Community education

Millbank Community Education Centre in Aberdeenshire, 2018.

Community Education, also known as Community-Based Education or Community Learning & Development, or Development Education is an organization's programs to promote learning and social development work with individuals and groups in their communities using a range of formal and informal methods. A common defining feature is that programmes and activities are developed in dialogue with communities and participants. The purpose of community learning and development is to develop the capacity of individuals and groups of all ages through their actions, the capacity of communities, to improve their quality of life. Central to this is their ability to participate in democratic processes.

Community education encompasses all those occupations and approaches that are concerned with running education and development programmes within local communities, rather than within educational institutions such as schools, colleges and universities. The latter is known as the formal education system, whereas community education is sometimes called informal education. It has long been critical of aspects of the formal education system for failing large sections of the population in all countries and had a particular concern for taking learning and development opportunities out to poorer areas, although it can be provided more broadly.

There are a myriad of job titles and employers include public authorities and voluntary or non-governmental organisations, funded by the state and by independent grant making bodies. Schools, colleges and universities may also support community learning and development through outreach work within communities. The community schools movement has been a strong proponent of this since the sixties. Some universities and colleges have run outreach adult education programmes within local communities for decades. Since the seventies the prefix word ‘community’ has also been adopted by several other occupations from youth workers and health workers to planners and architects, who work with more disadvantaged groups and communities and have been influenced by community education and community development approaches.

Community educators have over many years developed a range of skills and approaches for working within local communities and in particular with disadvantaged people. These include less formal educational methods, community organising and group work skills. Since the nineteen sixties and seventies through the various anti poverty programmes in both developed and developing countries, practitioners have been influenced by structural analyses as to the causes of disadvantage and poverty i.e. inequalities in the distribution of wealth, income, land etc. and especially political power and the need to mobilise people power to effect social change. Thus the influence of such educators as Paulo Friere and his focus upon this work also being about politicising the poor.

In the history of community education and community learning and development, the UK has played a significant role in hosting the two main international bodies representing community education and community development. These being the International Community Education Association, which was for many years based at the Community Education Development Centre based in Coventry UK. ICEA and CEDC have now closed, and the International Association for Community Development, which still has its HQ in Scotland. In the 1990s there was some thought as to whether these two bodies might merge. The term community learning and development has not taken off widely in other countries. Although community learning and development approaches are recognised internationally. These methods and approaches have been acknowledged as significant for local social, economic, cultural, environmental and political development by such organisations as the UN, WHO, OECD, World Bank, Council of Europe and EU.

Theoretical underpinnings

Theories of community

German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies coined the terms 'gemeinschaft' and 'gessellschaft' in 1887 to create a distinction between community and civil society. 'Gemeinshaft' refers to smaller neighbourly, close communities, whereas 'gessellsschaft' refers to larger market-driven, individualistic societies. French sociologist Emile Durkheim worried about disintegration of community because of modernity and social change, because he argued that people might loose traditional familial and social bonds as they prioritised work and economic competition. American urban sociologist, Robert E. Park also made a distinction between geographical areas and communities, Park believed that rural communities were those with greater interactions between a small group of close-knit individuals, and urban communities were less personal and more individualistic. Some community interventions are geographically targeted, for example, in Europe communities of need may be identified from databases such as the EU-SILC (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) or the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. Dave Beck and Rod Purcell have criticised this approach, based on statistics and geography, because they believe "these are artificial constructs that are labelled as communities, with the expectation that the people who live there do (or should) behave as if they were a functioning community."

