This article embodies a kind of backward travelling by revisiting the history of workers' education in a mining community as part of our contemporary struggle to reinvigorate notions of the common good and popular education. Its focus is the complexities of working-class history, disparaged in neoliberal condescension and oversimplified in some…

This article studies the role of the village teacher in three rural parishes in eighteenth-century western Sweden. Earlier research has shown that the clergy and parents were important in reaching high literacy rates in early modern Sweden. However, many parishes were sparsely populated, and many villages were far from the church, affecting…

This article builds on a classroom study and interviews with facilitators and students on a travelling Folk High School course on global justice and development, an education that raises awareness about colonial history and contemporality. The study explores how the concept of being 'in and against' presents itself in the narratives of the…

This article explores the role of popular education for migrants in a social movement context. The aim of this study is to explore how migrants' societal involvement is enabled and constrained by participation in study circles organised in a local branch of the Swedish Workers' Educational Association (ABF). The study was designed and conducted in…

Disciplinary pressures within academia often produce specialised and one-sided accounts of complex social processes. Convincing accounts of popular education regularly acknowledge the importance of social movements but without theorising them adequately -- and vice versa. This one-sidedness is compounded by a widespread tendency to generalise from…

This article features an account and analysis of a participatory action research (PAR) project that involved the author and five teacher activist co-researchers. This piece has two principal aims. The first is to contribute to practitioners' knowledge and practice by offering an account of a PAR project, grounded in popular education, that…

Based on a case study from southwest Colombia, this paper provides hopeful example of an intercultural social movement popular education initiative which brings together social movements across territorial, political and cultural borders in order to generate unity and collaboration between these counter-hegemonic forces in the southwest of…

This article discusses the interplay between artivism and media literacy in plural Global South(s) and its fight against marginalisation. It reflects on the production of an experimental animation "Portrait of Marielle" by Kenyan and Brazilian young media activists and artivists. This animated film honours the legacy of Marielle Franco,…

This study investigates tenured academics' experiences of science communication--popularization of science, dissemination of scientific knowledge, and collaboration outside academia. Specifically, the study spotlights the written aspect of science communication and explores how scientists approach writing addressing audiences 'beyond academia'.…

Developing learning tools based on local potential is necessary because it directly relates to students' daily lives. One of them is a Popular Science Book (PSB), which highlights the potential of gastropods in coastal areas as a subject for observing biodiversity. The implementation of assessments and the value of students' critical thinking…

Popular education has a long history in Sweden, dating back to the mid-1800s and having developed in close relationship with the state. This relationship has been sustained over the years by the way popular education is spoken of as being "unique"--as being complementary to formal education. In this article, we focus on how the…

This essay draws from four years of ethnographic fieldwork with women activists in self-defined Paulo Freirean-based popular education schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Rather than leaning on the traditions of education activism, modeled on Freire's class-based emancipatory vision, the women in this study sought to turn popular education's focus…

This paper discusses insights from a larger study of popular educators' deployment of Freire's pedagogical principles during facilitator training. The paper focuses on data from two facilitators and attempts to examine how popular education principles are applied in two different socio-economic and political contexts, Canada and South Africa.…

This article presents the results of a descriptive case study of the Union School of the Chilean nongovernmental organization (NGO) Alejandro Lipschutz Institute of Science (ICAL-Spanish acronym). The study contributes to the field of adult education by providing a contemporary example of what Gramscian pedagogy can look like. Theoretically, this…

This paper explores the current challenges of Catholic popular education in Latin America, with a focus on Ecuador. It identifies the current economic and political context -- threats to democracy and economic crises -- that affects the social fabric as well as challenging educational outcomes exacerbated by the pandemic. It focuses on Fe y…