Feminist “Popular Education”

Popular education is rooted in the interests and struggles of ordinary people, and is overtly political, critical of the status quo and committed to

progressive social change. When done well, popular education promotes personal as well as collective growth and transformation. It can also be downright fun!

Foundational Principles:

Begin where everyone is at

what people know, what they are experiencing, feeling, and thinking

— get that on the table up front. These are the initial ingredients. Build and learn together from there to establish a collective analysis and collective plans.

Collaboration

all learn and contribute to the group analysis and

process. Everyone has something to give as a gift to the group. The process models teamwork and cooperating, rather than an individualistic and/or competitive approach.

Whole person learning

popular education engages heads, hearts, spirits, and

bodies, containing mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical dimensions. Learning, evaluating, strategizing, and planning aspects use a variety of techniques to address different learning/processing styles. This promotes a more deeply felt experience, as well as a deeper commitment to outcomes and commitments made.

Trust

everyone feels respected, heard, seen, and

included. Everyone is valued. This enables more honest and robust sharing, a deeper process, and more profound outcomes.

Cross-cutting

People, issues and dreams do not exist in silos.When

engaging in a structural analysis of current realities, facilitators need to be sure to promote a power analysis which incorporates social and cultural, economic, political, and environmental conditions and institutions, policies, dynamics and trends.

Values-based

Participants explore shared moral/values/ethical

understandings and interpretations that inform a critique of social realities as well as dreams and plans for the world they want to create. For individuals and groups rooted in a particular spiritual or explicitly religious identity(ies), cross-cutting (and intersectional) structural analysis includes this. Underlying shared spiritual or religious identities and/or values may also inform other design elements of the process – such as music, poetry, worship and reflection time, etc.

Out Comes

Greater understanding of one’s situation, and sense that one is not alone
Developing and/or strengthening critical consciousness (of the status quo)
Identification of priorities for change
Action plan emerging from the group
Greater sense of personal and collective agency
Establishing processes of accountability for taking action

FACILITATION TIP:

The process and outcomes of popular education are based on the needs of the group, not the needs of the facilitator(s).

Especially for intensive and extensive endeavors, this means that the facilitator(s) need to do some homework in advance and talk with various individuals to get a sense of what is needed, wanted, group dynamics, etc. As much as possible, this inquiry includes both leaders of the group as well as individuals who may be active but not in leadership positions.

FACILITATION TIP:

As fits the length of the project/event, various forms of periodic evaluation need to be built in to gather input to gauge how well goals are being met,

how the process may need to be modified, etc.

CategoryBasic Concepts