The object of this study is the participatory process that is put into operation in six secondary schools in the city of Barcelona (collective case study) when they build and develop Agenda 21 (A21), within the framework of the Agenda 21 School Program ( A21E) of Barcelona. The aim is to describe the culture that is developed, and also to discover the success factors and the problems that remain unsolved, designing the actions that resolve them or redirecting those that are already being carried out.
To achieve these objectives, through action research, participants in the centers who were or were not active in the A21 were interviewed, the activities that were promoted were observed, and artifacts were collected. The same techniques were used to collect data in the Barcelona A21E Program.
To organize and be able to process the enormous volume of data that is stored in a research where qualitative information is handled, a proposal of indicators was built as codes with which to identify, process and transmit the characteristics or elements of the object of study. Data processing was done with the support of HyperResearch software.
The analysis describes the participatory process that the A21 of educational centers builds and develops, from the four areas that are identified through the proposal of indicators: who participates, what they participate in, how they participate and the consequences of the participatory process. Observing particularities and similarities in the approach to the participatory process. From this, the conclusions of the research were drawn up, determining four systems of participation in the A21 of the centers, while offering a series of guidelines that would make each system evolve. On the other hand, the proposal of indicators constructed for this research is examined, determining notes for rewriting and for future studies where this collection of indicators could be used.
The research shows the possibility that A21E offers to carry out participatory practices in order to train citizens who are capable of making their voices heard, making decisions and acting to produce real changes, educating us to get out of the closed loop in which we are trapped. the unsustainable side of globalization.