|
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.〔Working and Learning Together to Build Stronger Communities, Scottish Government Guidance for Community Learning and Development, 2004 seen at (Community Learning and Development ), Scottish Government Website.〕 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 education in the UK== In the UK the term community learning and development has now been widely adopted as describing a discrete employment sector of occupations concerned with outreach education and development work in local communities. In 1999 a UK wide organisation responsible for setting professional training standards for education and development practitioners working within local communities was established. This organisation was called PAULO - the National Training Organisation for Community Learning and Development. (It was named after Paulo Freire). It was formally recognised by David Blunket, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment in the New Labour Government in January 1999. It brought together a range of occupational interests under a single national training standards body, these being, adult education, youth work, community development and development education. The inclusion of community development was significant as it was initially uncertain as to whether it would join the NTO for Social Care. The Community Learning and Development NTO represented all the main employers, trades unions, professional associations and national development agencies working in this area across the four nations of the UK. This was the first time that the informal education occupations across the UK had ever come together with the common purpose of creating a publicly recognised occupational sector, in the way that school teachers or college lecturers had long been publicly and officially recognised. The term ‘community learning and development’ was adopted to acknowledge that all of these occupations worked primarily within local communities, and that this work encompassed not just providing less formal learning support but also a concern for the wider holistic development of those communities – socio economically, environmentally, culturally and politically. In effect this brought together for the first time two traditions. The former group of occupations – adult educators, youth workers and community education workers had tended to focus upon the provision of informal education support for individuals and groups within communities. They had always seen their work as being educational. The latter group – community workers, community development workers and development educators had tended to focus upon the socio-economic and environmental development of those communities. Both sets of occupations recognised that they shared very similar values, knowledge base and skill sets and that what brought them together was a common commitment to supporting learning and social action. By bringing together these occupational groups this created for the first time a single recognised employment sector of nearly 300,000 full and part-time paid staff within the UK, approximately 10% of these staff being full-time. The NTO continued to recognise the range of different occupations within it, for example specialists who work primarily with young people, but all agreed that they shared a core set of professional approaches to their work. In 2002 the New Labour Government announced that it wished to cluster NTOs, of which there were over 50 covering a wide range of occupations across the UK labour market, under a smaller number of what they called Sector Skills Councils. A Sector Skills Council was formed called the Lifelong Learning UK Sector Skills Council. PAULO became one of five discrete pillars within LLUK, the others being the former NTOs for Further Education, for Universities, for Library and information Services and for Work Based Education. Over nearly a decade LLUK did a large amount of labour market mapping, as well as setting standards for the professional training of people working in the CLD area and generally promoted the identity of this sector across wider UK public policies and the public, non governmental and private sector employers. All Sector Skills Councils in the UK including LLUK were abolished by the Conservative/Liberal coalition Government in 2011 and at the time of writing it is uncertain as to whether a single body representing the professional community learning and development sector will be sustained. The Community and Youth Workers Union which is part of the Unite Union in the UK played the lead role in improving employee’s conditions across the sector but never succeeded in representing all employees within the CLD sector and is not widely represented across all parts of the UK. The Scottish Government has continued to recognise community learning and development as a discrete employment sector, and has for over a decade supported CLD training for people wishing to work professionally in this area. There is a team of HMI (Her Majesties Inspectors) to inspect the quality of delivery by employers. In 2007 the Scottish Government established a Scottish Standards Council for Community Learning and Development. This organisation oversees quality standards in the professional training of staff working in this field, including the validation and endorsement of professional training courses and is introducing a professional registration scheme for such qualified practitioners. It has continued much of the work of the former LLUK as it operated in Scotland. At the present time similar CLD Standards Councils have not been set up in other parts of the UK and it does appear that the sector outside Scotland is once again becoming more fragmented. Unlike the formal education sector there is virtually no legislation in the UK underpinning the need to provide and fund community learning and development. Consequently it has been vulnerable to cuts in public expenditure due to the recession, particularly projects that were seen as too radical. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Community education」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|