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…

Discourses on adult learning and education (ALE) and in particular the GRALE Report generally have limited coverage of popular education as part of its ecology. Given both the long history of popular education globally as a necessary approach towards affecting transformation and the socio-economic-ecological transformations that are needed, we…

In this article, we focus on how a discourse on inclusion operates through language learning programmes for migrants. We direct our attention to a new form of activities funded by the Swedish government, "Swedish from day 1," organised by popular education institutions. These activities emerged in connection to the migration flows in…

In the past, non-formal education in South Africa was committed to supporting the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) in opposition to apartheid. Such non-formal political education was concerned with education for democracy. Post 1994, South African adult education policy has exclusively concentrated on vocational training, shifting the focus away…

This article addresses the tensions and contradictions of applying a popular education approach in the current context of South Africa. It draws upon data from an 18-month research project exploring the traditions of popular education. It presents an extended discussion on the meanings of popular education, and their varied implications for…

In critical and feminist educational circles there has been a lively debate between those who call for more emphasis on contextualisation and concrete practices and those who defend a more generalised view of critical pedagogy. The unceasing march of corporate globalisation and neoliberalism make it absolutely urgent that educators and organisers…

The article is based on activist research working in an anti-deportation social movement, and on sixteen interviews with both experienced and less experienced activists between 2009 and 2011. The anti deportation social movement made up of a range of organisations, is identified as a left social movement situated in an historic producer…

In the first decade of the 21st century, efforts to create alternatives to neoliberalism emerged in many parts of Latin America. Social movements across the region took to the streets, occupied abandoned factories, and started to create new democratic spaces, solidarity networks, and social economy initiatives. In one country after another,…

While there is a wealth of literature and research on radical adult "popular" education for social change, most of it looks forward and speculates on the educational processes best able to help the oppressed of the world overcome naive passivity and become critically aware "subjects" of social change. Within a critical…

The Landless People's Movement in Brazil seeks agrarian reform and social justice. Its adult education, leadership, and technical training programs use principles of popular education. Its strengths are a radical political culture, open-ended educational inquiry, and linking of education to a tangible benefit: land reform. (SK)

Fugitive knowledge constructed outside the dominant discourse by gay and lesbian people is distributed through networking and is the basis for learning to transgress in social contexts. Popular adult education is essential to the process of knowledge construction and dissemination. (SK)

The educational aim of this genealogical study of ribbon workers as popular educators is to expose activist and voluntary organisations, not only as generative sites of learning, but also as sites of habituated learning and stereotypical colour assumptions. This study urges popular educators and activists to reflect critically on the popular…