Think Piece: Working for Living - Popular Education as/at Work for Social-ecological Justice

Abstract

<jats:p>Drawing on the working lives of popular educators who are striving for socioeconomic and socio-ecological justice, we demonstrate how popular education is a form of care work which is feminised, often undervalued and unrecognised as highly skilled work. It is relational work that aims to forge solidarity with communities and the environment. Given the state of the planet, the radical transformations that are needed, and the future projection of ‘work’ as including the care economy in large measure, we argue that popular education is a generative site for further exploration of research into work and learning. However, to move popular education as work from the margins means to rethink the current economic system of value. Addressing the contradiction that undervalues work for life/living, popular education engages transformative action motivated by a deep sense of solidarity and a focus on imagining alternatives as an act of hope.Keywords: work and learning, popular education, care work, solidarity</jats:p>

Inventive pedagogies and social solidarity: The work of community-based adult educators during COVID-19 in British Columbia, Canada

“…Although these practices were novel in the moment, they emerged from existing, albeit previously undervalued, capabilities within the adult education sector. Indeed, the pedagogical and emotional labour (Hochschild 2003(Hochschild [1983; Hardt 1999) in which community-based educators engage is vital to mobilising collective ties, but this labour is often ignored or discounted until moments of crisis, such as that of the COVID-19 pandemic, when inventiveness and social solidarity became necessary to survival (Burt et al 2020;Olesen et al 2017).…”

“…Cultivating social solidarity is a project of participatory and transformative pedagogies that have a long history in community-based education (Magee and Pherali 2019;Schugurensky 2000;Burt et al 2020). These pedagogies are generated within practices of "togetherness" (Moskal and North 2017), interdependence and collective action that have been repressed under the weight of neoliberal emphases on individuality and self-sufficiency, and hierarchical service-client cultures (Acheson and Laforest 2013).…”

“…They work with individuals and families during the most difficult times in their lives, yet are often positioned as helpers on the lowest rungs of the hierarchy of communitybased organisations. Their insights and experiences can get lost within institutional hierarchies that discount front-line education practice as a site for theory building, social critique and action (Burt et al 2020). As Burt et al elaborate, because care work is highly gendered and involves emotional labour, there is potential for overwork and exploitation.…”

Research for the People, by the People: The Political Practice of Cognitive Justice and Transformative Learning in Environmental Social Movements

“…Therefore, I would argue that paying attention to cognitive justice as learning praxis facilitates and supports the transgressive labour that activists engage in. It is care work that otherwise tends to go unrecognized and undervalued [22,23].…”

“…In social movements the divisions between educator and activist are blurred, because activists are educators, and professional educators who work with activists are themselves activists who situate themselves within the social movement. Popular education is thus overtly political, in both theory and practice, engaging with questions and contradictions coming out of social action being thrown up for dialogue and analysis, action and reflection (praxis) [23]. Needless to say, such engagement cannot be extracted as a 'method' to be used outside its political-activist context.…”