Module One: Introduction to Community Education and Training

 L1: Concepts of Learning, Education & Training …

 L2: Concepts & Theoretical Foundations of Community Education …
 L3: Framework for Social Work Community Education and Training …
 L4: Overview of Popular Education …

- Table of Contents –

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 - EDUCATION -
LESSON 1: - a process of teaching and learning.
- an act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the
Concepts of Learning, Education, and Training powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally preparing oneself or others
intellectually

 Learning Domains
1. COGNITIVE DOMAIN is the thinking domain or refers to mental skills. It is the
- LEARNING - core of the learning domain. It deals with how a person acquires processes and
utilizes the knowledge.
- refers to a process resulting in some modification, relatively permanent, of the ways 2. PSYCHOMOTOR DOMAIN deals with the performed actions that are
of thinking, feeling, and doing of the learner. neuromuscular and demand certain levels of physical dexterity. It is the
conscious and consistent actions performed by a person as a result of a
- it includes both of the concepts of education and training.
learning experience.
3. AFFECTIVE DOMAIN focuses on attitude, motivation, willingness to
participate, valuing what is being learned, and ultimately incorporating the
 Characteristics of Learning discipline values into real life. The capacity to feel is demonstrated by how one
1. Learning is considered unitary because the learner responds as a whole person in acts, empathizes, and takes action.
a unified way to the entire situation.
2. Learning is also social because it responds to the environment where there are
other individuals and material things.
3. Learning is self-active. This principle embodies the idea that a learner learns
- TRAINING -
through their activities. Learning is a personal process. Self-active learning - the art of facilitating the transfer of knowledge and skills. The Training aims to
includes listening, visualizing, recalling, memorizing, reasoning, using judgment, enhance the learner's competence by increasing knowledge, skills, and values.
and thinking.
4. Learning is purposive. That means that learning is moving toward a goal or
result.
5. Learning is creative. For each individual, learning is not merely a summing up of
LESSON 2:
previous knowledge and experience. It is a creative putting together of all the Concepts and Theoretical Foundations of Community Education
knowledge and experience of the learner.
6. Learning is transferable: Transferable knowledge means that whatever is learned
in one context or situation will also apply in another context or case.
 Competence, Skills and Values
1. COMPETENCE is the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.
Competencies are measurable practice behaviors that are comprised of
knowledge, values, and skills.
2. SKILLS are about what a person can perform. It is the ability to carry out a task
with pre-determined results, often within a given amount of time, energy, or
both.
3. VALUES refer to what a person regards as necessary, which drives them to do or
act the way they do. It reflects the person's principles or standards of behavior,
one's judgment of what is essential in life.
 Characteristics of a Successful Training Program
1. It effects change. Training help people increase their knowledge, learn or
improve their skills, or change their attitudes to change the current situation and
achieve the desired outcome.
2. It is designed to achieve specific goals. Those goals are the learning objectives
that describe what people will do due to the Training.
3. It is learner-centered, not trainer-centered. The trainer's primary role is to guide
the learning process, not an expert who impacts information to passive learners.
4. It is designed to engage learners actively in the learning process. The program
uses engaging, relevant activities to help people discover new concepts, skills,
and information and relate what they already know and experience.
5. It is relevant to the learner's real world. The program focuses not on theory but
on practical information, concepts, and skills that learners can use immediately.
6. It has measurable outcomes. The degree to which the program successfully
achieves the desired effect can be observed or measured somehow.
- COMMUNITY EDUCATION -
- also known as community-based education or community learning and development, is a
program used 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 programs and activities are developed in dialogue with
communities and participants.
- the purpose of community education is to build individuals and groups of all ages
through their actions and enhance the capacity of communities to improve their quality of
life.
 Pedagogy of Community Education
- Community education as a process for social change is related closely with
community development practice and theory and serves the ideal of an equal society.
 Paolo Freire argues that the situation of the oppressed is a result of broader
economic, social, and political forces. Therefore, part of enabling people is
to break out of their situation and allow them to develop a critical awareness
of the world around them and their place within it. This process is called
'conscientization.'
o CONSCIENTIZATION is the process of developing a critical
awareness of one's social reality through reflection and action.
o Freire describes community education as the 'banking model' which
espouses a more authoritarian teacher-pupil model, where
participants are seen as 'empty vessels' to be filled with
information.
 Freire offers us his theory of praxis, "reflection and action upon the world to
transform it." It is a process of theory, application, evaluation, reflection,
and then back to theory. It intends to enable participants to be more critically
conscious and that through this process, they will become more aware of
themselves and the world around them.
 Learning and education are not just seen as psychological processes.
Community education strives to meet the needs of individual learners in
their educational development. It attempts to address the community's needs
