This book is about action learning in the service of social action and social change. The contributors are all engaged in developing new approaches to the wicked problems found in the world today, including the climate emergency, the circular economy, food poverty and insecurity, homelessness, disadvantage, active citizenship, social entrepreneurialism, and the learning of young women abducted by Boko Haram. They reflect a great diversity of settings in South Africa, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Mozambique, Hungary, Poland and the UK. At this time of global crisis rapid technological and social developments sit side by side with apparently impossible challenges needing urgent action. In the Global South, conflicts, terrorism and climatic changes have forced millions of people to abandon their homes and to migrate in search of food and safety. In the Global North, neo-liberal and market-based policies have pursued deregulation, privatisation and the shrinking of the state with consequent increases in homelessness, poverty and ill-health. Action learning was devised to help people work together in challenging situations to bring about changes from the bottom-up. The people in these stories and cases are not passively awaiting brighter futures but are acting together to create a better world for themselves. They are taking back control in local community regeneration schemes, local energy and housing projects, setting up co-working spaces and inventing new ways of doing business and learning new ways to inhabit the earth. They demonstrate a confidence in an action learning idea that is alive and evolving. The chapters in this book were first published in the journal Action Learning: Research and Practice.

This book seeks to increase our understanding of those non-educational contexts and informal circumstances in which people learn. Adult educators, Professor Foley argues, ought not to neglect the importance of the incidental learning which can take place, in particular, when people become involved in voluntary organisations, social struggles, and political activity of every kind. In developing the argument that such involvement can provide extraordinarily powerful learning opportunities, he uses case studies from the United States of America, Australia as well as Third World countries - Brazil and Zimbabwe - and embracing very diverse environmental, women's, worker and political struggles. He is particularly interested in how involvement in social action can help people to unlearn dominant, oppressive ideologies and discourses and learn instead oppositional, liberatory ones, even if such processes of emancipatory learning are inevitably complex and contradictory. He relates these processes of informal learning in contested contexts to current thinking in adult education and points the way to a somewhat different, and more radical, agenda in adult education theory and practice. For adult educators, community workers and others working with socially engaged citizens, the insights and lessons of this book ought to be especially useful as they try to develop their own practice in such contexts.

While many educators acknowledge the challenges of a curriculum shaped by test preparation, implementing meaningful new teaching strategies can be difficult. Active Learning presents an examination of innovative, interactive teaching strategies that were successful in engaging urban students who struggled with classroom learning. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the book proposes participatory action research as a viable approach to teaching and learning that supports the development of multiple literacies in writing, reading, research and oral communication. As Wright argues, in connecting learning to authentic purposes and real world consequences, participatory action research can serve as a model for meaningful urban school reform. After an introduction to the history and demographics of the working-class West Coast neighborhood in which the described PAR project took place, the book discusses the "pedagogy of praxis" method and the project’s successful development of student voice, sociopolitical analysis capacities, leadership skills, empowerment and agency. Topics addressed include an analysis and discussion of the youth-driven PAR process, the reactions of student researchers, and the challenges for adults in maintaining youth and adult partnerships. A thought-provoking response to current educational challenges, Active Learning offers both timely implications for educational reform and recommendations to improve school policies and practices.

CHANGE! A Guide to Teaching Social Action is for faculty, staff, and students who are interested in developing a college course or co-curricular experience using social action. Social action occurs when everyday people band together to develop their power in order to change policy. What distinguishes a social action class from other social change courses is that students are actively involved in enacting a policy change of their choice, thus providing students with a first-hand experience of democracy and power. As part of the social action class, students can start a new campaign, keep a campaign going from the previous semester, reactivate a campaign from a previous year, or join a community campaign. The goal of this book is to train the next generation of democratic citizens and participants. The hope is that if teaching social action is mainstreamed in higher education, students will be able to do democracy more effectively, and help to preserve it at the same time. More specifically, the book provides an overview of the history of college social action, explores what needs to be considered before starting a social action class, explains how students choose their campaigns and launch them, and how students plan, implement, and evaluate their campaigns.

Actions Speak Louder than Words is a systematic, qualitative study offering in-depth and detailed portraits of teachers engaged in social action projects as part of the regular classroom curriculum.

Learning Activism is designed to encourage a deeper engagement with the intellectual life of activists who organize for social, political, and ecological justice.

