Popular Education Movement Research Articles

The promise of recognition and the repercussions of government intervention: the transpedagogical vision of popular educators in Buenos Aires, Argentina

ABSTRACTThis investigation draws from Mouffe’s [2005, On the Political. London: Routledge] theoretical work on the politics of public togetherness, together with Biesta [2011, “The Ignorant Citizen: Mouffe, Rancière, and the Subject of Democratic Education.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 30 (2): 141–153] and Kamat’s [2014, “The new Development Architecture and the Post-political in the Global South.” In The Post-Political and its Discontents: Spaces of Depoliticization, Spectres of Radical Politics, edited by J. Wilson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press] insights on democratic discourses centered on empowerment, inclusion, and participatory democracy, to show how popular education and social change movements in Buenos Aires conceive of partnership building in communities under the impediment of neoliberal governance. It provides an empirical account of former popular educators who together built the first and only school in Latin America to offer educational opportunities for transgender men and women, how they secured government recognition, but eventually how they lost their power within it. In making the shift from a community-based popular school, to one run under the thumb of Argentina’s Ministry of Education, these educators were forced to drop the more radical aspects of their work in favor of a pedagogy aligned with patriarchal, neoliberalist-sanctioned reform.

Ecopedagogy as an element of citizenship education: The dialectic of global/local spheres of citizenship and critical environmental pedagogies

Emerging from popular education movements in Latin America, ecopedagogy is a critical environmental pedagogy which focuses on understanding the connections between social conflict and environmentally harmful acts carried out by humans. These connections are often politically hidden in education. Ecopedagogy, while being pluralistic, is in its essence defined as a critical, transformative environmental pedagogy centred on increasing social and environmental justice. Its ultimate aim is to find a sustainable balance between the conflicting goals of diverse notions of human progress and environmental wellbeing. This article is based on two comparative research projects. The first was a qualitative study on ecopedagogical models involving 31 expert ecopedagogues in Argentina, Brazil and the Appalachian region of the United States. They were asked for their perspectives on how successful ecopedagogy can be defined within the contexts in which they taught and conducted research. The second study analysed how 18 international expert scholars of citizenship and/or environmental pedagogy from six world continents regarded the ways in which citizenship intersects with environmental issues and the pedagogies of both in an increasingly globalised world, with specific focus on Global Citizenship Education. Results from the first study indicate the following two needs for effective environmental pedagogies: (1) for there to be an ecopedagogical paradigm shift in environmental teaching and research; and (2) for ecopedagogy to be an essential element of citizenship education (and vice versa). This article examines how conflicting processes of globalisation both help and hinder in achieving such a paradigm shift by decentring traditional nation-state citizenship. Results from the second study indicate how critical teaching within and between different spheres of citizenship (e.g. local, national, global, and planetary citizenship) is essential for ecopedagogy (and the ecopedagogical element).

Popular Adult and Labor Education Movement in Sweden—History, Content, Pedagogy

AbstractIn Sweden, workers’ education—Arbetarbildning—is part of the all-embracing popular adult education movement that assumed its organizational consolidation in the late 1800s. Popular education—Folkbildning—is a culturally determined practice of social communication with roots in the Reformation and the Enlightenment, playing a decisive role in the shaping of the Swedish labor movement in the late 1800s, the history of which is intertwined with democratization and the transformation of Sweden into a highly developed welfare society. The pedagogical and ideological configuration of labor education in Sweden is surveyed from a historical perspective through the lenses of the Workers’ Educational Association (ABF) and the labor movement's most powerful branches: the Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO). Workers’ education was utilized as a political strategy for a just and equitable society, via successive reforms, based on knowledge and initiated and supported by well-informed citizens.

Physical Education, Exercise, Fitness and Sports: Early PM&R Leaders Build a Strong Foundation

Physical Education, Exercise, Fitness and Sports: Early PM&R Leaders Build a Strong Foundation

