Abstract
Community education in the Republic of Ireland exists in several forms and in several sites. This article draws on two qualitative research projects in community education to identify the practices of the social model of community education that link them. The context of the research is the impact of policy changes as experienced by the practitioners and providers. The social model can be spoken of in different terms, depending on the practice of the speaker; it can be a process model of curriculum, critical literacy, or feminist emancipatory pedagogy. The article describes different discourses of practice and considers how practitioners could, while differentiating aspects of their practice, find common ground and resist the erosion of adult education for social justice by the state’s drive for vocational education for the labour market.
Highlights
Community education involves working with the most economically and socially disadvantaged groups in non-formal and formal sites (Lovett 1975)
Merrill and Fejes (2018) noted the concern in adult educational research about the identity of working-class men and women in middle-class higher education and adult education institutions. This synthesis of two research projects focuses on adult education sites that are linked by a social model of community education that minimises identity conflicts
New layers of accountability may make us feel that we are being co-opted and worn down by business processes, but resistance to neoliberal hegemonic processes exists, whether through overt social analysis in women’s community education groups, critical literacy and the wealth model operating in the adult literacy classroom, or through organisations and tutors reflecting on practices in the learning and teaching relationship
Summary
Community education involves working with the most economically and socially disadvantaged groups in non-formal and formal sites (Lovett 1975). The State proceeded to respond to calls to make formal education more accessible, and the consequent policy developments provided an infrastructure for adult education, which was framed as ‘Further Education’. Both sites are subject to changed accountability demands that are experienced as challenging. The hidden curriculum of mainstream education is that it continues to make the oppressive practices of neoliberalism appear as if there is no alternative Both fields of practice at local and national levels work to reduce barriers to access, participation, and outcome for individuals and groups in the public sphere through education and development, these are defined. The need for the different areas of community education to reframe their practice and reconceptualise their mission for the 21st century is a reflection of the challenges of neoliberalism for adult education that have been anticipated by those writers
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