Paulo Freire's concept of "inédito viável" or untested feasibility, refers to the exploration of possibilities to transcend limiting situations and transform realities. In this paper, we examine how this idea is related to the counter-hegemonic pedagogical proposal of popular education by the Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF),…

Why develop leaders? What politics are implicit in our practice? This paper uses the history and practice of Popular Education as a comparative framework to survey the politics of intentional emergence leadership pedagogy, surfacing potential alliances for building social change movements. Using a case analysis, the article elucidates the ways the…

In this article, we explore a pedagogical and conceptual tool we have refined and developed for the fields of peace, social justice, and human rights education: "the possibility tree." Initially introduced in our 2021 book, we explore this tool in more depth in this article to show how such pedagogical and conceptual processes are key…

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 looks at how social movements in francophone Belgium shaped the institutional contours of adult education 'from below'. It focuses on the integral role played by progressive social movements in the creation of a regional state-based system of adult education in 1976, known as the "Service de l'Éducation Permanente" (SdEP).…

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,…

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a Florida-based human rights organisation, has significantly improved working conditions for migrant farmworkers on large-scale produce farms in the United States, in part, through its adaptation of applied theatre strategies used in its worker-to-worker popular education programme. The farmworker-devised…

Participation by its very nature is iterative, meaning Participatory Action Research (PAR) must be responsive to the way participation manifests and what actions emerge from this participation. In the article that follows, we share the complex and intertwined stories of PAR in action in two social movement contexts in Ghana, as well as the…

In the 1970s and 1980s, the social and professional imaginaries of education, sociopolitical conceptions of it, and educational practices in Spain, began to be influenced by certain elements specific to critical popular education, which had developed in Latin America during the "long 1960s." Paulo Freire's work was particularly prominent…

Popular educators are encountering students' past trauma and dealing with how to engage ethically with social issues through "difficult knowledge" (Britzman 1998). The force of their curriculum provides the education community the ability to learn from their social conditions and share in the difficult knowledge experienced among them.…

Learning in social movements has been studied using different approaches, such as critical pedagogy, public pedagogy and adult education (Ollis, & Hamel-Green, 2015). While in the field of formal education, the focus is usually on 'education for citizenship' or 'citizenship education' (Schugurensky, 2006, 2010; Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon,…

The United States is at a turning point in its history. Insurrection has become a dominant motif describing a country torn between the promises and ideals of democracy and an emergent authoritarianism that trades in lies, lawlessness, and a rebranded fascist politics. In this article, I analyze the contrasting visions, politics, and role of…

Adult education in art galleries sits on a fault line, at once an apparatus upholding the affirmative aspects of museum culture cultivated by global elites, a propellant in the whirring of an increasingly dislocated set of events on trendy and consumable political themes, and a site for 'allyship' and other kinds of radical and socially…

This autoethnographic study explores how participants in the environmental social movement in Cidra, Puerto Rico learned and produced knowledge. The data was obtained through the narration of my personal experiences as an environmental activist and founding member of Comite Despertar Cidreno, eleven individual interviews with members and…

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…