Learning and education for a better world: The role of social movements

The editors of Learning and Education for a Better World: The Role of Social Movements established for themselves an ambitious goal. As indicated in the introduction, they intend for the book to offer ‘new insights into the theories of how social movements work, deeper insights into the theory and practice of adult education in the context of political struggle, and new resources for hope’ (p.x). Each contribution to this edited volume investigates a different aspect of the intersection of adult education and social movement work. The volume is divided into three parts. The first is focused on theoretical and historical perspectives, the second on learning through cultural struggle and the third on ‘changing the world’. The interplay between education and social movements/ social change is the theme that ties the chapters together. While some chapters focus on education as a part of social movements (such as in the opening piece about an adult education program for South African militants), others show how education is the target of social movements, as demonstrated in Steinklammer’s piece on Austrian kindergarten teachers protesting for better education funding. Liam Kane provides a primer on popular education and a nice history of the popular education movement in Latin America. Darlene Clover’s and Stephen Brookfield’s respective articles both describe how art is an educational tool that is specifically appropriate for social movement work. In one of my favorite articles of the compilation, Astrid von Kotze describes a grassroots-based adult education system in South Africa in which the ‘students’ set their own curriculum and build the radical imaginings of an alternative social world. The examples von Kotze describes provide excellent lessons for teachers of all kinds about how to involve students in their own education. In addition, the ‘bottom-up’ model of freely available education described by von Kotze could provide a fascinating contrast with the largely ‘topdown’ massive online open courses or MOOCs that have been touted as democratizing higher education. Likewise, Budd L. Hall’s article describes the grassroots training and educational processes at the heart of the Occupy Movement, and how Occupy’s use of the Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement Vol 8/No 1 (2015): 167–68 © UTSePress and the author

A EXPERIÊNCIA DE EDUCAÇÃO POPULAR DO CENTRO POPULAR DE CULTURA EM GOIÁS

This article discusses the involvement of the Goiás Center for Popular Culture in adult education in the 1960s. This was a popular education movement, organized by the National Union of Students, engaging high school and university students, intellectuals and artists in cultural awareness activities and in adult education in the State of Goiás. The study shows how these militants in Goiás were influenced by the Recife Popular Culture Movement in terms of adult literacy, resulting in the preparation of a book entitled Leitura para Adultos (Readings for Adults). The text is based on doctoral research, including documental analysis, interviews, testimonies and reports from militants of that period.

Enlightened publics: Popular education movements in Europe, their legacy and promise

Popular education movements can be dated back to the religious heresies of the Middle Ages but only become well-formed movements following the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In this article I outline the scope and nature of some of the most effective of these movements which have come to inform the concept of the ‘public sphere’ advanced by Jurgen Habermas. It continues with a brief description of contemporary popular education movements dating from the anti-imperialist liberation struggles of the mid-twentieth century and the post-Freirean Latin American movements and asks: what was the legacy of the older popular education movements? It concludes with an assessment of the current direction of higher education made by Slavoj Zizek, as ‘producers of expert knowledge’ and compares it with the ‘Popular Universities’ that have emerged in Venezuela in the last decade.

Learning global citizenship?

This article identifies historical connections between adult learning, popular education and the emergence of the public sphere in Europe, exploring potential implications for adult learning and community development, drawing upon research evaluating programmes to promote community-based learning for active citizenship in UK. The research findings illustrate the relevance of the global and indeed the regional levels, when addressing concerns with active citizenship, locally. The article then moves on to examine experiences of global citizen advocacy coalitions, experiences from which participants have been drawing differing lessons about global citizenship. Finally, the conclusions raise questions about the scope for adult learning and community development in the current policy context, shaped so significantly by neo-liberal agendas. Social movements in general and popular education movements, more specifically, would seem to have vital roles to play, facilitating adult learning for critical democratic engagement with the structures of governance, locally and beyond, internationally.

Popularising the ‘New International Political Economy’: The ATTAC Movement

Born in France in 1997, the ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens) movement is popularising IPE (international political economy), the interdisciplinary field of study born in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. The affinity between the ideas and main concerns of ATTAC and IPE can be clearly stated. ATTAC is a popular education movement, promoting a critical reading of globalisation. It uses critical pedagogy and is largely supported by ‘resisting intellectuals’, who are the newborn ‘organic intellectuals’ once envisioned by Antonio Gramsci.

Conflict and Co-Operation between ‘Popular’ and ‘State’ Education in Latin America

During the Latin American oppression of the 1970s, as the rapidly increasing number of grassroots ‘popular’ social movements sought to profit from and expand the ideas of the radical Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire, there developed, in its own right, a ‘popular education’ movement which engaged in radical education for change independently of and often in direct opposition to the state. With the apparent demise of open dictatorship and the rise of formal, albeit limited, ‘democratic’ states in the 1990s, the popular education movement began to debate the type of relationship it should now have with the state in this changed political context. In recent years the election of a number of left-leaning governments has made the issue even more urgent. Drawing comparisons with practice in the UK, this article explores the relationship between ‘popular’ and ‘state’ education in Latin America and argues that the strength of the popular education movement outside the state is the most likely determinant of its impact within it.

