Community Learning Development Resource Category 04
UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY LEARNING
SUMMARY
Community learning largely takes place in community and neighbourhood settings, and is seen as going well beyond the formal education and training opportunities that are sometimes labelled as community-based learning and delivered beyond provider institutions, as outreach provision for people in neighbourhoods and communities.
The potential for learning exists in every human experience and experiential learning occurs in its widest forms within communities and neighbourhoods. We see this generically as community learning – holistic and learner-centred, occurring naturally and universally in everyone. This learning can occur through any informal or non-formal engagements, as well those planned as formal learning experiences.
The setting for much of the community learning, explored within the ‘Understanding Community Learning’ (04) category of resources, is development, regeneration and renewal work within communities and neighbourhoods. The importance of community learning is perceived to be at its greatest in work with excluded and disadvantaged people, sometimes described as ‘hard-to-reach’ by education and training providers.
Community learning here is seen as inclusively supporting and enabling people to build their own individual capacity; to develop their collective capacity; to contribute to community capacity building, and to actively participate in community development and action. This Resource Category (04) explores community learning which supports people to build their own capacity to equip and empower them to choose to improve the quality of their lives.