This article argues that at a moment of crisis in education, the defence of critical pedagogy is vitally important. However, it also suggests that such a defence should be more than a "cri de coeur" that asserts principles and methods of criticality against those of neoliberal or conservative education policy. Narratives of a totalising "crisis of…

Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a new method for the provision of popular education emerged in Europe. The Sardinian Kingdom represents a good example of this evolution: in 1729, Piedmont was the first state in Europe to launch a "modern" educational policy with the creation of a public school system. Education was…

The history of popular education is a long-standing field of research. Its beginnings trace back at least to the mid-twentieth century and it maintains its attractiveness for many researchers, both historians and educators. But, using the same label, quite different lines of research have been developed. They correspond to different ideas about…

The business side of the Lancasterian system of mass schooling has been highlighted by some researchers. However, this feature is usually considered of minor importance compared to other dimensions of that system, namely the social control role of popular education in early nineteenth-century Britain. The present surge of projects and mechanisms…

The aim of this philosophical and historical position paper is to discuss the ways in which Popular Education--folkbildning--has contributed to the social transformation of Sweden through self-directed and collaborative educational practices. One of our premises is that individual transformative learning, fostered by folkbildning, has contributed…

Trade unions and other sites of community-labour organizing such as workers centres are rich, yet contested spaces of education and knowledge production in which both non-formal and informal / incidental forms of learning occur. Putting forward a critique of dominant strands of worker education, the authors ask what spaces exist for social…

How can visual arts and popular education pedagogy contribute to collective recovery from and reconstruction after trauma? This question framed the design and delivery of the Trauma Recovery and Reconstruction Group (TRRG), which consisted of 12 group sessions delivered to clients (trauma survivors) of the Centre for Concurrent Disorders (CCD) in…

When people come together in community to practice critical inquiry, they develop a capacity to see, reflect, and become subjects of their own development. This article describes arts-based participatory action research in partnership with a nongovernmental organization in Central America. Creative art therapy was culturally adapted and practiced…

This article looks closely at how the process of artmaking linked to social critique unfolds in one community-based educational setting in Latin America. Drawing on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork with a community-based popular education organization in the northern desert of Mexico, the article examines the pedagogical uses of poetry,…

This article begins with a discussion of the implications of CONFINTEA VI having been organised in Brazil--the author uses the term "Brazilian effect"--and the role of social movements challenging neoliberalism. Next, drawing from the experience of Latin America, this paper analyses the counter-hegemonic practice of the new social…

Brian Simon's "Studies in the History of Education", 1780-1870, published in 1960, set out to counter nearly all work previously produced on the history of education in Britain in this period, and to direct the field towards a new course. It provided a Marxist perspective that drew upon Simon's involvement in campaigns for educational…

In this article, I compare two distinct uses of "Popular Education" that emerged in Tlaxcala in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. I examine archival and oral evidence to reconstruct the situated meanings and political rationales that led to the use of the term in each case, beyond their contrasting pedagogical content. In 1917, a…

Increasing recognition of the role of social conditions in health has led to calls for methods that can be used to change social conditions. Popular education has demonstrated great promise as a methodology that can be used to address the underlying social and structural determinants of health. To date, most studies of popular education have used…

Opportunities for adult learning are under pressure in far too many places in the world. This situation was made all too clear at the eighth World Assembly of the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) in Malmo, Sweden this June. More than 700 adult educators from almost a hundred countries, all members of non-government associations,…

Youth organizing combines elements of community organizing, with its emphasis on ordinary people working collectively to advance shared interests, and positive youth development, with its emphasis on asset-based approaches to working with young people. It is expanding from an innovative, but marginal approach to youth and community development…