Social Capital

The term 'social capital' is said to have been first used by Lyda Hanifan in his 1916 article entitled 'The rural school community centre' and later explained further in his 1920 book The Community Centre. In his 1916 article, Hanifan defines capital as "that in life which tends to make these tangible substances count for most in the daily lives of a people, namely, goodwill, fellowship, mutual sympathy and social intercourse among a group of individuals and families who make up a social unit, the rural community, whose logical center is the school." American-Canadian economist Jane Jacobs defined social capital is "people who have forged neighbourhood networks" in her 1961 critique of urban planning The Death and Life of Great American Cities. However, the term social capital is most associated with French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu during the 1980s. Bourdieu regarded social capital as something belonging to an individual from their social status and power. In Bourdieu and Wacquant's 1992 book An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, he defines social capital as "the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition." Bourdieu linked social capital with the cultural capital, which he described as inherently built up through generations, and both social and cultural capital, alongside economic capital, contribute to inequality and deprivation. In Bourdieu's definition of social capital, there is room for inequality when people have the most advantageous social networks get ahead of other people, in terms of their access to economic and cultural resources.

American sociologist James Coleman also considered social capital as relating to social relationships, but Coleman believed social capital to be a collective asset that benefits individuals as a group. For example, Coleman cites how a neighbourhood watch group benefits a neighbourhood as a whole because it helps to lower crime in an area, even benefiting those who are not part of the neighbourhood watch group. In 2000 American political scientist Robert Putnam published his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community in which he argues that there has been a decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. Putnam's work is credited with bringing the term social capital into popular vernacular, and he defined it as a public good. Putnam writes that social capital is "the connections among individuals' social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them". Putnam argues that American's have increasingly become disengaged from community involvement and more distrustful of the government, and he uses data from the General Social Survey showing falling membership to civic organisations, and argues that this shows a decline in social capital.

Some researchers have split social capital into 3 different forms, and these include:

1. Bonding - long-lasting social bonds between individuals who share similar experiences. For example, family and friends.
2. Bridging - relationships between individuals who differ in social identity or geography but share an ethnicity, interest, or ideology, for example.
3. Linking - relationships between individuals of differing status and power. For example, users of a service or government officials.

Psychosocial Theories

Paul Hoggett and Chris Miller (2000) argue that the emotional life of individuals is often ignored in community development and encourage greater reflexivity from practitioners and communities. Reflexivity refers to the practice of examining ones own beliefs and judgements, and how this may effect their practice. Canadian-American psychologist Albert Bandura's theory of self-efficacy looks at the ways in which individual behaviour is influenced by specific situations, and Bandura defined self-efficacy as an individual's belief that they will be able to "exercise influence over events that affect their lives." Marilyn Taylor argues that if an individual has low self-efficacy, they will be less likely to engage in collective action.

In the UK

In July 1917 the British government, under Lloyd George, established The Ministry of Reconstruction. This governmental department aimed to address a number of political and social areas including employment, housing and industrial relations. In 1919, The Ministry of Reconstruction Adult Education Committee (AEC) published the Final Report in which it argued that adult education was a "permanent national necessity." The AEC was chaired by A.L. Smith, and members included historian and social critic R.H. Tawney. Tawney believed that adult education was a democratic bottom-up process, that acts as a space for individuals to challenge and change their community. In the Final Report the need for adult education is described as individuals desire for "adequate opportunities for self-expression and the cultivation of their personal powers and interests." The 1919 Final Report identified a number of challenges that education may help to improve and these include; international cooperation, gender equality, maintaining democracy, and employment and the quality of work.

The UK underwent a reform in social welfare during and after the inter-war period. Community centres were built in newly established suburban housing estates under the 1936 Housing Act and the 1937 Physical Training and Recreation Act, and the Education Act 1944 introduced the Youth and Community Service. In the Ministry of Education pamphlet A Guide to the Education System of England and Wales (1945) it is stated that:

A more recent development has been the decision of the Government that the provision of community centres where men and women can meet for social and educational purposes and for recreation should be regarded as coming within the scope of the education service. Local education authorities are now expected to review the needs of their areas and provide such centres, which will have buildings of their own and full-time staff.

— Ministry of Education, A Guide to the Educational System of England and Wales (1945)

In a 1944 booklet entitled Citizen Centres for Adult Education by the Education Settlements Association (see, Settlement movement), posits adult education as vital to the "social reconstruction" of post-war Britain. One of the main challenges identified in the booklet is provision of centres and states that "the primary function of any local citizen centre should be the progressive development of the individual as a member of a free society, through mental training, the encouragement of self-effort, and the exercise of personal responsibility."

