Search

Ecoliteracy is essential for adult educators/activists en route to creating ecoliterate populations. Working cooperatively with other networks in the spirit of a 'solidarity economy', a group within the PIMA network has run a climate justice education programme through a series of webinars. We describe and analyse a case story of an emergent climate justice curriculum in action. We use an ecofeminist analysis to understand the relational entanglement of ecological breakdown, capitalism, colonialism, racism and patriarchy which in part undergird the breaching of planetary boundaries. We identify five inquiry-based themes which are suggestive as coordinates for orientating curricula for adult educators/activists learning climate justice. One of these is the importance of building ecoliterate alliances through collaborative action as we face the 'socio-ecological hurricane' which is bearing down.

When the Australian Association of Adult Education (AAAE) was established in 1960, Australia was locked into a global conflict between capitalism and communism, known as the Cold War. With anticommunism at fever pitch, AAAE's founders who were fighting to retain some influence with Australian universities and with government funding authorities needed an origin story which would appeal to these prejudices. Not surprisingly, therefore, histories of 'the profession' produced in the first decades largely dismissed the role of the many radical adult educators and left-wing organisations which had been instrumental in extending adult education to the working class in the first half of the twentieth century. One of the main sources for these early histories was a memoir of David Stewart, founder of the Workers Education Association, written in 1957 by a university adult educator, Esmonde McDonald Higgins. In this paper, I tell a different story, through a close examination of Higgins' own role in this early history, to show how 1960s 'official' adult education lost touch with its own roots in radical working class politics, roots which are only now re-emerging, through the study of popular education and social movement learning.

This article looks at how social movements in francophone Belgium shaped the institutional contours of adult education 'from below'. It focuses on the integral role played by progressive social movements in the creation of a regional state-based system of adult education in 1976, known as the "Service de l'Éducation Permanente" (SdEP). Blending historical and sociological methods, it is shown that the SdEP emerged when a movement-based legacy of popular education initially forged as an extension of the labour movement in the francophone community during the late nineteenth century converged with new sets of movement-based actors and ideas emanating from a contentious wave of youth- and student-led protest around 1968. Additional insight is also given into a series of political processes that empowered the efforts of social movement actors working in the field of adult education: regionalisation and Europeanisation.

Disciplinary pressures within academia often produce specialised and one-sided accounts of complex social processes. Convincing accounts of popular education regularly acknowledge the importance of social movements but without theorising them adequately -- and vice versa. This one-sidedness is compounded by a widespread tendency to generalise from often highly specific institutional and political contexts, as though all movements learned in the same way across space and time and popular education's role in fostering this learning is simple. Unchecked, this leads to the reification of 'critical' theory and the reduction and flattening of emancipatory practices to methods or even predefined goals. This paper constructs a dialogue between the work of Choudry, Freire and other authors in both fields, aimed at both celebrating and problematising their contribution to learning from our struggles. By developing a conversation between them, we want to explore how their insights might be usefully integrated for contemporary social movements.

Previous studies have documented the personal transformation that many low literate adults undergo when they engage in literacy campaigns. In particular, research has captured how improved literacy leads to a greater willingness and capacity to speak out, or what is often referred to as voice. This paper focusses on the impact of an adult Aboriginal literacy campaign on those responsible for implementing it. Through the words of these 'maestras', we reveal how the teachers and trainers of the campaign, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, experience a similar trajectory of transformation to the literacy students. This transformation, we argue, is the result of the pedagogic relationship between students, local campaign staff and national trainers. This dialectical relationship in which teacher is learner and learner teacher is at the heart of the literacy campaign model and is part of what Giroux (1988) characterises as a radical theory of literacy and voice. We further argue that the impacts of the literacy campaign at the individual and collective levels and crucially, the sustainability of these impacts depend largely on this pedagogic relationship and the new, shared understanding of the world which results.

