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Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition

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Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition Theorising meaning, educator and institution in Ireland’s community education field using a generative grounded theory approach. WILLIAM MC GLYNN EDUCATION DOCTORATE NUI Maynooth Faculty of Social Sciences Education Department Head of Department: Dr. Aidan Mulkeen Department of Adult and Community Education Head of Department: Josephine Finn Supervisor: Dr. Bernie Grummell May 2012 Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition ABSTRACT 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 8 WORTH THE STRUGGLE : REFLECTING ON COMMUNITY EDUCATION IN A DECADE OF CHANGE 2000-2010 9 Crystallizing the enquiry 13 The Generative Themes of the Study 13 Why meaning? 15 Why educator? 16 Why institution? 17 The VEC as research site 18 Epistemology and Valued Ways of Knowing 19 On valuing knowledge 20 Researcher epistemology: Critical and reflexive ways of knowing 21 Researcher practice: Liberatory pedagogies 24 Thesis Structure 25 CHAPTER 1 THE LENSES OF THEORY: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY EDUCATION 28 Meaning and Critical Theory 28 The sources of critical theory 29 Marxist inspired meaning 30 Understanding critical theory 32 Gramsci, hegemony and education 33 Foucault and the meaning of struggle 35 The Community Educator and Critical Pedagogy 37 Freire’s liberatory pedagogy in the toolkit of community education 37 Feminist critique of critical pedagogy 38 Critical pedagogy around the world 40 Community educators as organic intellectuals 44 Institution,: Recognition, Reproduction and Power 46 Honneth and the struggle for recognition 46 Bourdieu: misrecognition and reproduction in education 48 Foucault: surveillance and power 52 Conclusion 53 CHAPTER 2 AN EMPOWERING PRACTICE : REVIEW OF DISCOURSES IN COMMUNITY EDUCATION STUDIES & POLICY TEXTS 55 Researching Community Education: Ireland and Beyond 55 1 Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition A Foucaultian Review of Discourses in Text 56 Review of Discourses of Meaning 57 Meaning: Green & White Papers compared 58 The ideological discourse of neo-liberalism and community education 61 Challenging the mainstream discourse 63 Resisting mainstream discourse and asserting critical pedagogy 64 From neo-liberalism and critical pedagogy to tea and men’s groups 65 Review of the Discourses of Practice and Community Educators 66 The glass fence revisited 67 To accredit or not to accredit 69 Women’s community education as a model of good practice 71 Discourses of masculinity and engaging men in community education 73 Redemptive v liberatory discourses in Irish adult education 74 International influence in Irish community education 75 Review of Discourses of Institution and Structure 76 VEC historical discourses 77 Discourses of ownership: Early relations between VECs and other providers 81 Structures to support community education 82 Discourses of control at institutional and NGO levels 83 Conclusion 86 CHAPTER 3 IN TOUCH WITH ITS ROOTS: CONSTRUCTING COMMUNITY EDUCATION USING GROUNDED THEORY METHODOLOGY 87 Engaging with the conversation : The process of generating data 89 Making my pitch - why this research is useful 89 Planning the focus groups 94 Running the focus groups 96 Background to constructing focus group codifications 99 Ethical considerations and follow up with participants 105 The research community sample 106 The focus group: Facilitating dialogue, recording & transcribing 107 Critical, grounded and collective : Rationale for methodology claims 108 Shaped by critical ways of knowing 108 A critical and qualitative research methodology 109 Grounded up from the grassroots 110 Choosing a collectivist research method 111 An emancipatory researcher stance 113 Grounded theory and Community Education 114 A grounded theory methodology 114 Coding, memo-writing, theoretical sampling and theorising 116 Conclusion 118 2 Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition PREFACE TO ANALYSIS & FINDINGS CHAPTERS 119 CHAPTER 4 HOLDING ONTO OUR ETHOS: ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ON THE MEANING OF COMMUNITY EDUCATION 122 Introduction 122 Generative Themes of Core Meaning & Ethos 123 Achievement and disappointment in meaning making 123 A tale of two definitions 125 Empowerment and its meaning 129 The economic skills-focused meaning 133 The lack of understanding of community education 137 Holding onto ethos 139 Generative Themes of Recognition 140 Misrecognition of community education 141 Valuing accredited and non-accredited community education 143 Dilution and homogenisation of meaning 147 Generative Themes of Community 149 Community education and community development links 150 Community led and community owned 152 Conclusion 154 CHAPTER 5 THERE’S ONLY ONE OF US: FROM