During the 1960s, Britain experienced increased poverty. In a 1965 survey entitled The Poor and the Poorest, Peter Townsend and Brian Abel-Smith measured poverty as the rate of people receiving National Assistance and, from this, they found approximately 14% of British people were living in poverty. British social researcher, Richard Titmuss published his book Income Distribution and Social Change in 1962, and argued that the wealth divide between classes was much wider than shown in official statistics. In 1965 the Seebohm Committee was established to investigate and review the work of social services in Britain. The subsequent Seebohm Report was published in 1968 and recommended greater integration between social care services and other health and social welfare services, particularly proposing the creation of a single family services department. The Seebohm Committee's work bolstered interest in community work as it was seen as a way to facilitate plans for social change. The Seebohm Report argued that in order to prevent delinquency, social work should be involved in encouraging positive community values and empowering people to help themselves. In 1965 a study group, chaired by Dame Eileen Younghusband and funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, investigated the role of community work in Britain and how best to go about training community workers. The study group published their findings in 1968 and defined community work "as a means of giving life to local democracy" and said that community work was important to coordinate and develop "services within and among organisations in a local community." In response to concern about poverty and social inequalities in Britain, Prime Minister Harold Wilson introduced the National Community Development Projects (CDPs) in 1969. Subsequently this influenced creation of the Urban Aid Programme, which allocated grants to local authorities to support education, housing, and social care organisations. Martin Loney described the CDPs as "the story of Britain's largest ever government funded social experiment." [1] The rationale of the CDPs, and similar American projects such as the Community Action Programmes for Juvenile Delinquency, was that social issues were local and caused by individual pathology.

CDPs were established in 12 cities and towns in Coventry, Liverpool, Southwark, Glyncorrwg, Bately, Birmingham, Canning Town, Cumbria, Newcastle, Oldham, Paisley and North Shields. The aim was for researchers to identify local issues, and work alongside the local community to provide and evaluate different methods of intervention. A number of reports were published particularly by the North Tyneside CDP, following CDPs research, and these include Whatever Happened to Council Housing (1976), Gilding the Ghetto (1979) and Costs of Industrial Change (1981).

In the UK, the term community learning and development has now been widely adopted as describing a discrete employment sector of occupations concerned with outreach education and development work in local communities. In 1999, a UK-wide organisation responsible for setting professional training standards for education and development practitioners working within local communities was established. This organisation was called PAULO – the National Training Organisation for Community Learning and Development. (It was named after Paulo Freire.) It was formally recognised by David Blunket, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment in the New Labour Government in January 1999. It brought together a range of occupational interests under a single national training standards body, these being, adult education, youth work, community development and development education. The inclusion of community development was significant as it was initially uncertain as to whether it would join the NTO for Social Care.

The Community Learning and Development NTO represented all the main employers, trades unions, professional associations and national development agencies working in this area across the four nations of the UK. This was the first time that the informal education occupations across the UK had ever come together with the common purpose of creating a publicly recognised occupational sector, in the way that school teachers or college lecturers had long been publicly and officially recognised.

The term 'community learning and development' was adopted to acknowledge that all of these occupations worked primarily within local communities, and that this work encompassed not just providing less formal learning support but also a concern for the wider holistic development of those communities – socio-economically, environmentally, culturally and politically. In effect this brought together for the first time two traditions. The former group of occupations – adult educators, youth workers and community education workers had tended to focus upon the provision of informal education support for individuals and groups within communities. They had always seen their work as being educational. The latter group – community workers, community development workers and development educators had tended to focus upon the socio-economic and environmental development of those communities. Both sets of occupations recognised that they shared very similar values, knowledge base and skill sets and that what brought them together was a common commitment to supporting learning and social action.

