Session Information
07 SES 02 B, Teacher Perspectives on Social Justice and Diversity
Paper Session
Contribution
In pedagogical contexts in recent decades the great risk that democratic education runs due to the neoliberal processes that have invaded the educational environment as well as all areas of living (Mayo, English, 2012) has been continuously debated. We are seeing, as stated by Martha Nussbaum, a “silent crisis of education” (2011: 20), mainly due to the imposition of a training model decidedly aimed at profit. This type of education is therefore likely to be increasingly an “education of capital” (De Vita, 2009), rather than an education towards human development that can accompany people to achieve their capability and adapt to their living environment (Nussbaum, 2011).
At a time in history when dominant economism has marginalized politics and society crippling democracy, it is interesting to study those social movements that attempt to redeem the relationships and connections between society, politics and economics through a reappropriation of economic action with a view toward participation in social life and a denouncement of structural social injustice (Young, 2006). In the last twenty years we have witnessed the development of an awareness linked to consumerism and critical production that questions a system inspired by the paradigm of economic growth. This widespread behaviour has been substantiated by the appearance of numerous economic and social experiments that, in addition to Budgets of Justice, also includes GASs (fair trade groups), RESs (social economy networks), DESs (Districts of Social Economy), the Movement for Happy Degrowth, Transition Towns, and Genuine Clandestines. There are also less structured but very popular experiences such as urban gardening co-ops, networks of small organic farmers, and self-development groups.
These movements, which are mainly based on practices of political consumerism (Micheletti, 2003), have become important areas of informal adult education (Jubas, 2013), especially in urban settings. By inventing new lifestyles inspired by consumerism and critical production, adults and young people have created communities of practice (Wenger, 2006) that generate interesting processes of learning, self-education and self-training; and above all they show an ability to fight injustice through the creation of social connections (Young, 2006).
It is in this perspective that we, as a team at the University of Verona, have launched a survey entitled Practices and visions of change and learning - from the reduction of consumerism to new hypotheses of coexistence - aimed at studying, in particular, the case of Italian Budgets of Justice, one of the European social movements related to the transformation of lifestyles.
The main objectives of the survey are:
-to understand in depth how these communities of practice interpret, in a 'not for profit' way, these processes of learning, self-education and self-training by increasing the ability to create connections and social participation;
-to study the processes set up for self-education and to train individuals and groups to gain the capability to create relationships and connections at a local and global level.
The research project was designed by the interdisciplinary TiLT (Territories in Free Transition) team and involves both the University of Verona and the University of Bergamo. It includes 5 overall stages and we are currently at the end of the second phase.
The survey has been set up so as to combine instruments of qualitative and quantitative research. In the qualitative aspect, we used qualitative methodologies like Grounded Theory (GT) utilizing data analysis software N-Vivo and the Community of Research (CoR). As for the quantitative part, we chose the traditional instrument of the questionnaire
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
De Vita, A. (2009). La creazione sociale. Relazioni e contesti per educare. Roma: Carocci. Forno, F. and Graziano, P. (2014). Sustainable community movement organisations. «Journal of Consumer Culture», XIV, 2, 2014, pp. 139-157. Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine. Jubas, K. (2013) “Learning (through) consumption: shopping as a site of adult education”. in Peter Mayo (Ed.), Learning with Adults, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Lipman, M. (2003). Thinking in Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mayo, P. and English, L. (2012). “Adult education and social movements: perspectives from Freire and beyond”, Educazione Democratica, 3, pp. 170-208. Micheletti, M. (2003). Political Virtue and Shopping: Individuals, Consumerism and Collective Action. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Not for profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of Qualitative Research. Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park (CA): Sage. Wenger, E. (2006). Comunità di pratica. Apprendimento, significato e identità. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore. (Communities of Practice, Learning, Meaning and Identity, 1998). Young, I. R. (2006). Responsability and global justice: a social connection model, «Social Philosophy and Policy», XXIII, 1, Cambridge I. M. University Press, pp. 102-130.
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