This special issue of the Australian Journal of Adult Learning is a great opportunity to bridge two areas of scholarship that are in close proximity to one another, but have generally failed to establish systematic dialogues and exchanges. These domains, of course, are comprised of educational scholarship devoted to the study of 'adult' and 'popular' education on the one hand, and sociological scholarship on 'social movements' on the other. While the study of popular education has thematic proximity to the social movement literature, it is not a terrain of systematic research and theorising by social movement scholars. A recent search of the terms 'popular education', 'community education' and 'adult education' in both the titles and keywords of two leading social movement journals over the past two decades, for example, yielded zero hits. On the other side of the equation, while scholars of popular education may frequently invoke terms such as 'social movement' and 'activism', the tools of social movement theory are rarely put to use within this literature (cf. Kilgore, 1999). That these two literatures are so close, but so far apart is rather astonishing given their overlapping concerns for issues of resistance, solidarity, democratisation and social transformation. In this essay, I briefly address the gap between social movement studies and popular education studies, and then proceed to engage in some initial bridge-building work by discussing the concept of 'free space' (Groch, 2001; Polletta, 1999; Polletta, & Kretschmer, 2013). In particular, I suggest that by theorising community-based sites of popular education as 'free spaces', scholars can better investigate the ways in which the participants within these sites engage in educational practices that actively promote the reproduction of movement-based strategies, tactics, meanings and identities. From such a conceptualisation, researchers can explore the question of how local-level sites of popular education bolster the broader-level influence of social movements in society, thus shedding important light on the socio-political outcomes of popular education programs.

The global Occupy! actions gave some pause for thought. At first, some thought that this was a global movement that could change the way politics was conducted and maybe see the end of capitalism as we knew it. The hopes for Occupy! were high, but the highest hopes for the movement were short lived. This paper examines Occupy!'s legacy; what potential remains and where educators might go with it. An argument is presented that Occupy! became an empty signifier: a 'bucket' of discontent into which thousands of disjointed, dissenting voices and discontents were poured, ranging from the original Wall Street encampment to the Umbrella revolution in Occupy Central. The paper looks at the power of the 'empty signifier' as a galvanising mechanism and explores what this could mean for education. The notion of occupying the curriculum in HE will be explored as a unifying mechanism for multidisciplinary teaching and learning.

In this article, we direct our focus on some of the recent activities undertaken by popular education institutions in Sweden in relation to the refugee challenge in 2015. The aim is to analyse how these popular education activities are shaped as specific communities of practice, through the ways they are described by those who organised these, and what meaning newly arrived refugees create regarding their participation in these practices. Drawing on a socio-cultural understanding of participation and learning, we analyse interviews with newly arrived refugees, principals, managers, teachers and study circle leaders. Our analysis illustrates how popular education emerge as specific communities of practice different compared to the regular education system; how these practices are shaped as practices of stability and learning; and how newly arrived refugees construe these practices as important in their current engagement across a range of communities in the role as newcomers.

Popular education has a long history in Sweden, dating back to the mid-1800s and having developed in close relationship with the state. This relationship has been sustained over the years by the way popular education is spoken of as being "unique"--as being complementary to formal education. In this article, we focus on how the uniqueness of popular education is shaped today, and how it operates to legitimize further support. We draw on Barthes' notion of myth, analyzing interviews with managers, principals, study circle leaders and teachers working with adult asylum seekers and refugees at study associations and folk high schools. We argue that the myth of the uniqueness of popular education is made up of three rhetorical figures that are mobilized by a range of actors legitimizing state support for popular education. The myth thus becomes a "tool" that commodifies popular education, that is, that turns the myth into monetary funds.

This article presents the results of a descriptive case study of the Union School of the Chilean nongovernmental organization (NGO) Alejandro Lipschutz Institute of Science (ICAL-Spanish acronym). The study contributes to the field of adult education by providing a contemporary example of what Gramscian pedagogy can look like. Theoretically, this case contributes Latin American social movement-based analysis of neoliberalism, and its impact on the nature of work for working-class people. The study presents an example of educational praxis; the dialectical relationship between theory and educational practice that emerges from ICAL's efforts to advance the Chilean union movement's struggle to challenge neoliberalism through educational and leadership development work.

The article begins with the broad context of youth and adult education (YAE) in Colombia, and then discusses the place that educational demands occupy in the political plans of popular feminisms. The article ends with an analysis of the experiences of two community projects, which address YAE for women from the perspective of gender, feminisms, and popular education.