By bringing together these occupational groups this created for the first time a single recognised employment sector of nearly 300,000 full and part-time paid staff within the UK, approximately 10% of these staff being full-time. The NTO continued to recognise the range of different occupations within it, for example specialists who work primarily with young people, but all agreed that they shared a core set of professional approaches to their work.

In 2002 the New Labour Government announced that it wished to cluster NTOs, of which there were over 50 covering a wide range of occupations across the UK labour market, under a smaller number of what they called Sector Skills Councils. A Sector Skills Council was formed called the Lifelong Learning UK Sector Skills Council. PAULO became one of five discrete pillars within LLUK, the others being the former NTOs for Further Education, for Universities, for Library and information Services and for Work Based Education. Over nearly a decade LLUK did a large amount of labour market mapping, as well as setting standards for the professional training of people working in the CLD area and generally promoted the identity of this sector across wider UK public policies and the public, non governmental and private sector employers.

All Sector Skills Councils in the UK including LLUK were abolished by the Conservative/Liberal coalition Government in 2011 and at the time of writing it is uncertain as to whether a single body representing the professional community learning and development sector will be sustained. The Community and Youth Workers Union which is part of the Unite Union in the UK played the lead role in improving employee's conditions across the sector but never succeeded in representing all employees within the CLD sector and is not widely represented across all parts of the UK.

The Scottish Government has continued to recognise community learning and development as a discrete employment sector, and has for over a decade supported CLD training for people wishing to work professionally in this area. There is a team of HMI (Her Majesties Inspectors) to inspect the quality of delivery by employers. In 2007 the Scottish Government established a Scottish Standards Council for Community Learning and Development. This organisation oversees quality standards in the professional training of staff working in this field, including the validation and endorsement of professional training courses and is introducing a professional registration scheme for such qualified practitioners. It has continued much of the work of the former LLUK as it operated in Scotland.

At the present time similar CLD Standards Councils have not been set up in other parts of the UK and it does appear that the sector outside Scotland is once again becoming more fragmented. Unlike the formal education sector there is virtually no legislation in the UK underpinning the need to provide and fund community learning and development. Consequently, it has been vulnerable to cuts in public expenditure due to the recession, particularly projects that were seen as too radical.

National priorities

Three national priorities have been developed for community learning and development in Scotland:

Achievement through learning for adults

Raising standards of achievement in learning for adults through community-based lifelong learning opportunities incorporating the core skills of literacy, numeracy, communications, working with others, problem solving and information communications technology (ICT).

Achievement through learning for young people

Engaging with young people to facilitate their personal, social and educational development and enable them to gain a voice, influence and place in society.

Achievement through building community capacity

Building community capacity and influence by enabling people to develop the confidence, understanding and skills required to influence decision making and service delivery.

Principles and competences

Competent CLD workers will ensure that their work supports social change and social justice and is based on the values of CLD. Their approach is collaborative, anti-discriminatory and equalities-focused and they work with diverse individuals, communities of place or interest when this is or is not appropriate. Central to their practice is challenging discrimination and its consequences and working with individuals and communities to shape learning and development activities that enhance quality of life and sphere of influence. They have good interpersonal and listening skills and their practice demonstrates that they value and respect the knowledge, experience and aspirations of those involved.

The Scottish Government have introduced the following set of principles of which community learning and development related activities should be based on:

1. Empowerment – increasing the ability of individuals and groups to influence issues that affect them and their communities;
2. Participation – supporting people to take part in decision making;
3. Inclusion, equality of opportunity and anti-discrimination – recognising that some people may need additional support to overcome the barriers they face;
4. Self-determination – supporting the right of people to make their own choices; and
5. Partnership – recognising that many agencies can contribute to CLD to ensure resources are used effectively.

