Community Learning Development Resource: 200 – 12
UNDERSTANDINGS AND MEANINGS LINKING LEARNING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
SUMMARY
Understanding community development and learning concepts, terms and meanings helps us to understand how the two fields relate and connect to bringing about change within neighbourhoods and communities.
1. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT – any activity, which seeks to engage people in developing and improving the quality of their experience of life in their community
Some descriptive themes within the scope of Community Development:
- community improvement
- community action / neighbourhood action
- community provision
- community capacity-building
- neighbourhood regeneration / renewal
- urban and inner-city regeneration
- community consultation
- community cohesion
- building Social Capital
- Stronger Communities
- ‘The Big Society’
2. LEARNING – the process in any experience, which puts in place a more or less
permanent change in an individual’s behaviour
- Changes in behaviour include: developing skills; gaining knowledge; developing understanding; changing and developing feelings and attitudes; gaining confidence; gaining abilities to learn, reflect, solve problems, etc.
- Forms of learning activities include – informal learning through experiencing life; formal learning through planned and taught programmes and courses (e.g. in education and training).
- In relation to enabling and supporting active participation by people in regeneration, all forms of learning are seen as having a potential to enable them and to help build their capacity to engage in and contribute to community development.
- People usually gain confidence and self-esteem, and are empowered by learning success. They learn most successfully when they can use and apply what they have learnt, in their life and work and by successfully using their learning to improve their quality of life and that of those around them.
Learning as a process rather than a product
- In identifying learning as the core process that builds the capacity of individuals (individual capacity-building), and enables and encourages them to choose to engage in community development activities (community capacity-building), we should be more concerned that a learner is learning (verb), than with what is to be learned – the learning (noun).
- We should be prepared to challenge the idea that learning should be content driven and that there should be a learning agenda. Any experience that enables a learner to grow as a learner and as a person, should be valued. It may be that recognising and valuing the experience of their successful socialising and communicating, is all that some people need to learn.
- The less confident and less experienced learners that people are, the more an up-front learning agenda can be intimidating and counter-productive. As we try to widen participation and draw in excluded learners, we would do well to choose as our starting point, where they are at, not where we want them to be. Even worse is to try to engage them on the basis of fixed ideas about what we are going to teach them and what they should learn.
3. LEARNERS – everyone has the ability to learn – all individuals are able to learn and everyone is naturally a learner
- People learn best when the learning is purposeful and relevant – relating to needs that they individually and collectively have, e.g., the interests that they have; their aspirations; issues they want to address; problems they need to solve.
- People may come together to learn within groups collectively, but how they learn and what they learn is done individually.
- We should try to see people as learners, who are not the passive recipients of someone else’s wisdom and expertise, but as active learners who are able to reflect on learning and learning experiences and decide for themselves what they will learn and how they will adapt it and use it.
4. TEACHING – any process by which someone or something enables someone to learn
- Teaching is often thought of as being only the teaching, training and lecturing found within formally organised education and training – in courses and classes. This is too narrow a definition of teaching. If someone communicates with someone else successfully and as a result that person learns and is changed by the experience, then that communication has been a form of teaching.
- Many informal activities, including conversation and non-verbal communication, facilitate learning, and should be recognised as teaching
- Teaching is not an essential in order for anyone to learn, it can only help someone to learn (learning is the key process – not teaching).
- Teaching is a collective term for a variety of ‘teacher’ activities, which enable people to learn, including teaching; coaching; training; tutoring; instructing; informing; enabling; facilitating; sharing; supporting, skilling, demonstrating, presenting, etc.
- Teaching includes material and communication based processes, where learning occurs without direct contact between individual people – e.g., from books; on the internet; distance learning materials; experience (of the environment/of life); self-teaching. ‘Discovery’ learning methods tend to minimise teacher inputs – where learners find, explore and take-on-board their learning and build their capacity for themselves, with a ‘teacher’ having more of a facilitating and managing role.
5. Community based learning in Community Development
- Learning that enables and equips people (workers and clients) to effectively and successfully engage in community development, as active participants.
- Community learning engages people in all aspects of learning – gaining knowledge; developing understanding; gaining skills; changing and developing feelings and attitudes; gaining self-confidence; gaining abilities to learn, reflect, solve problems; gaining confidence and skills in communication and relationship building, etc.
- Learning about Community Development is the learning that is embedded within the themes and strands of Community Strategies. It is the ‘subject’ learning – the knowledge and understanding within the theme, for example if local people seek to participate meaningfully in a local Community Safety initiative, they may need know and understand some of the technicalities, the legal framework, who is responsible for what, etc., otherwise as ‘lay-people’ they will be disadvantaged. To effectively put in place the ‘Learning about Community Development’ is a challenge for Local Strategic Partnerships, their working groups, forums and relevant agencies and workers, if they are seeking to successfully enable local people to participate in their business.
6. CAPACITY
- Individual capacity – the skills, knowledge, understanding, abilities and feelings of individuals, which equip and enable them to function within their lives. Learning is the key process in building individual capacity.
Self-esteem, self-confidence, self-image, self-value, etc. are indicators of the capacity of individuals and how they feel about themselves.
Capacity is not about what is in place (the learning) but more about how the individual is able to apply, use, benefit from, recognise and value their learning.
- Collective capacity – this is built-up by the gathering together of individuals who bring their own individual capacity, to build relationships and contribute through their participation to achieve some shared goal – e.g., with partners, within families and friendship groups. Collective capacity builds Social Capital. Where this is directed towards community development and regeneration, it is Community capacity-building.
7. PARTICIPATION is about an individual successfully interacting with others
- Participation implies active involvement. Those who participate are not just passive receivers of the experience – they interact with the situation.
- Participation implies working together, partnership, equality, etc,
- Participation means ‘playing an active part; having a role; ‘getting in on’; ‘having a hand in’; sharing-in; being involved; having part ownership
- For individuals to successfully participate they need to have a ‘can-do’ attitude and feel-good about themselves. (individual capacity).
8. Some philosophical and organisational terms:
- Norm: a principle of correctness that is binding upon the members of a group and serves to regulate actions and judgements
- Value: a moral principle or standard of behaviour
- Principle: a universal or fundamental law, doctrine or truth. A rule or code of conduct. To behave on the basis of belief or moral code (being principled). Devotion to the rules of right conduct, morality, integrity(a tenet)
- Mission: a specific task with which a group or person is charged
- Vision: having a view of the future
- Protocol: a code of conduct or procedure – an agreement through negotiation
- Purpose: the reason or intention underlying action
- Philosophy: sum of beliefs and attitudes of an individual or group
- Belief: conviction of the truth of something – a principle or collection of principles held by a group
- Culture: the conditions, which inform and shape the collective behaviour of the members of an organisation.
REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION PROMPTS:
- Does your work contribute to changing the lives of the individuals you work with?
- Do the people you work with learn from their experience of you and if so how do you think that you are teaching them?
- What skills do you think are important for you as a teacher in your line of work?
- In your work how do you enable and support local people to successfully engage with and participate in community development activities?