This engaging book shows how teachers and schools are creating emergent, democratic, progressive education amidst the current context of high stakes accountability. In this follow-up to his bestseller, Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way, Schultz explores how today’s rhetoric and restrictive mandates result in curriculum that fails to capture the attention of students. For meaningful learning that develops transferable skills and engages students, teachers and sometimes whole schools need to find spaces to “teach in the cracks” so that students can connect with issues relevant to their lives. Teaching in the Cracks provides both a theoretical and practical foundation for incorporating an action-focused curriculum that meets academic standards and provides students with opportunities for agency and to use their voices in their own learning. “Through compelling examples, Brian Schultz shares how educators can help students use their powers.” —From the Foreword by Deborah Meier, teacher, principal, and advocate “This book is an invitation to rethink teaching from top to bottom, to dive into classroom life as a passionate adventure in discovery and surprise.” —From the Afterword by William Ayers, education activist “For teachers who genuinely seek to make a difference through their work, this book will be a helpful resource.” —Pedro A. Noguera, University of California, Los Angeles

Anti-bias education begins with you! Become a skilled anti-bias teacher with this practical guidance to confronting and eliminating barriers.

John F. Kerry United States Senator If we are to reinvigorate and reinforce civic participation in this country at a time when our society is increasingly fragmented and highly technologically based, we must find a way to unite distinct communities, such as universities, regional and non-profit organizations, and families. We must find ways to link academicians, students, teachers, and professionals with the reality of events and circumstances so that theories and ideas mightily pursued within the "ivory tower" are connected to social reality and useful. As the editors and contributors in this volume point out, the way to bridge theory/practice divide is not merely to interpret and report on circumstances of the real-world; but rather, to deconstruct the separate and distinct communities that exist within our society and actively engage other communities to realize a continuum of mutual understanding, collaboration, and action. It is crucial to include our nation's public schools in this new approach of social inquiry and social action. Improving and creating educational opportunity for all children in the United States has been an ongoing critical federal issue. We know that when children achieve in school they have a much greater chance of living healthy, productive adult lives that will benefit themselves and society, and we know that increasing the base of stakeholders in children's education yields those positive results.

This is a book for activists, students, scholars of social movements and adult education and for the public interested in the contemporary movements of our times. From the streets of Barcelona and Athens, the public squares in Cairo, Tunis and Tripoli, the flash mobs and virtual learning of the #Occupy movement, and the shack dwellers of South Africa people around the world are organising themselves to take action against the ravages of a capitalism that serves the greedy while impoverishing the rest. Social movements have arisen or re-arisen in virtually every sector of human activity from concerns about the fate of our planet earth, to dignity for those living with HIV/AIDS, to feeding ourselves in healthier ways and survival in places of violent conflict. At the heart of each of these movements are activists and ordinary people learning how to change their lives and how to change the world. This book offers contemporary theoretical and practical insights into the learning that happens both within and outside of social movements. Social movement scholars present work linked to the arts, to organic farming, to environmental action, to grassroots activists in the Global South, to the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, the shackdwellers movements, school reform and the role of Marx, Gramscii and Williams in understanding social movement learning. The greatest contribution of this inspiring book is to remind us that learning and education in social movements help to make a difference. Not only does this collection enable us to understand how we might theorise and historicise learning in diverse contemporary social movements, but its contributors do so with outspoken and passionate commitment to ‘Learning and Education for a Better World.’ - Professor Miriam Zukas, Executive Dean, Birkbeck, University of London The burning demand for such a text comes from our contemporary moment that is witness to a world where nearly everything is commercialised, marketised or commodified. This text shuns an essentialist discourse while simultaneously and masterfully offering unprecedented insights into social movement learning and education. The book is numinous. - Professor Robert Hill, University of Georgia, USA This is a book we have all been waiting for. The editors have brought together an amazing cadre of international adult educators to probe the intersection of social movements and learning, and to build theory around the many social actions that are taking place globally. A must read for students and professors everywhere. - Leona English, PhD, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada Accessible, engaging, often inspirational, the essays that comprise Learning and Education for a Better World offer deep insights on the role of social movements as agencies of learning, struggle and transformation. From case studies that include the occupy movement, popular education in Latin America, political cinema and the Egyptian Revolution to reflections on resistance, aesthetics and the role of organic intellectuals, this collection will be of interest to educators, social scientists, humanists and activists alike. An interdisciplinary tour-de-force. - Professor William Carroll, University of Victoria, Canada This is such a timely collection of essays, bringing together critical reflections on experiences of social action from across the globe. This book is to be commended to the widest possible readership. - (From the Preface by) Emeritus Professor Marjorie Mayo, Goldsmith’s College