Adult Education for Social Change: a project for community development in the city of Valencia

Proceedings of ‏The 2nd World Conference on Research in Education

Year: 2020

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/2nd.worldcre.2020.09.216

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Adult Education for Social Change: a project for community development in the city of Valencia

Donatella Donato and Ángel San Martín Alonso

ABSTRACT: 

In a district of the city of Valencia, a project of Social Innovation is an innovative approach with the aim of overcoming social conflict and improving peaceful coexistence. Adult Education can generate an opportunity for intergenerational dialogue and collaborative exchange between different cultures. The challenge is to start a personal and social transformation to strengthen democratic values, into the community, the family, the school. The project began in November 2016. Eight Roma women start a pedagogical and political training path with a strong social impact on the entire neighborhood. Overcoming the status of learnification the study shows how the pedagogical and political compromise of people in social life and the interaction between scientific research and civil society can have important repercussions on local context. The proposal of our case study is to analyze the policy frame in which this project was born, and to reflect on the innovative strategies built in a context of co-participation as an effective alternative to the problem of social exclusion. The project was an opportunity for self-reflection about opportunities, resources and abilities, and a challenge to analyze the condition of some social groups and the marginalization of others. The process of transformative learning allowed reflecting on those representations that are assigned to a specific group and is used to justify their social status assigned to it. The possibility of the meeting of different cultures and status allowed analyzing the present conflict by promoting a positive social change.

Keywords: Adult Education, Community Development, Empowerment, Participation, Social Innovation.