In this article I discuss the vision of education for liberation during the antiapartheid struggle in South Africa. The article focuses specifically on "People's Education" and "Workers' Education". Instead of an instrumental role for education reduced solely to the labour market requirements of business, economic growth and international competitiveness, I argue that the purpose of education is much broader. Embedded in a rich tradition of an educational praxis based on social justice and democratic citizenship, the popular movements associated with people's and workers' education generated alternatives to apartheid's legacy on education. In contemporary South Africa, this apartheid legacy is exacerbated by post-apartheid policies rooted in neoliberalism. While post-1994 education policies established the legislative framework for social justice, equity and adequate resources remain unattainable and elusive. In the face of the desultory state of schooling and the failures of neoliberalism, the article takes issue with the proffered solutions advocated by proponents of neoliberalism, including strident calls for the privatisation of education and resorting back to an apartheid-like disciplinary regime. In forging a pedagogy of possibility, social class analysis and effective community participation in education policy deliberations would need to be reinserted into the conversations about redress and education reform if the country is to overcome its inequalities and social cleavages. To this end, alternatives and possibilities raised during the struggle against apartheid are reiterated, re-examined and offered as prisms through which an alternative education can be practised.

Political parties are essential for the functioning of parliamentary democracy, yet parties have not received much attention in contemporary research on popular education. The aim of this article is to analyse the contemporary role of party-political education as a form of popular education in two labour movement parties in Sweden. The study is based on semi-structured interviews focusing on the reasoning behind the organisation of education in political parties. The interviews were conducted with ten interviewees who represented ABF (the Swedish workers' educational association), the Left Party, and the Social Democratic Party. The thematic analysis resulted in four categories of roles ascribed to education in political parties: "ideological training," "training skilled members and leaders," "training for a social infrastructure," and "training for internal positioning and distinction." The first two categories correspond to knowledge-oriented roles, while the two last represent relationship-oriented roles. Findings show that party-political popular education still plays a significant role in contemporary Sweden. The shrinking member base of political parties creates challenges when new members and prospective representatives cannot be expected to have as extensive popular movement experience as previous representatives. In this situation, study activities are, to some extent, attributed more significance than previously.

Discourses on adult learning and education (ALE) and in particular the GRALE Report generally have limited coverage of popular education as part of its ecology. Given both the long history of popular education globally as a necessary approach towards affecting transformation and the socio-economic-ecological transformations that are needed, we identify the challenge of incorporating the radical approach of popular education more explicitly into ALE discourses. We proffer suggestions toward this end.

The article focuses upon analysis of educational experiences of an international group of labor movement activists over a ten-year period. A key rationale for the research activity is to help rescue and revitalize the tradition of radical popular education and activist knowledge grounded in organized worker movements.

Denmark has a strong and versatile tradition of adult education. Over a long historical period, adult education for public enlightenment and leisure, for continuing study and for vocational and professional competence have been developed, been made part of state policy and been used by citizens. But in recent years the public and political presence of Danish adult education has changed. While education policy issues generally abound in public and political debates, adult education is given much less attention than earlier. In this article, we trace the causes of this and conclude that it reflects a turn towards focusing on vocational types of adult education and a relocation of adult education policy to networks linking the state and the social partners. Drawing on theories of policy streams, policy networks and the competition state, we provide a historical analysis of Danish adult education reforms during the past two decades and document how the vocational turn has manifested itself.

Using a framework of care to design experiences in formal or informal learning does two things. It acknowledges intentions of reflective learning through open communication and meets expectations of scholars seeking knowledge within a learning community. This proposed framework was developed from programs involving popular education, community development, open communication, critical reflection, and democratic participation. It can be applied to most instructional contexts, where relationships between facilitators and participants are valued as part of an active learning environment. This framework of care builds on the work of Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, Nel Noddings, and Fergal Finnegan. When planning programs, we recommend both understanding participants' learning goals and then being attentive to care, community, communication, critical reflection, equality, and democracy. Through these approaches, educators can create a caring experience for learners.

Adult education in art galleries sits on a fault line, at once an apparatus upholding the affirmative aspects of museum culture cultivated by global elites, a propellant in the whirring of an increasingly dislocated set of events on trendy and consumable political themes, and a site for 'allyship' and other kinds of radical and socially transformative work. Resurrecting Hannah Arendt's question, 'where are we when we think?' this paper explores how we might move from a moment in which the 'space' of the gallery is replaced by the 'time' of the event (Helguera) and towards embedded space-times that attempt to address contemporary urgencies through situated practices that collectively analyse and respond to conditions. Drawn from examples derived from the author's practice, the paper argues for the use of popular education and anti-colonial pedagogies in the production of adult education in galleries, suggesting that such processes support groups in collectively naming and thinking through conflicts to re-shape both the galleries in which they have congregated and the worlds beyond their doors. This paper suggests that the re-construction and use of the often forgotten genealogies of emancipatory education are pivotal to doing social justice work in galleries.

