Empowering Education: Educating for Community Development: a Critical Study of Methods, Theories and Values - Softcover

This is a book about giving people power. It is written in a style that makes community development, adult education and collective action accessible to community workers, adult education tutors and students as well as committed citizens. The author, with extensive experience of adult education and community action, examines how teaching via logical discourse, storytelling, critical thinking - and the linking of the ideas of social theorists such as Freire, Alinsky and Gramsci with community concerns about the changes driven by neoliberal policies - can generate political awareness and collective change. By providing examples of group development processes, listening skills, constructive conversation, question posing, and group focused analyzes of community work problems, the author delivers an understanding of how educators and students can learn effectively together to stimulate insight, combat power structures, assess and realize community needs, manage conflict, generate leadership and work in partnership to implement successful regeneration strategies.

Roger Hopkins lives in Pontypridd in South Wales and has spent his working life in the voluntary and the higher education sectors helping communities combat social and economic deprivation.