by ensuring the learners can analyze the society in which they live and act
for change.
 Characteristics of Community Education as a Model
1. Lived experience as the starting point.
2. Community education responds to disadvantage and social exclusion.
3. Community education works at an individual, community, and political level.
 4. The community group is the deliverer of community education.
 Theoretical Foundation of the Social Work Community Education Model
1. JACK ROTHMAN’S three models of community practice: locality development,
social planning, and social action. In this framework, education as the social
worker's role is implied.
2. KEITH POPPLE identifies models of community work practice. According to
him, the purpose of community education is to bring education and community
into a closer and more equal relationship.
3. MIKE WEYERS’ identifies five models of community work from a South
African perspective. His ideas cover community development, social planning,
social marketing, social action, and community education. Weyers practically
operationalizes each model. According to Weyers, the community education
LESSON 3:
Framework for Social Work and Community Education and Training
model that must be utilized to equip community members with the necessary
knowledge, insight, and skills is essential to help people function optimally.
Variables accepted as the foundation for the community education
model according to Weyers:
/ The community's relationship to the power structures that impact upon
them
/ The community circumstances, the needs, problems, and strengths in
the community
/ The basis on which worker's/change agents are involved.
 Approaches of the Community Education Model
1. CIVIL AND SOCIAL EDUCATION APPROACH - it involves non-formal and
informal learning experiences to function as responsible citizens
2. LIFE SKILLS APPROACH - focus on developing life skills of the individuals
3. LEARNING SKILLS APPROACH - the focus of this approach is on literacy
 Core concepts of Community Education
1. PARTICIPATION
2. EMPOWERMENT
3. STRENGTHS
4. CAPITAL
In this model, capital is seen as people's assets in the shape of a human, social, or
identity capital, and then benefit from the returns on the investment in the form of
better health, more robust social networks, and enhanced family life.
 SOCIAL CAPITAL refers to various social factors, such as norms and
networks, that enable people to take collective action to contribute to
well-being.
 HUMAN CAPITAL refers to individuals' knowledge and skills and
enables them to function effectively in economic and social life.
 Education can enable individuals to sustain their identity capital within
the LOCAL OR NATIONAL IDENTITY
 Perspectives on Community Education and Implications for Social 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, processes, and community education
techniques reflect a given society's socially constructed reality.
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.
 A participatory and Liberating concept of training
/ 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:
 Relationship of Community Education and Community Development
 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.
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.
LESSON 4:
Overview of Popular Education
- POPULAR EDUCATION -
- developed in the 1960s and 1970s by the Brazilian educator PAULO FREIRE, is a
nontraditional method of education that tries to empower adults through
democratically structured cooperative study and action (Center for Popular Education
and Participatory Research).
 Praxis (Action/Reflection Model)
It is not enough for people to come together in dialogue to gain knowledge of their
social reality. They must act together upon their environment to critically reflect upon
their reality and transform it through further action and critical reflection.
The Reflection-Action process starts from people’s analysis of their context and
builds cumulatively. The people follow a cycle of reflection and action, which
involves:
 Understanding the context
 Identifying and prioritizing an issue
 Planning and action
 Participatory monitoring and evaluation. At each stage, a
variety of participatory tools are used to support analysis and
planning.
 Key Concepts of Popular Education
1. POPULAR SPIRAL MODEL suggests that learning begins with the experience
and knowledge of participants. After participants have shared their experience
(whether prior experience or the participants' experience from the activity at
hand), they can look for patterns and analyze that experience. New information
and theory can be collectively created (through facilitated discussion) or added
by outside resource people. Once an issue or problem has been analyzed, it is
essential to practice new skills, strategize and plan for action so that the analysis
is not passive.
 1. To link with the mass movements. It involves the organized effort by a large
number of people, especially those not forming part of the elite of a given
society, to bring about changes in existing social, economic, and political
institutions.
2. From the masses to the masses
3. Education for liberation- Popular education is a process that aims to empower
people who feel marginalized socially and politically to take control of their
learning and to effect social change.
4. Action—Reflection cycle- Develop people’s capacity for social change through a
collective problem-solving approach emphasizing participation, reflection, and
critical analysis of social problems.
5. Collective learning
6. Nationalist orientation- Projects, strategies, and tactics used are produced
collectively by the participants themselves to support the nation’s interest
vigorously.
7. People-centered
8. Problem-oriented
2. LEARNING HEADS show the amount of information we understand and retain
9. Holistic- Popular Education uses the heads for analysis, reflection,
with different ways to learn. The model aims to help community participants in
consciousness, our heart for feeling and vision, and our feet and body for
every program to hear, see, talk, and do so they understand and remember the
collective action to attain short and long-term goals.
information they are taught to the best of their ability.
10. Simple and popular.

 Goals of Popular Education