Promoting Child and Youth Participation in the Creation of Citizenship

Children, Youth and Environments 17(2), 2007 Promoting Child and Youth Participation in the Creation of Citizenship Yolanda Corona Caraveo Programa Infancia, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco México María Eugenia Linares Pontón Hacia una Cultura Democrática, México Citation: Corona Caraveo, Yolanda and María Eugenia Linares Pontón (2007). “Promoting Children and Youth Participation in the Creation of Citizenship.” Children, Youth and Environments 17(2): 1-10. Introduction: The Latin American Context What are the motives that lead us to work and reflect on child and youth participation in Latin America? What is the meaning, here and now, of childhood and youth for the governments, the organizations and the adults of this region? In Latin America, as in many other parts of the world, young people are facing very difficult life situations marked by poverty and inequality. Yet, the democratization processes Latin America is experiencing has begun to open opportunities for young people to acknowledge their own place in the social structure, and to have their opinions incorporated to political agendas and decision-making. In order to understand how child and youth participation projects are inserted into the citizenship projects and political cultures characteristic of Latin America, we must first analyze the socio-political framework within which the region has lived for a relatively long historical period. The twentieth century in Latin America was marked by a large number of social movements and, moreover, revolutions that strove to transform the situations of injustice and enormous inequality that plagued most countries. The region was also characterized by the existence of dictatorships that subjected societies to repressive processes and genocides. There were numerous coups d’état that overthrew presidents who had reached their positions through popular elections. The one that occurred in Chile in the 1970s put an end to one of the longest-lived democratic traditions in the region, while the one that occurred in Brazil had a strong impact on education, since it sought to suppress the liberation and popular education movement promoted by Paulo Freire. A related aspect of the political Promoting Child and Youth Participation in the Creation of Citizenship 2 landscape during the last 25 years has been the strong presence of military juntas in several countries, such as Argentina, Chile, Haiti, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. Six countries lived under military regimes for 45 to 50 years. Authoritarianism had defined the political systems of the region, and therefore a democratic transition in which civil society would play an important role was hard to envision. However, since the 1960s, we have observed the organizational and mobilization abilities of many groups who have defended the interests of the oppressed and contributed to the fall of military regimes in the Southern Cone. There were also wide social mobilizations—students’, teachers’, and unions’ solidarity movements in the face of natural catastrophes and also, significantly, a wide popular education and social action movement based upon the postulates of the Liberation Theology. All of these have set the base for a profound transformation of the region. On the other hand, Latin America has been characterized by a high social exclusion index; today, 44 percent of the population lives in poverty, and 19 percent of these live in extreme or abject poverty. According to the data of the Economy Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL, 2005), the Latin America region has the worst income distribution indicators on the planet and shows a tendency to move towards even greater distributive inequity. The situation of children and youth is also dramatic, since more than half of them live under conditions of serious poverty and inequality. There are many deep problems related to the quality of health and education services, especially among the poorest children and those in rural areas. There are also an increasing number of working children and children who live on the streets who are subjected to exploitation, mistreatment, and even extreme violence. Reproductive health services are not available in many countries, which contributes to a high adolescent fecundity index, as well as a greater danger of HIV/AIDS infection. Moreover, the wave of emigrants to more developed countries as well as internal migration endangers...

Organizing for the future: labour's renewal strategies, popular education and radical history

Australian unions have adopted new organizing methods to rebuild and develop their organizations. This represents a change in direction from the commitment to partnership and tripartite planning that characterized the Accord period under the Labor governments of the 1980s and 1990s to a new focus on capacity building. A serious decline in union density along with shifts in the labour process has led unions to focus on recruiting and organizing new members. The vitality involved is tempered by a hostile legal climate that supports workplace flexibility, casualization, fragmentation and low-wage work, while curtailing the rights of unions to recruit and organize. This paper explores the common heritage between the new organizing and theories of popular education, radical history and social movement experience. The paper suggests that contemporary efforts to regenerate unions as assertive organizations that rely on developing and educating new activists and leaders can benefit from drawing on emancipatory traditions of popular education, radical history and community organizing, and in so doing avoid an uncritical adoption of what might become simply a new set of organizing techniques.