Wisconsin Model

A philosophical base for developing Community Education programs is provided through the five components of the Wisconsin Model of Community Education. The model provides a process framework for local school districts to implement or strengthen community education. A set of Community Education Principles was developed by Larry Horyna and Larry Decker for the National Coalition for Community Education in 1991 These include:

1. Self-determination: Local people are in the best position to identify community needs and wants. Parents, as children's first and most important teachers, have both a right and a responsibility to be involved in their children's education.
2. Self-help: People are best served when their capacity to help themselves is encouraged and enhanced. When people assume ever-increasing responsibility for their own well-being, they acquire independence rather than dependence.
3. Leadership Development: The identification, development, and use of the leadership capacities of local citizens are prerequisites for ongoing self-help and community improvement efforts.
4. Localization: Services, programs, events, and other community involvement opportunities that are brought closest to where people live have the greatest potential for a high level of public participation. Whenever possible, these activities should be decentralized to locations of easy public access.
5. Integrated Delivery of Services: Organizations and agencies that operate for the public good can use their limited resources, meet their own goals, and better serve the public by establishing close working relationships with other organizations and agencies with related purposes.
6. Maximum Use of Resources: The physical, financial, and human resources of every community should be interconnected and used to their fullest if the diverse needs and interests of the community are to be met.
7. Inclusiveness: The segregation or isolation of people by age, income, sex, race, ethnicity, religion, or other factors inhibits the full development of the community. Community programs, activities, and services, should involve the broadest possible cross section of community residents.
8. Responsiveness: Public institutions have a responsibility to develop programs and services that respond to the continually changing needs and interests of their constituents.
9. Lifelong Learning: Learning begins at our birth and continues until death. Formal and informal learning opportunities should be available to residents of all ages in a wide variety of community settings.

Role of the professional

The role of a community learning and development professional depends somewhat on the career path followed. For example, someone working with young people may have different priorities than someone working with adults; however, the outcomes are very similar in a sense that both will be aiming to promote a more socially just and equal society. Community learning and development is a vast field of work and the range of job categories is wide and may include the following: Youth Information Worker, Detached Youth Worker, Community Arts Worker, Community Capacity Worker, Local Authority Community Planning Officer, etc.

Community learning and development workers should see themselves as working with people, rather than for them. Empathy is crucial to understanding the issues faced by those they work with and it is important that they engage in a way that does not intimidate people or place the worker in a position of looking down on those they work with.

The role of a Community learning and development worker is largely different from the role of a formal educator such as a teacher. Community learning and development workers do not follow a curriculum, as they allow the people they work with to form their own way of learning and each individual is believed to have the ability to reach their full potential in life. A community learning and development approach is arguably a more effective way of learning as every individual has their own unique way to learn and community learning and development workers look for the best possible method that suits the individual. Community learning and development approaches are gradually being adopted in schools to some extent and many other agencies and using a community learning and development approach in their work.

In Canada, a university in Alberta has created a Community-based Bachelor of Education program to prepare teachers for rural community education, making it the first university program in Canada that aims at preparing teachers for rural community education.

Qualifications

Professional community educators or community learning and development workers usually hold a professional degree in community education or community learning and development, depending on the course offered at the university from which they graduate. In Scotland, qualifications may be Approved by the Standards Council for Community Learning and Development. This means that the course has been assessed by a group of peers - an Approval Panel. The course must have a practice element totalling 40% of the course to gain Approval. More details on the Approval Process and a list of Approved qualifications are available on the Standards Council website www.cldstandardscouncil.org.uk In order to gain entrance to this course, a history of voluntary work is usually desirable.

Many of those working in the field of community learning and development will be doing so voluntarily. These people are usually encouraged to complete a work-place based alternative to the full-time degree course. Others in paid positions may hold qualifications relevant to the field. These people will also be encouraged to study for a degree in community education.

Some university institutions offer post-graduate degrees in community education such as MA, MSc, PGDip, PGCert, etc.

Participatory democracy

Youth participation

In countries where democratic governments exist, people are encouraged to vote for someone to represent them. In today's society there is a dwindling interest in politics from our younger generation and this could have a negative effect on our democracy and political system in years to come. Community learning and development has the potential to encourage young people to become more interested in politics and helping them influence decisions that affect their lives.