This paper focuses on three Southern European countries, Italy, Portugal and Spain, to explore examples of projects that provide signposts for a critical popular education that contributes to an ongoing democratic process--one whereby citizens are developed as social actors and members of a collectivity rather than simply passive producers/consumers. This approach would serve as an alternative to the traditional "top-down" and current hegemonic economy-oriented discourses. In so doing, the paper seeks to redress an imbalance in the English language adult education and learning literature that often overlooks alternative discourses to the mainstream on and from this part of the world.

Popular education programs allow for collective agenda setting and flexibility, and also to carefully and respectfully design activities that bring in all voices and level the power in the room. Popular education methods help to raise awareness and engage with stakeholders to support topics, such as social justice, human rights, collective power, and nonviolent responses. This study examines the explicit and implicit intentions and expectations of participants who have engaged in popular education workshops related to authentic leadership. This instrumental case study examines the reflective writing of 13 participants from two popular education workshops. To analyze the 26 reflections, the co-researchers individually coded a set of four reflections and then worked with a partner to compare their coding results. Themes were developed from the coded data. The themes included the Center as a destination, seeking renewal and inspiration, personal growth and learning gained from the experience, open minded and flexible expectations, interest in the topic, and professional and academic growth and networking. We suggest ways to build in components of a popular education program to other settings, such as building community, storytelling and sharing, and establishing group norms.

This article contextualizes and reviews the third global report on adult learning and education (ALE) released by UNESCO in 2016. The authors suggest that it is a visionary document, which is articulated through the bringing together of data from a range of areas that are usually kept apart. They recognize the report as a bold attempt to project what role ALE plays, or could play, within a holistic philosophy and approach to lifelong learning. They argue that given the ambitious nature of the task, and the inevitable tensions and contradictions that exist within a report of this nature, the report both fails to present a robust picture of ALE and succeeds as an advocacy document toward achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. They recognize that the political and pedagogical work undertaken by the third "Global Report on Adult Learning and Education" is at an early stage. Alongside this work, they argue for the importance of the broader nonformal and informal ALE, including popular education, as a means of challenging the "post-truth society."

Non-formal, non-vocational adult education (NFNVAE) is a low-cost, low-threshold learning activity that generates many benefits for individuals and society, and it should play a more central role in educational policy. NFNVAE's challenge is that it lacks clear concepts and definitions and is, therefore, less systematically covered in statistics, research and surveys. This article seeks to tackle these problems by providing (1) a mapping of NFNVAE courses in 10 European countries and (2) a conceptual framework for NFNVAE. The mapping is based on survey data (n = 8,646) that contain information on 14,063 courses, which were coded into 24 categories and three general types: civic, liberal and basic skills education. Popular adult education courses (in the radical meaning of the term) were not found among these data; therefore, further mapping is needed. The genealogical analysis shows that ideological discourses and cultural practices should be taken into account when different concepts are used to describe NFNVAE. Especially the concept "popular" needs more clarification, since it is frequently used to refer to several different traditions, for example the Nordic "folkbildning," which is a civic education system, and therefore differs from Latin American popular adult education, which is a radical, non-governmental movement.

This article traces the work of community-based popular educators with an explicit commitment to "Freirean" popular education as they shifted from teaching in a community-based setting to an after-school program focused on standardized test-preparation. Drawing from ethnographic observation and interviews, it examines educators' pedagogical practice and the narratives they employed to explain, interpret, and justify their practice. It shows that they adopted a "discourse of both/and," asserting the possibility and virtues of doing Freirean popular education and high-stakes test preparation simultaneously, without sacrificing the integrity of either. It argues that this discourse was a pragmatic adaptation to structural imperatives but also a limiting one that facilitated the intensification of workload, individual responsibilization, and a shifting of organizational mission in ways that align with neoliberal reform. Drawing from Foucauldian analyses of audit culture, this article troubles the discourse of both/and by exposing how it operates as a technology of neoliberal governance even when cloaked in the language of social justice.

This literature review engages mental illness in adult education (AE) to locate what research exists and to suggest a research agenda moving forward. This structured review located research related to mental health issues published in the conference proceedings of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) and the Adult Education Research Conference (AERC) and fourteen international AE journals. AE scholarship focused on identity construction, andragogy and classroom issues, public pedagogy, popular education and arts-based education, contesting psychiatric knowledge and sanism, and workplace.