Popular Education (popular + education)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN CHILD REARING: GOVERNING INFANCY

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 3 2010
Robert A. Davis
In this essay, Robert Davis argues that much of the moral anxiety currently surrounding children in Europe and North America emerges at ages and stages curiously familiar from traditional Western constructions of childhood. The symbolism of infancy has proven enduringly effective over the last two centuries in associating the earliest years of children's lives with a peculiar prestige and aura. Infancy is then vouchsafed within this symbolism as a state in which all of society's hopes and ideals for the young might somehow be enthusiastically invested, regardless of the complications that can be anticipated in the later, more ambivalent years of childhood and adolescence. According to Davis, the understanding of the concept of infancy associated with the rise of popular education can trace its pedigree to a genuine shift in sensibility that occurred in the middle of the eighteenth century. After exploring the essentially Romantic positions of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Fröbel and their relevance to the pattern of reform of early childhood education in the United Kingdom and the United States, Davis also assesses the influence of figures such as Stanley Hall and John Dewey in determining the rationale for modern early childhood education. A central contention of Davis's essay is that the assumptions evident in the theory and practice of Pestalozzi and his followers crystallize a series of tensions in the understanding of infancy and infant education that have haunted early childhood education from the origins of popular schooling in the late eighteenth century down to the policy dilemmas of the present day. [source]


Environmental popular education and indigenous social movements in India

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT & CONTINUING EDUCATION, Issue 99 2003
Dip Kapoor
Practical and theoretical considerations of activist-educators using environmental popular education in indigenous social movements in India are explored. The responses of these social movements to destructive development are linked with the theoretical dialogue on environmental adult education and social transformation. [source]


Literacy, Knowledge Production, and Grassroots Civil Society: Constructing Critical Responses to Neoliberal Dominance

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009
Erika MeinArticle first published online: 14 DEC 200
Within the context of neoliberal globalization, portrayals of "literacy" and "knowledge" are increasingly emphasized for their instrumental value for individuals and markets. At the same time, locally situated movements have emerged to challenge, resist, and transform these representations. This article examines a grassroots movement in Mexico, the Feria Pedagógica (Pedagogical Fair), as one such site of contestation. Grounded in nonmainstream notions of "civil society," this movement represents an alternative educational space where literacy practices are tied to the construction of counterhegemonic identities and epistemologies.[literacy, civil society, social movements, popular education, Mexico] [source]


Out of the Loop: Why Research Rarely Reaches Policy Makers and the Public and What Can be Done

BIOTROPICA, Issue 5 2009
Patricia Shanley
ABSTRACT Most of the world's population that derives their livelihoods or part of their livelihoods from forests are out of the information loop. Exclusion of public users of natural resources from access to scientific research results is not an oversight; it is a systemic problem that has costly ramifications for conservation and development. Results of a survey of 268 researchers from 29 countries indicate that institutional incentives support the linear, top-down communication of results through peer-reviewed journal articles, which often guarantees positive performance measurement. While the largest percentage of respondents (34%) ranked scientists as the most important audience for their work, only 15 percent of respondents considered peer-reviewed journals effective in promoting conservation and/or development. Respondents perceived that local initiatives (27%) and training (16%) were likely to lead to success in conservation and development; but few scientists invest in these activities. Engagement with the media (5%), production of training and educational materials (4%) and popular publications (5%) as outlets for scientific findings was perceived as inconsequential (<14%) in measuring scientific performance. Less than 3 percent of respondents ranked corporate actors as an important audience for their work. To ensure science is shared with those who need it, a shift in incentive structures is needed that rewards actual impact rather than only ,high-impact' journals. Widely used approaches and theoretical underpinnings from the social sciences, which underlie popular education and communication for social change, could enhance communication by linking knowledge and action in conservation biology. [source]