Abstract
Family-focused community education implies a relational pedagogy, whereby people of different ages and experiences, including children, engage interdependently in the education of selves and others. Educational projects grow out of lived experiences and relationships, evolving in dynamic conditions of community self-organisation and self-expression, however partial and approximate, as opposed to habitual and repetitive actions. In developing educational activities through radical listening, community educators aim to reflect the character of the neighbourhood and build on local knowledge and expertise. The paper reports on ways in which one community school invited, encouraged and supported children as co-educators through projects that promoted collaborative leadership and unfolded, rather than being delivered through planned and scripted lessons. These were creative projects of cultural significance, characterised by attentive listening and aiming to promote intergenerational conversation. Through such transformative projects children emerged as educators by acting as catalysts of change, as cultural producers and as conversationalists, as did their parents and other members of the school community. The paper concludes that community co-education ideas should be re-visited to breathe new life into educational and social actions today.
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Notes
The term ‘discredited knowledge’ was coined by the Nobel Prize winning African-American novelist Toni Morrison (cited in Shotwell 2011, p. 38).
In England the term ‘co-education’ is usually associated with girls and boys being educated in the same school and hearkens to a time when many schools segregated girls and boys or they were in separate schools.
Pamodzi means togetherness in Njanga, a language of Zambia. The quilt is held in the collection of the Bristol Commonwealth and Empire Museum.
Bristol is the largest centre of culture, employment and education in the south west region of England. A major seaport, it has a long history of trade and industry.
The term ‘free school’ has recently been adopted by the Coalition government in the UK as part of a policy to extend the privatisation of education. In the 1970s there were progressive and experimental free schools set up by groups of parents and teachers in a number of UK cities.
It has since lost this community school designation and title. The current school website makes reference to a creative community curriculum, celebration of various cultural and religious events and family learning. It shows children learning outside the classroom and parents visiting the school, including an image of children ‘teaching’ their parents about Ancient Egypt at a school event.
Such schools are funded and managed by the government department of education but a religious trust or foundation maintains a stake in the running of the school. Governors representing the foundation are in a minority on the governing body.
For example, belly dancing, first aid, supporting children’s reading.
Such as the community midwife, local baker, corner-shop owner, elderly residents.
Examples included a mural on a building by a play area near the school and a series of tableaux made of tiles that were hung in various places within the school grounds. Other examples involved musical and dramatic performances.
In the nineteenth century early experimentation in community or folk education in Europe is associated with pioneers such as Robert Owen in New Lanark, Scotland and with Nilolai Gruntwig in Denmark. (http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-grund.htm, accessed 17 April 2012).
Whilst many secondary schools in rural parts of England retain the name ‘village college’, or ‘community college’, most are indistinguishable from other secondary schools, in terms of their curricula and ethos. Some let out the facilities to community groups and adult education classes in the evenings or raise funds for the school by allowing other uses of grounds and facilities during school holidays.
Referred to at that time as Social and/or Educational Priority Areas. Since this period there has been a succession of government policies for such urban areas based on the same principles.
In developing her therapeutic work with children, Pinney was strongly influenced by Margaret Lowenfeld’s pioneering forms of child study and play therapy in the form of World therapy. This name was given to the activity because of a cabinet in Lowenfeld’s play room that children called The World, and was based on the creation of ‘worlds’ within the sand tray. Lowenfeld believed that play is an important activity in children's development and that language is not always the best medium for children to express themselves. Based on her observations of children, she developed non-verbal techniques that enabled them to communicate their thoughts and feelings. Lowenfeld drew on ideas from literature, philosophy, history and anthropology in a lifetime preoccupation with relations between individuals and cultural forms as organising of human experience. She was deeply concerned with identifying what might constitute the conditions for human liberty (Urwin and Hood-Williams 1988).
These followed the Education Reform Act of 1988 of the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher.
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Haynes, J. Gifts of Time and Space: Co-educative Companionship in a Community Primary School. Stud Philos Educ 32, 297–311 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9352-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9352-1