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In inquiry to understand the potential role of workers´ centers as a forum for occupational health learning, Spanish-speaking immigrant participants of the workers´ centers said they preferred informal conversational dialogue for learning, called charlas, contrasted to dominant culture lecture content transmission. It is proposed that charlas may create a learning space where occupational health disciplinary knowledge offered by peer educators, meets the experiential knowledge of the participants to form collective reflective action impacting health. This dialogue of workers and educators through informal discussion is one means of fostering power/knowledge in popular education. Segments from charlas held in workers centers are analyzed applying critical discourse analysis through three distinct theoretical lenses reflecting postcolonial and ecosocial perspectives to provide implications of the meanings expressed by participants. Considering what the workers said about their agency and how they said it offers practitioners decolonizing facilitation practices in popular education training and occupational health policy to confront workplace abuse and precarious employment.

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Joseph Zanoni, PhD, MILR, Research Assistant Professor, leads training and research projects as the Director of Continuing Education and Outreach at the Illinois Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety Education and Research Center (ERC) University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.

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