Community Education: A Critical Pedagogy of Place

• In Event: 34.068 - Transforming Relations Through Community-Based Research and Projects: The Paulo Freire Democratic Project

Abstract

Using a Freirean perspective where education is dialogical, dynamic, and based on “…ideas that will guide us toward the critical road of truth, toward the reappropriation of our endangered dignity, toward the reclaiming of our humanity” (Macedo & Araújo Freire, 2005), this paper describes the efforts of a college of education’s community education center situated in an urban center outside of the university. The Centro is present as a real "Dialogic space- intra, inter and extra”, leaning towards the possibility of self-development and safeguarding the identity, contextualization, participation, organization, initiative and autonomy of its members (Gruenewald, 2003). Social pedagogy is in the service of community, within a framework of interests and needs leading to self-determination (Caride, 1992, p. 34). Critical pedagogy intersects with social pedagogy moving us towards a critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald, 2003) that is concerned with context and the value of learning from reading the world as “political texts,” where teachers and students engage in reflection and action to understand and change the world (Freire, 1995; McLaren, 2003). “Developing a critical pedagogy of place means challenging each other to read the texts of our own lives and to ask constantly what needs to be transformed and what needs to be conserved in our communities” (Bowers, 2001, p. 10). The community is not static, but dynamic and alive, it changes within a historical context. Community education can achieve much with participating members of the community to improve their social, economic, and cognitive conditions through participation, reflection, and action.

Author

• Anaida Colon-Muniz, Chapman University