learning on community experiences in a rural territory of Colombia. Methodology: A socio-critical paradigm, qualitative approach, and Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) method. Instruments were a sociodemographic survey, focal groups, semi-structured individual interviews and learning experiences. The instruments were supported by the sociodemographic sheet, focal groups and interview scripts, planning of learning experiences, and observation sheets. The work unit was 51 community families, six teachers, 29 students, six community-linked external agents and one research professor for a total of 195 participants. Results: In Cycle I Problematization, the disconnection of the school from the community was recognized due to the lack of recognition of ancestral local knowledge from the culture, customs, and traditions of the community. Cycle II Communitization was implemented to enable the solution of those problems. It was based on three learning experiences related to coffee as the main product of the rural territory. As a result, community-related processes such as the construction of peasant and school knowledge supported by processes of community bio-learning were found to provide an ideographic vision of communitization. The community is constructed in a shared pedagogical environment in which bio-community learners interact as part of a bio-learning community to solve the needs of communitization and project bio-learning. Conclusions: Customs have not passed from generation to generation; neither daily life activities nor the value of bio-learning are being exploited. The learning spaces can be found in everyday life, in nature, or in the rural territory itself; hence, the importance of learning experiences from community participation-based bio-learning. The bio-learning community is recognized as supported by community training processes in, from, and for life. It takes the indigenous, cultural, customs, what is shared from the territory, and what has been referred to as the community spirit of bio-learning as its starting point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]