The emergence of mass schooling is undoubtedly one of the most significant transformations that took place during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article takes a new approach to this fundamental issue by analysing the historical conditions required for the construction of school buildings and the advent of mass schooling, in the…

"The Wiley Handbook of Action Research in Education" is the first book to offer theoretical, conceptual, and applied/practical presentations of action research as it is found and conducted solely in educational settings. Covering primarily PK-12 educational settings, the book utilizes a cross-section of international authors and…

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…

This article traces the work of community-based popular educators with an explicit commitment to "Freirean" popular education as they shifted from teaching in a community-based setting to an after-school program focused on standardized test-preparation. Drawing from ethnographic observation and interviews, it examines educators'…

This article seeks to show the relation between popular education and solidarity economy in experiences of solidarity economy enterprises in Brazil. It is based on diverse experiences which have occurred in various sectors of this economy, highlighting those experiences which took place in João Pessoa with the creation of a Cooperative of Workers…

The eviction of the Occupy London protesters from their tents outside St. Paul's Cathedral marks the end of one of the most interesting experiments in popular education in recent times. For the past few months a string of leading writers, activists, journalists and academics have held workshops, led discussions and given lectures beneath the…

This paper is a reflection on recent Portuguese policy on adult education. It explores the policy discussion at the national level from 1999 and in particular after 2005, when the New Opportunities Initiative ("Iniciativa Novas Oportunidades" in Portuguese) was adopted and European Union (EU) guidelines were given considerable emphasis.…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to present the use of virtual communities in work processes in Popular Education, a field strongly supported by presentiality because of historical social inequalities in Brazil. It presents the assessment of the Virtual Community Work (CVT) used in the Popular Healthcare Education Policy (PNEPS).…

Over the years, there have been several attempts to spread the "Swedish model" of popular education, that is, study circles and folk high schools, to countries in other parts of the world. In this article, the authors analyze the large-scale project of establishing folk development colleges in Tanzania in the 1970s and 1980s, by…

John Macmurray was a public intellectual and an early proponent of popular education through the new medium of radio. National broadcasting of the time was finding its role in the competing cultures of education and entertainment, and significantly one of Macmurray's first radio projects in 1931-1932 concerned the issue of "Learning to…

Engaging students as actors in rather than audience of their education. This is both the primary feature of experiential education as John Dewey envisioned it and its underlying link to education for democracy: the flourishing of democracy requires citizens who are empowered actors, and such citizens cannot be produced through educational…

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

Many religious orders and congregations that were deported from France between 1904 and 1914 established themselves in neighbouring countries (Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Spain). One of the affected congregations was "Los Hermanos de las Escuelas Cristianas," which worked in the field of popular education. Many of its members found…

For almost two decades, the Prairie School for Union Women (PSUW) has operated in Saskatchewan, Canada. Its use of feminist popular education, adult learning principles in facilitation, and mentoring and support for activist practices make it unique from other labour schools in many respects. This paper focuses on a community-based participatory…

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi promised his Method as a means of education for all that was easily manageable by mothers at home for early childhood, leading eventually to a wholesome person characterised by morality. In order to develop this Method, Pestalozzi published "Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt" (How Gertrud Teaches her Children) in…