European Influences in Spanish Popular Education: The Case of the Socialist Casa Del Pueblo of Madrid and the Belgian Model (1897–1929)

In Spain from the late nineteenth century, the ‘People’s Houses’ (Casas del Pueblo) corresponded to a desire to provide and organize a space of sociability for workers and their families. This formed part of the diverse Spanish popular education movement. This article focuses on the project to translate the model of the Belgian Maison du Peuple into the Spanish context, and the plans and activities of two cultural and educational socialist institutions directly inspired by similar Belgian institutions: the Central de Educación Socialista (Centre of Socialist Education) founded in 1913 on the model of the Centrale d’Éducation Ouvrière (Centre of Labour Education), and the Escuela Obrera Socialista (Socialist Labour School) founded in 1929 and based on the École Ouvrière Supérieure (Upper Labour School). The comparison with the Belgian models allows us to see the distance between hope and reality. In fact, what interested the Spanish Socialists in the Belgian experience was more the general idea, the name and the concrete means to formalize it, rather than the pedagogic methods used, which inscribed both in a national and international perspective.

Building Community and Reconstructing Citizenship in the Youth and Culture Houses of Post-War France

This article explores the historical significance of Youth and Culture Houses in the cultural reconstruction of post-war France in the wake of war and occupation. Integrating the young into the cultural life of the nation was a project designed to unify the French polity after the divisive years of the late Third Republic and Vichy. The Youth and Culture Houses, a private initiative with government support, emphasized the cultural development of the young within an inclusive, pluralist, secular, and democratic environment premised on the notion that by fashioning the young culturally, the youth of France would participate more fully and more effectively in the national community as adult citizens. However, another element of the Youth and Culture Houses, and the popular education movement more generally, was to homogenize the national community, to produce a standard of cultural normality that would create a common bond of Frenchness.

Paperback Pornography: Mass Market Novels and Censorship in Post‐War America

The year 1952 was an historical one in the history of American book publishing. A special committee of the U. S. House of Representatives (the Gathings Committee) formed for the express purpose of investigating the influence of paperback books on American society. Never before or since in the history of the book in the United States has a specific format been singled out for this degree of scrutiny; but perhaps never before had one been seen as a serious threat to public morality. The House investigation followed in the wake of diverse and vocal censorship efforts designed to counter the perceived threat of paperback novels, with their suggestive cover art and titillating stories. At any other time in modern American history, protests against paperbacks might not have gained sufficient momentum to expand beyond localized censorship efforts. In the volatile political and social climate of post-War America, however, threats to the established order were taken with unprecedented seriousness. In little more than a century, paperback novels had gone from a democratizing element in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, providing reading material to anyone who could afford their nominal price, to a subversive influence in the mid-twentieth century, for much the same reason. While several histories of American book publishing have commented on this era of censorship, none have actually examined the texts investigated by the Gathings Committee. This article will explore censorship activities of the early 1950s, with particular emphasis on the Gathings Committee investigation, and will look closely at several of the texts cited in the committee's report. Despite provocative cover art, this author suggests that the texts ultimately reinforced rather than challenged traditional notions of sexual propriety. The mass-market paperback novel, introduced in the United States in the late 1930s, was not an original concept in publishing. The first American paperbound books were printed over a century earlier (Schreuders 31). Technological innovations facilitated the production of inexpensive books. Improvements in paper production, typesetting and printing methods coincided with the popular education movement of the 1820s and 1830s. One provided the means and the other a motive for the production and distribution of inexpensive reading material for the masses, thus ushering in the First Paperback Revolution in America. By the end of the Civil War, over four million paperback reprints had been sold in the United States. Their success ultimately might have undermined the regular book publishing industry, had not changes in copyright law in 1891 curbed the paperback reprint business (Between the Covers 68). For the next four decades, the paperbound publishing industry in the United States was defunct. In the late 1920s, the country's economic crisis fostered a resurgence of interest in inexpensive printing practices and once again led to experimentation with paperbound publishing. The first effort that produced sustained success came in 1939, when Robert DeGraff launched the publication of his Pocket Books, beginning the second paperback revolution in America. What made the Pocket Book so unique and successful was more than its portable pocket size, its low price (twenty-five cents), or its range of quality fiction titles. Pocket Books used distribution methods unlike those of regular hardcover publishers. DeGraff, who had worked in the newspaper industry, saw potential there to reach a much broader audience than through traditional book outlets. Pocket Books sold on newsstands, in drug and department stores, in cigar stores, and other places where newspapers and magazines sold. In Columbus, Ohio, for example, there were six outlets where people could shop for hardcover books. Consumers could purchase Pocket Books, however, at over 218 locations around the city. While DeGraff was not the first publisher to use newspaper distribution channels to sell books, he was by far the most successful (History 68). …