Community-based Adult Education Research Articles

Pedagogical development in older adult education: A critical community-based approach

This paper informs pedagogical development in older adult education. It draws on qualitative data of a longitudinal community-based educational action research study. Informed by critical theory, Freirean and postcolonial literature, the educational initiative comprised a critical and praxis-oriented engagement with generative themes co-identified with participants – such as capitalism, consumerism, education and the Internet. Participants’ artistic talents, subcultural affiliations and chaperoning and mentoring rituals that characterised their community context were used as educational tools. Workshop-based sessions elicited critical problematization of the generative themes and co-production of related artistic yields, such as poetry and prose in the community’s dialects and also traditional folk song. Together with interviews, focus groups and participant observations, the artistic yields provided primary qualitative data. Thematic analysis of this varied data informed the development of pedagogy for community-based adult education grounded in participatory democracy and enhanced historicity. However, gaps, contradictions and ambivalences in the data testified to participants’ nuanced engagement. The study showed the educational value of such nuances because they provided spaces for learners to come into presence in an unscripted manner. Recommendations include pedagogical development rooted in the profiling of learners’ community and life stories, and investment in small-scale community-based initiatives.

Challenges facing community-dwelling adults with hemophilia: Implications for community-based adult education and nursing.

Community-dwelling adults are members of society residing in community settings. Community-based adult education is designed for local residents and groups, to enable them to improve their quality of life within their community. Hemophilia is a bleeding disorder that can be inherited or acquired. World Hemophilia Day 2018 helped to raise awareness about the importance of sharing knowledge and the experience of hemophilia, as well as to improve access to care and treatment among people with this bleeding disorder. We used the documentary method of research, which has been adopted in recent review articles, to collect and analyze the findings of published literature on hemophilia. Our results showed that community-dwelling adults with hemophilia have concerns that merit the attention of government and non-governmental agencies. Some challenges faced by many community-dwelling adults with hemophilia include the cost of treatment and employment challenges. Herein, we discuss the implications for community-based health education and nursing with respect to patient care, adult education, nursing education, management, research, and policy. Finally, the authors note that sustainable efforts are needed in the provision of local, national and international leadership and educational resources to improve and sustain health care for community-dwelling adults with hemophilia.

Working the Margins of Community-Based Adult Learning: The Power of Arts-Making in Finding Voice and Creating Conditions for Seeing/Listening by S. Butterwick and C. Roy

Working the Margins of Community-Based Adult Learning is a well-rounded example of how art and creative forms of expression can influence, aid, and elevate transformative learning in community-based adult education. Specifically, the authors Shauna Butterwick and Carole Roy use an edited book format in a cohesive way to “gather stories from the margins and explore how various art and creative forms of expression can enable the voices of underrepresented individuals and communities to take shape and form” (p. ix).

The People's Free University: Alternative to the Corporate Campus and Model for Emancipatory Learning

Our article describes how the People's Free University (PFU) emerged directly from a series of seminars at the University of Saskatchewan in the Fall of 2001 that addressed critical concerns about a discernible tendency on campus towards the adoption of a business corporate style of governance steered increasingly by marketplace priorities. The seminars, open to the public as well as students, staff and faculty, turned to a discussion on the significance of a "people's university" envisioned for the University of Saskatchewan by its first President, Walter Murray. Invoking Murray's vision opened the way to the remarkable beginning and subsequent creative program development of a free university. Examples of community-based adult education initiatives from which PFU drew are identified, situating it historically within an on-going critical legacy that has become even more relevant in the face of neo-liberal imperatives. The emancipatory pedagogy entailed is informed substantially through the theory and practice of Paulo Freire, Thomas Hodgskin and Alfred North Whitehead. Essential learning processes and guiding principles which characterize PFU pedagogy are illuminated under the rubric of "everyone can teach, everyone can learn." In drawing a connection between the PFU experience and resistance to attacks on academic freedom at the University of Saskatchewan, we align the enlightened aims of community-based popular education embodied in PFU against profit driven encroachments of corporate business interests.

Aspects of Community-based Adult Education Activities in NalueiWard of Mongu District, Zambia

Aspects of Community-based Adult Education Activities in NalueiWard of Mongu District, Zambia

Is group singing special? Health, well-being and social bonds in community-based adult education classes.

Evidence demonstrates that group singing improves health and well-being, but the precise mechanisms remain unknown. Given that cohesive social networks also positively influence health, we focus on the social aspects of singing, exploring whether improvements in health and well-being are mediated by stronger social bonds, both to the group as a whole (collective-bonding) and to individual classmates (relational-bonding). To do so, seven newly-formed community-based adult education classes (four singing, N=84, and three comparison classes studying creative writing or crafts, N=51) were followed over seven months. Self-report questionnaire data on mental and physical health, well-being, and social bonding were collected at Months 1, 3 and 7. We demonstrate that physical and mental health and satisfaction with life significantly improved over time in both conditions. Path analysis did not show any indirect effects via social bonding of Condition on health and well-being. However, higher collective-bonding at timepoint 3 significantly predicted increased flourishing, reduced anxiety and improved physical health independently of baseline levels. In contrast, relational-bonding showed no such effects, suggesting that it is feeling part of a group that particularly yields health and well-being benefits. Moreover, these results indicate that singing may not improve health and well-being more than other types of activities. Nonetheless, these findings encourage further work to refine our understanding of the social aspects of community-based adult education classes in promoting health, well-being and community cohesion.

