Conference

Introduction

The recent resurgence of interest in participatory and dialogic approaches to teaching and learning makes its mark across university, TAFE and other professional development contexts, more specifically in the fields of international development, community development, environmental science, health, social work, education, feminist and women’s studies and management and organisational development programs. With ideas of participation, democratisation, transformation, empowerment and social change so central to theory and practice in all of those fields, many educators are trying to put these into practice through classroom teaching and community outreach.

We don't have to look far to find the reasons why these approaches and the issues they throw up are still important. The rich traditions and approaches of popular education and critical pedagogy (associated not only with Paulo Freire but also democracy-building struggles in Europe since the nineteenth century) challenge conventional formal education and are widely practiced in adult and non-formal education programs throughout both the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ world. It can be difficult, however, for educators to depart from conventional approaches to teaching and learning; we tend to teach the way we ourselves were taught and for most of us of that meant sitting in lecture halls and training rooms during our ‘contact’ time. Furthermore, universities and other educational institutions often resist approaches which challenge their institutionalised power and claims to authoritative knowledge. Finally, the last decades have not been quite so generous in terms of funding for Tertiary Education in this country and class sizes, on-line teaching and encroaching administrative work have not been conducive to the implementation of participatory and transformative approaches in (adult) education, including and especially in professional and vocational courses.

Nevertheless, in one way or another many educators are grappling with how to bring the ideas of participation, dialogue and critical pedagogy into higher education, to challenge and enable students to see themselves as agents of social change, and to engage the broader community in new ways.

When inviting contributions to a recent special issue of the journal New Community Quarterly (vol 5 (2) 2007), we found that a wide variety of educators in universities and other institutions throughout Australia are utilising participatory, dialogic and popular education approaches in teaching and learning, that they are engaging the community in innovative ways and that they often do so with working conditions stacked against their intentions. Importantly, they have little opportunity to interact and share their experiences with other educators pursuing similar goals and strategies. This conference aims to bring university educators, popular educators, students and other interested people together to share and reflect upon actual practice and effective strategies.