Rethinking the link between (adult) education and development

This course introduces students to the concept of development in public policies and to approaches of adult learning and education that can be identified in different practices (projects, activities, events resulting from social movements) existing all around the world. Students will be introduced to several theoretical contributions on development and on adult learning and education. Within the liberal theory of development, focusing on welfare-state countries, economic growth is/was a central idea, based on scientific and technological improvements. In this frame, adult learning and education has been understood as an essential tool to educating the voting citizen and training the worker in industrial settings. Based on adaptative aims, adult education practices undertaken under public policies by State-dependent organisations foster the maintenance of the social and economic status quo. Within the marxist theory of development, various critics are formulated to the hegemonic understanding of development within public policies that have contributed to the enlargement of inequalities and the spreading of social injustice, namely between countries of the North and those of the South. Directed at critical adult education, several practices implemented by a wide range of organisations (social movements and non-governmental mainly and also some other State funded) are aimed at questioning the world and exist-ing power relations, raising awareness and favoring social emancipation. However, in the frame of the dominant capitalist system, some authors have argued that the ambitious aims of adult critical learning and education are not enough for transforming the world and turning it fairer. The post-structuralist theory defends that development in present times is a powerful concept that Western societies use as a dominating tool of less developed countries within unequal international relations to keep under-privileged conditions of wide social sectors of countries from the South, within neoliberal States. It is therefore important to give the stage to these groups that are at the social margins or socially excluded, through the democratization of democracy, the social recognition of cultural differences, autonomy and self-determination and even by the implementation of strategies of anti-development, degrowth and other alternative forms of living and producing. Here adult education is directed at valuing the culture of local groups and at strengthening local contra-hegemonic practices meanwhile promoting individual emancipation, social innovation and entrepreneurship. For these adult learning and education prac-tices, the most striking critics are referring to the stress upon individual responsibility and to the ambi-guity that some social and economic proposals, namely, of alternative forms of living and producing, include.
Student will explore several theoretical contributions concerning development and adult learning and education and will be asked to focus on social movements/informal education and non-formal adult education practices in an attempt to understand how local practices are related to global trends con-cerning development, the State and public policies. The main purpose is to build with students a theoretical ground to further on interpret critically specific cases happening all around the world.

Das Seminar findet wöchentlich statt.

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