Helping Them Help Themselves: Supported Adult Education for Persons Living with Mental Illness

This case study of the Ontario Shores Supported Education Program (OSSEP) illustrates the importance of a hospital-based education program for adult learners living with mental illness, and its impact on participants’ quality of life and hopes for the future. The findings demonstrate that supported education programs catering to the needs of adults living with mental illness have the potential to not simply provide skills for future employment, but to more broadly improve participants’ ability to manage daily life, increase self-confidence, and improve rehabilitation efforts. With on-going cuts to community-based adult education programs, this research indicates the importance of ensuring specialized supported education programs are introduced and maintained for persons living with mental illness. For hospitals like Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences, such programs can be an important part of patients’ recovery and rehabilitation process.

Review of Indigenous Teacher Training Using Community-Based Adult Education: Implications for Technology and Outsider Educators

Worldwide there are critical shortfalls of teachers, particularly in Indigenous communities. This article considers the use of nonformal education (NFE) in the form of community-based adult education (CBAE) for Indigenous teacher training to meet this need. Drawing on a literature search of Indigenous CBAE initiatives, some of the challenges and common characteristics are identified along with advantages with respect to Indigenous ownership, culturally based curriculum, and community empowerment. By its very nature, CBAE has implications for the Indigenous community's decisions about educational technology and for relationships with outsider educators. Discussion about this generates questions and guidelines to promote self-evaluation by outsider educators who, the author suggests, will find themselves in new roles and relationships.

Landscapes, spatial justice and learning communities

This paper draws on a study of a community-based adult education initiative, Cumbria Credits, which took place during the period of serious economic decline which hit sections of the farming and the wider community in Cumbria during 2001. It draws on the principles underpinning Edward Soja's notion of ‘spatial justice’ to explore transformations which took place in terms of human activities and relationships which emerged in response to challenging conditions. Human agency created opportunities to envisage new ‘ways of being’ in the community and to pursue new values and aspirations through education and collaboration. In the three examples of practice presented here, the work undertaken was concerned, in different ways, with the ‘fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and the opportunities to use them’ (Soja, 2008). In all the three contexts, forms of adult education emerged, which were responsive to the particular issues relating to ‘social justice’ and ‘locational discrimination’ experienced by their local communities. Spatial justice is a powerful concept which can serve to illuminate struggles for human rights in different settings and to highlight some of the many unexplored dimensions which must be taken into account in debates around inclusion and exclusion in education.

Stuck at home: A portrayal of educational work in community spaces

This paper considers the positioning of work in community learning spaces through insights drawn from a particular case of adult community education in Victoria, Australia. Despite the rhetorical location of adult community education in Victoria as a legitimate and important sector of post compulsory education and as part of the platform on which the government's lifelong learning agenda is realised, perceptions held of it continue to devalue the significant educational work that is done within it and the outcomes it achieves.The paper draws on an analysis of a sample of qualitative interview data collected in the course of related research projects (Clemans, 2005; Billett et al., 2005; Seddon et al. 2008) to highlight the ways in which work in a community learning space is positioned, perceived and (mis)understood. These perceptions stem from those who work both within and are located outside of the community-based adult education sector. The findings demonstrate the centrality of the notion of the ‘domestic’ or home space in the ways that educational work in community settings is constructed and perceived. They suggest that a consistent emphasis on care overlays notions of unpaid, private and domestic work onto those who work in the community learning space.The paper invites readers to view the community as a spatial construction, drawing on ideas founded in feminist geographies and those within adult education. It argues that these scholarly resources are helpful in understanding the ways in which work within the adult community education space is distinctively positioned, yet consistently devalued, despite its significant impact on ‘second chance’ learners.

All for Our Children: Migrant Families and Parent Participation in an Alternative Education Program

Children from migrant agricultural families have some of the lowest socioeconomic and educational indicators in the American Southwest, and migrant parents are often characterized by school personnel as “hard to reach” and uninvolved in their children's education. This study analyzes the process of school participation among migrant parents who participated in a community-based adult education program. It examines the participants' own process of self-actualization and the specific programmatic features that promoted educational and attitudinal changes that affected children's schooling. The data indicate the emergence of beneficial, assertive interactions between parents and school personnel that improved schooling for migrant children.