In many parts of the world, youth parliament-style organisations have been set up to allow young people to debate issues that affect them and others in their community. Young people engage with these organisations voluntarily and are sometimes elected using a democratic system of voting. Young people are at the heart of these organisations and are usually involved in the management and development. The majority of these organisations are facilitated and staffed by workers trained in community learning and development; however, staff role is mainly to facilitate and be supportive but not intrusive.

These organisations allow young people to gain a voice, influence decision makers who affect their lives and provide them with a sense of self-worth and a place in society.

In the United Kingdom, examples of these organisations include the United Kingdom Youth Parliament (UKYP); in Scotland, the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP); in Wales the Children & Young People's Assembly for Wales; and in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Youth Forum. In Canada, examples include Youth Parliament of Manitoba (YPM), Saskatchewan Youth Parliament (SYP), TUXIS Parliament of Alberta (TUXIS), and British Columbia Youth Parliament (BCYP).

Parental participation

Cultural divides and deficit thinking creates mutual distrust between marginalized parents and schools which in turn creates barriers to active parental involvement of marginalized parents in the education of their children. Researches also show that parents of high socio-economic status play active and direct role in the education of their children and are more likely to influence school policies that affects their children's schooling whereas parents of low socio-economic status play indirect roles in the education of their children and are less likely to influence school policies that affects their children's schooling. The gap between parents' educational involvement among parents from higher socio-economic status and parents from lower socio-economic status results in a more personalized education that caters for the needs of children from higher socio-economic backgrounds and more alienating and generic education systems/policies for students from low socio-economic backgrounds.

The following practices are necessary for parent and community participation in the education of their wards to be effective; students come to school healthy and ready to learn, parents assist schools with financial and or material support, there are frequent communications between parents and school authorities, parents have meaningful authorities in the schools and they also assist in the teaching of their children. Parents' home based educational involvement such as creating an enabling learning environment at home, helping their children with their assignments, helping their children develop cognitive skills and other school skills and motivating their children to do well in school supports student success. Researches show that multimodal and effective migrant parental involvement in the education of their children increases the test scores of such students and also shows strong student success even after academic abilities and socio-economic status are taken into consideration.

School officials' racial stereotypes, class stereotypes, biases and attitudes regarding parental involvement in the education of their children hinders school officials from involving parents as partners in the education of their children. Also, bureaucracies in the public education systems hinders parents from advocating for changes that would benefit their children. Formally organized parental associations in schools that seeks to increase parental involvement, ignore the cultural and socio-economic needs of minorities, thereby contributing to the barriers of parental involvement, especially for marginalized parents. Research shows that high number of marginalized parents do not actively engage in their children's schooling. There is also a wide gap between the rhetoric of best parental involvement practices and actual parental involvement practices. Effective parental Involvement in the education of their children involves; parenting, communication, volunteering, home tutoring, involvement in decision-making, and collaboration with the community. Effective Parental Involvement treats and or makes school officials and parents partners in the education of their children.

See also

• Community development
• Lifelong learning
• Youth Bank

External links

• Community Learning & Development Scotland. Scottish Government. Retrieved 2009-12-12.
• Community Education Principles. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Archived from the original on 2006-08-31. Retrieved 2008-05-08.
• Supporting Education Through Community Engagement with Sienna Wildfield (TEDx Talk). Hilltown Families.
• Hilltown Families.

Further reading

• Jeffs, Tony. (2005). Informal Education: Conversation, Democracy and Learning. Nottingham: Educational Heretics Press. ISBN 1-900219-29-8.

• Tett, Lyn (2006). Community Education, Lifelong Learning & Social Inclusion. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press. ISBN 1-903765-56-0.
• McConnell, Charlie (2002). Community Learning and Development: The Making of an Empowering Profession. Edinburgh: Community Learning Scotland/PAULO. ISBN 0-947919-75-9.

• Packham, Carol (2008). Active Citizenship & Community Learning. Exeter: Learning Matters Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84445-152-4.