SCUTREA Seminar - Professor Emilio Lucio-Villegas

Global Issues, Local Solutions:
The changing face of adult education

A free day seminar/AGM hosted by SCUTREA and the University of the West of Scotland, Paisley. 3^rd July 2014. 9.30am – 4.00pm

To book a place contact: s.j.galloway@stir.ac.uk

Speakers:

Dr Linda Morrice, University of Sussex

Adult Education as a Panacea for ‘Fractured Britain’: A Subaltern Perspective

Professor Emilio Lucio-Villegas, University of Seville

The Country and the People - Adult Education and Communities: a Participatory Approach

Dr Janice Malcolm, University of Kent

Adult education as academic work

For Abstract and biography for all speakers 

Emilio Lucio-Villegas

Professor Emilio Lucio-Villegas, University of Seville, SpainDr Lucio-Villegas’ research focusses on Adult Education. From 2008 to 2013 he was Paulo Freire Chair at the University of Seville, where he is currently the Head of the Department of Theory and History of Education and Social Pedagogy.  He has participated in research at a national and international level and is a member of the Steering Committee of the European Society for Research on the Education of the Adults (ESREA). He convenes the ESREA network ‘Between Global and Local: Adult Learning of Development’.

The Country and the People - Adult Education and Communities: a Participatory Approach Starting from a Freirean approach, I consider that adult education is based on at least two major issues. The first is dialogue, meaning that adult education arises from experiences that people share in the educational process; education is a kind of dialogue where experiences are shared with others. The second issue is related to the contexts where people live, love, work, walk, etc. As Freire states, adult education has to begin from the specific context of a group of learners. This context, which we usually call community, is the source of generative themes making it the essence of learning programs.
There are other elements to define adult education and reinforce this idea of collective and relational perspective. Adult education is based on cooperative work; it is an attempt to reach autonomy to people and communities. Community has been traditionally defined as a place and a space that allows people a feeling of security facing the other. Hoggart claims that community is divided into ‘us’ and ‘them’. Levesque describes community as ‘our only insurance’. But community is not only this kind of shelter. It is a heterogeneous place/space where both conflicts and changes are common. In this scope of diversity we need to situate adult education to rescue community as a form to challenge the pressures of Lifelong Learning policies and practices.

What practices can be presented to set adult education inside communities? The Participatory Budget experiment in Seville (2003-2007) was very rich in some experiences linking adult education to the city neighbourhoods and some outcomes remain from this time. Another important source of practices relates to the recovery of the culture, identity, memories of people. Two experiences can be presented here; the first relates to a Historical Memory Workshop; and the second is connected to a current project to build a museum on the Guadalquivir River. I conclude that establishing bonds between adult education and communities is necessary to the undertaking participatory approaches based on methodologies such as Participatory Research or Popular Education.