PROTOCOL: The effects of K‐12 school enrollment interventions in developing nations

PROTOCOL: The effects of K‐12 school enrollment interventions in developing nations

“It Feels Like a Little Family to Me”

Supportive social relationships are an important dimension of marginalized women's participation in community-based adult education programs. However, policy makers and researchers often consider these social dimensions to be tangential or secondary to instrumental outcomes such as obtaining employment or increasing standardized test scores. Drawing on two qualitative studies of family literacy programs in the Northeastern United States, this article examines the importance of social interaction and support for women in poverty. The study reveals that, for women with limited social support and social ties, family literacy programs afforded a social space that enabled them to leave the house, enjoy social contact and mutual support with peers, establish supportive relationships with teachers, and pursue self-discovery and development. The article concludes that nonformal adult education and family literacy programs play an important role in helping women in poverty receive social support and in turn enhancing their psychosocial well-being.

Community-Based Adult Education: Access for Aboriginal Residents in the Inner-City of Saskatoon

Community-Based Adult Education: Access for Aboriginal Residents in the Inner-City of Saskatoon

Philosophy in Program Management

Philosophy keeps me well-informed regarding the direction of my program management decisions. Philosophy also keeps me well-informed and considerate regarding the needs of my staff. To many, such a reliance on philosophy, I know, seems somewhat high-brow. Yet, when questioned about my grasp of reality, I always smile at the memory of my undergraduate philosophy professor who maintained that a good understanding of philosophy enables one to ask the right questions, following which, the answers take care of themselves. A bold and flippant statement you might think. However, under the structural umbrella offered by Zinn (1998) in Identifying Your Philosophical Orientation, I hope to convince you, the reader, that philosophy does have a very practical role to play in program management. Philosophy in Marketing and Program Development When advertising or selling a program, the first question I ask myself is an ethical one: Am I being honest in my representation of the program I offer and its potential outcomes? Expectations of company management are firmly rooted in behaviorist theories, whereby learners practice new behaviors that are skills-based. In this situation the teacher functions as a manager, controlling and directing outcomes. Feedback, to students and teachers alike, carries a strong environmental influence in the sense that skills being learned must contribute to increased productivity, seen as promoting economic survival of the employing organization. The same can be said of individuals who pay to attend Continuing Education classes that offer computer skills training, for example. Students who complete such courses expect to increase their proficiency in using computers and also, in many cases, improve their marketability and hence their chances of robust economic survival. To my mind, while a behaviorist element is present, the opposite perspective, generally speaking, is encapsulated in the role of community-based adult education programs such as the ESL program that I managed until recently. Being first and foremost a humanist, I believe that all individuals are essentially positive in nature with a high degree of motivation that manifests itself in the form of self-directed learning. Under these circumstances, individuals assume responsibility for their own learning as they see the need arise. Otherwise, obvious as it may seem, why would students who speak no English attend ESL classes on voluntary basis? Furthermore, I believe that these classes are available to promote personal growth and development that facilitates self-actualization on behalf of the students in attendance. In outlining these two opposing philosophies I ask myself whether or not my program is going to be market driven. If so, which market is going to drive the program? Do I, in selling my program, offer the industrial consumer whatever is expected at the expense of giving any consideration to the needs of students who attend classes commissioned by the said company? Or, do I consider the needs and wishes of students to the exclusion of any expectations from industry? In the case of community-based classes, do I consider the needs and expectations of students without regard to any other issues? Or, do I take a liberal/classic stance and view my program as a means of permitting the teacher, as expert, an opportunity to authoritatively transmit knowledge and completely direct the learning process? If only things were this simple! My experience in building a program is that one must be prepared to promote a variety of philosophies that moderate those already outlined. For example, programs and classes in industry most certainly need to be behavioral in nature. However, integrating a progressive philosophy into the program can successfully modify this approach. The progressive philosophy stresses the integration of experiential learning into the curriculum. In other words, the curriculum needs to contain opportunities for students to develop new skills that a company requires its employees to practice. …

Popular Research and Social Transformation: A Community-Based Approach to Critical Pedagogy

* This report focuses on the application of critical pedagogy at El Barrio Popular Education Program, a community-based adult education program in New York City. It is a vignette of a more complex picture of what the participants and the staff of the program accomplished together between 1990 and 1996. During that period, I served as executive director of the organization and as the coordinator of its educational programs. The program, which was committed to the implementation of participatory education and the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy, integrated the teaching of Spanish-language literacy and basic education with ESL, computer and video technology, and popular research-that is, investigations designed, conducted, analyzed, and produced by the learners on topics significant to them. The concept of critical pedagogy as used in this report places language at the center of the curriculum. The students' native language was used not only as an aid to learning English but also as a terrain of knowledge and a field of possibilities that linked students' experiences to collective action. The use of Spanish gave the students the opportunity to use their own reality as the basis of the literacy program and enabled them to reconstruct their history and culture (Freire & Macedo, 1987). Through the use of their own vernacular, the students produced new forms of knowledge that they made accessible to the community. They produced this knowledge by engaging in investigations-called popular

Composing Advisory Committees for Community-Based Adult Education

Composing Advisory Committees for Community-Based Adult Education