Education for Community Development

EDU A844 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

An aim of education is to train individuals to achieve personal growth and become a source of social good. However, educational programs also grapple with a difficult social reality - that the processes of modern development often leads to the breakdown of a fundamental unit of our social fabric, the community. What does the breakdown of community imply about the aims of education? Can educational processes reconstitute this social fabric?

In this course, we will ask: how can educational programs simultaneously advance the aims of community and individual development? The course takes the perspective that, in order to advance insights in response to this question, we must also develop our own capacity to advance social actions in collaboration with communities. The goal of the course is, therefore, to initiate a process in which the participant can imagine “walking a path of development” with a community. By the end of the course, the participant will, it is the hope, see themselves at the beginning of such a path, walking it together with the community they associate with. They will also gain insight into how the path can be extended by iteratively and cumulatively developing educational content, content that empowers people who live in the places they inhabit to advance place-based development through a cyclical process of action and reflection.

Enrollment is limited and will be determined via application. Link to application: https://forms.gle/MfccsDn5vY1kDLmX9