processes, and community education techniques reflect a given
society's socially constructed reality.
LESSON 3:
Framework for Social Work and Community Education and Training
 Perspectives on Community Education and Implications for Social
 A participatory and Liberating concept of training
Work Education and Practice
1. A social work response to risk issues such as AIDS, poverty,
economic, social, political, environmental, and security matters
will include community education components.
2. Community education has been a general social responsibility
throughout history. Still, present risk issues compel the social work
profession to consciously accept co-responsibility for community
education within the broader context of community development.
3. The theoretical underpinning of the social work profession can be
utilized to construct an ideal type of community education.
4. The ideal type of community education is based on a mutual
exchange of knowledge, skills, and ideas with the community,
which implies horizontal learning.
5. Community education is a function of social work on a macro-
level and an identifiable role of the social worker in partnership
with the community.
6. Community education is a precondition for action by the
community, and therefore it is inherent in all other social work
activities.
7. Community education is not an isolated, single occurrence, but it is
process-driven. Prevention, awareness, and consciousness-raising
are pursued as process goals.
8. Community education is mainly non-formal, lifelong, open-ended,
never completed, applied from a people-centered perspective, and
aimed at sustainable social development.
9. The social worker's response is situation-relevant and related to
local culture and indigenous knowledge. All activities, ideas,
10. In utilizing a strengths perspective, the knowledge already exists in
a community is extended to become assets that fortify
communities' human, social, and identity capital.
11. Activities such as participation and empowerment mean sharing,
working together, and enhancing mutual learning in community
education.
/ PARTICIPATORY TRAINING is an educational strategy in
which learners are active participants in the educational process.
Their needs and questions, their reflection and analysis, and their
strategy for change carry the process forward. This approach to
Training aims at freeing people from patterns of thinking imposed
upon them by dominant forces. Its methodology is learner-
centered, experience-based, and open-ended.
/ Five Core Elements in Development Work
o Conscientization is based on the ideas of Paolo Freire.
According to Freire, conscientization is the process of
raising people's critical awareness of reality.
Freire’s Perspective:
 Domestic Education emphasizes passivity,
acceptance, and submissiveness.
 Liberating Education encourages people to
take risks, to be curious, and to question. It is
seen as a process of empowerment that allows
individuals to function as being in and with the
world.
o Adult Education viewed adults as active learners. They
have specific characteristics (e.g., years of experience,
maturity, sensitiveness to failure, etc.) that must be
considered to identify more effective learning methods.
The concern for more experiential and dialogical teaching
methods has several advantages:
  Learning is based on shared experiences
 Self-analysis/reflection is facilitated since
students are treated as adults; and
 Methods used contribute to excellent retention
or learning experiences.
o Participatory Development views development training
as:
 A crucial step in the social preparation for more
critical and responsible participation; and
 A continuing effort to strengthen local
capabilities to sustain such actions.
o Empowerment of the Poor is one of the fundamental goals
of empowerment is to enable people to make themselves
better than before they were trained. It involves capacity
building, changes in its management, democratic
processes, change agents acting as capability builders and
enablers, and technical soundness as crucial as the human
process.
o Community Organizing as an element regards training as
an integral part of raising people's consciousness and
facilitating collective action.
 Central to community organizing is the Micro to
Macro Approach that merges individual
concerns with group interests, gradually moving
from immediate to community issues.
 Relationship of Community Education and Community Development
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
/ designed to empower the people in a targeted geographical area
with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to improve their
surrounding environment and economic circumstances.
/ a transformational approach to change that concentrates on
creating embedded competencies rather than just giving people a
handout.
/ a holistic approach grounded in principles of empowerment,
human rights, inclusion, social justice, self-determination, and
collective action.
/ considers community members to be experts in their lives and
communities and values community knowledge and wisdom.
/ community development programs are led by community members
at every stage - from deciding on issues to selecting and
implementing actions and evaluation
/ has an explicit focus on redistributing power to address the causes
of inequality and disadvantage.
/ educating community people is central to community development.
/ aims to equip communities with the knowledge and skills they
need for collective action.
/ a process whereby learning is used for both the betterment of the
individual and the community.
/ characterized by:
o Involvement of people of all ages
o The use of community learning, resources, and research to
bring about community change
o The recognition that people can learn through, with, and
for each other to create a better society.