ISOLATION TO SOLIDARITY ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ON ROLE OF COMMUNITY EDUCATORS 156 Introduction 156 Generative Themes on Inspiration 157 From inherent sense of injustice to inspiring role models 158 Transforming systems not meeting the needs of those on the margins 160 Generative Themes of Struggle 162 Identifying with the tradition of struggle 162 The struggle of engaging the most marginalized 166 The silencing of critical voices 168 Generative Themes Reflecting on Role 171 What gets measured: returns and administration 171 The community educator: recognising the practitioner 174 The community educator: recognising the pedagogy 176 Resilience: from ‘part of a real buzz’ to ‘we are still here’ 178 Generative Themes of Isolation to Solidarity 179 Isolation ‘there’s only one of us’ 180 Importance of allies and solidarity 182 On rocking boats and being strategic 183 Needing to have this conversation 185 3 Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition Conclusion 186 CHAPTER 6 EVERY VEC IS DIFFERENT : ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ON THE ROLE OF THE INSTITUTIONAL PROVIDER IN COMMUNITY EDUCATION 187 Introduction 187 Generative Themes on the VEC as Community Education Provider 188 Radical origins to mainstream service 189 Every VEC is different 190 Schools culture and community education culture in the VEC 192 From ‘competing territories’ to ‘common ground’ 197 Having space to be critical 200 Generative Themes of Opportunity 203 Missed opportunity – structures not implemented ‘gone belly up’ 203 New opportunity for collective voice – cefa ‘there is a forum’ 206 Conclusion 209 CHAPTER 7 COMMUNITY EDUCATION: THEORISING A CRITICAL PRACTICE, ROLE AND INSTITUTIONAL SPACE 210 Theorising Community Education: Organic Intellectuals to Critical Educators 211 The Merits of a Generative Grounded Theory Methodology 213 The Meaning of Empowerment and its Recognition 214 Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition 217 Community Education as Constructive Critical Voice in the VEC 220 Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition 224 REFERENCES 229 4 Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition ABSTRACT This thesis explores community education in Ireland in a threefold enquiry examining; (a) the core meaning which community education holds for practitioners in the field, (b) how the role of community educators shares a connectedness with liberatory struggle for social justice, and (c) what space community education and its educators occupy within its institutional provider, the Vocational Education Committees (VECs). Community education in Ireland is a vibrant field of practice operating on the fringes of mainstream education. Its origins can be traced to the early instructors of the Vocational Education Committees in the early part of the last century. Women’s community education has shaped the practice in Ireland since the 1970s. The year 2000 marked a significant step forward in terms of recognition for community education with the publication of the White Paper on Adult Education. In this thesis the author draws on his experience working in the community education sector to engage with other community educators to reflect on the generative themes of meaning, educator role and institution in this field of practice. The first aspect of the research explores the meaning of community education from the practitioner perspective, and finds a clear preference for an empowerment meaning. However, the findings suggest there is no clear settlement on the meaning of empowerment, and concludes there is a need to articulate an understanding of empowerment in the context of a critical analysis of power. The second aspect of the research concerns the role of the community educator and the connectedness of this role to a broader liberatory struggle for social justice. Using Honneth’s concept of a struggle for recognition, the findings point to a critical role which is poorly recognized within the education field in Ireland. A key purpose of the research is to rediscover the roots of this role in Gramsci’s organic intellectuals and Freire’s radicals and reclaim the critical role of the community educator within the Irish education site. The third aspect of this research examines the space which community education occupies within its institutional provider, the Vocational Education Committees in Ireland. The research presents an assessment of the institutional culture of the VECs. The findings recall 5 Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition the VEC’s radical origins, and its later immersion within the mainstream educational apparatus. Findings point to the tensions between a dominant school ethos and subordinate community education ethos in the VEC and proposes a critical coalition for the future. The findings suggest that community education facilitators have
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