Session Information
14 SES 03 B, Education in Rural and Urban Contexts
Paper Session
Contribution
Nowadays, cities grow based on the specialization and separation of spaces, purposes and publics, which translates into an increasing isolation for the people, and the desertification of traditional habitats. According to the UN Population Fund’s 2007 State of World Population report (United Nations Population Fund, 2007), in 2008, for the first time in mankind’s history, more than half of the world’s population were living in urban areas. The growth of cities all over the world has contributed to an increasing concentration of poverty, social disruption and environmental damage; on the other hand, urban agglomerates offer the best opportunities for social-economical development, for both people and communities. Local institutions may have (and, in some cases, have had) an important role as socialization contexts. Urban contexts, especially those where social-cultural diversity reigns, appear to be challenging, yet privileged, platforms for intercultural dialogue, the understanding of the inherent developmental potential of conflict situations and the promotion of an inclusive, live-long education.
The work that has been developed in the context of the Project "Massarelos, Educating Civil Parish" (Porto, Portugal) is rooted essentially in conflict mediation, because it is in this sphere that, in the field of social and human sciences, mediation is more substantially studied and, it is also there that its practice has achieved more visibility and repercussion (Mayer, 2004; Moore, 2003). Mediation is a confidential and non-adversarial process, guided by a third party, seeking to habilitate the parties towards the resolution of future conflicts (hence it may refer to a notion of empowerment).
As the devices that used to ensure a relatively stable social integration (for example, consider the status traditionally associated with the place where a person worked/the type of work a person did, the role of elderly family members in raising young children, the importance of having a diploma when entering the work market, etc.), start to show signs of growing feebleness, proximal management of social tensions becomes increasingly relevant (Castel, 2005).
Our main purposes are to, through the concept of Educating City (e.g. Bernet, 1990; Villar, 2001), identify a set of local institutions that, through their daily work, contribute to the social-educational development of their communities, and to improve the use of communicational resources between such institutions and the people that they aim to serve, through mediation processes. A mediation service is currently being implemented at the Massarelos' local government institution.
Our belief is that the idea of Educating City frames the type of social and educational work that we stand for, given that the model of local organization and intervention privileged in the context of the development of an Educating City features: «an increase in the degree of complexity of the interrelations of organization; a step forward in the creation of interdisciplinary teams; an evolution in the benefits system to an intervention based in projects and programs; the population is no longer conceived as a consumer but as a producer of benefits; the professional is no longer a distributor of answers but a mediator» (Villar, 2007: 67).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
- Bernet, Jaume Trilla (1990). «Introducción». In La Ciudad Educadora – La Ville Éducatrice. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 13-21. - Castel, Robert (2005). A Insegurança Social: o que é ser protegido? Petrópolis: Editora Vozes. - Mayer, Bernard (2004). Beyond Neutrality: Confronting the Crisis in Conflict Resolution. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. - Moore, Christopher (2003). The Mediation Process: practical strategies for resolving conflict. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. - United Nations Population Fund (2007). State of World Population 2007. Unleashing the potential of Urban Growth. [Online], http://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/ shared/documents/publications/2007/695_filename_sowp2007_eng.pdf, 27/09/2009. - Villar, Maria Belén Caballo (2007). A Cidade Educadora. Nova perspectiva de organização e intervenção municipal. Lisbon: Instituto Piaget.
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