Community education, also known as Community-based education or Community
learning & development refers to 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.[1]
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 socio-economically disadvantaged individuals and 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 nineteen
sixties. Some universities and colleges have run outreach adult education programmes
within local communities for decades. Since the nineteen 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.
Community school may refer to:
Community school (England and Wales), a type of state-funded school in which
the local education authority employs the school's staff, is responsible for the
school's admissions and owns the school's estate
Community school (Ireland), a type of secondary school funded directly by the
state
Community school (United States), a type of publicly funded school that serves
as both an educational institution and a centre of community life
What is a community school?
In a review of the literature, Tony Jeffs identifies some possible characteristics of a
community school:
Openness: Advocates tend to define community schools by what they are not rather
than what they are. Community schools, we are told, offer an alternative to so
much that is narrow, segregating, and inflexible in the traditional school (Jackson
1980: 40); that they are not closed and insular but open. Indeed according to Finch
(1980: 224) it has to be an open school or it ceases to be a community school. This
notion of openness cannot isnt just at the level of rhetoric it influences
classroom practice, administrative process and the design of purpose-built
community schools. Examples include:absence of fences or walls keeping students in and the public out;
retention or creation of public rights of way passing through the school site (in some
cases the building itself) and placing the school astride natural thoroughfares
between estates or neighbourhoods;
locating public utilities i.e. shops, libraries, job shops, leisure facilities, on campus;
building on central rather than peripheral sites i.e. adjacent to the market square;
open plan teaching areas.
Fusing: Simply being open is not perceived to be the ultimate aim. Halsey (1972),
Poster (1976) and Toogood (1984) all stress that ultimately the school should fuse
with the community. Toogood talks of the need for schools to explode into the
community (1984: 78); Midwinter (1973: 56) of the two blending serenely together;
whilst Halsey claims that
the community school seeks to obliterate the boundary between school and
community, to turn the community into a school and the school into a community.
(Halsey 1972: 79) .
Sharing, collaboration. Besides openness and fusion it is possible it identify other
persistent ideas (Wallis and Mee 1983) and distinguishing elements (Nisbet et al
1980) in the literature. All are embedded within distinctive forms of practice which
promulgated by the community school movement.
For many people community schools are synominous with the idea of shared
facilities and collaboration with other agencies and groups. The classic example
here is the school that that gains additional monies by agreeing to open up its
sporting facilities for use by local people. For many local authorities, especially in
local areas, the idea that capital and running costs for expensive plant could be
shared was attractive.
Linked to this are two associated ideas
encouraging collaboration with statutory and voluntary welfare agencies; and
the development of the school as a resource base for social and community action.
