ADTED 300Social Movements and Education: Global Perspectives

3 credits · Adult Education · Penn State

Social Movements are some of the most important contemporary actors influencing both societies and individuals. Social movements are also educational, transforming participants¿ worldviews and developing innovative pedagogical practices for both non-formal contexts and formal schooling systems. This course examines the role education plays in social movement struggles in the United States and globally. In the first part of the course, we analyze the informal, non-formal, and formal educational initiatives that were part of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Then, in the second part of the course, we read the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and examine how popular education - a pedagogy created by and for social movements - has been integrated into a diversity of grassroots struggles in Latin America. In the third part of the course, we go beyond the Americas and explore social movement-led educational practices in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Finally, in the fourth student-led part of the course we return to the United States and learn about education in a diversity of contemporary U.S. social movements. During these final weeks, students will lead a class discussion based on their secondary and primary research on one social movement. This course will introduce students to a diversity of social movements in unique geographical and social contexts and show how these movements have incorporated education into their broader fights for economic, racial, gender, environmental, and social justice.