This course engages participants in both the theory, values, educational pyschology and practices of democratizing teaching, learning and leadership. Participants will learn the principles of adult education and androgogy, as well as the participatory and collaborative modalities of Folkbildning. The course also explores how Folkbildning, as both a movement and an educational infrastructure, can be adapted to serve the emancipatory needs of different contexts that seek to bridge the gap between civic engagement and structures of governance. Together, participants will learn to design collaborative learning environments, by adapting and applying learning taxonomies to create learning outcomes that promote the personal integration of knowledge, self-awareness, and the holistic formation of both groups and individuals. Throughout the course, participants and instructors collaborate to model collegial workflows which tie together the experiences and material being learned during the course into the practical skills of designing learning outcomes, courseplans and syllabi that explicitly promote democratic processes.
By the end of the course, participants will have:
- Developed an awareness and appreciation for the role and potential of bildung (bildning) to change the lives of individuals and communities and to foster engagement, respect and identity formation
- Explored the methods, modalities, history and roles of adult education in general (and Folkbildning in particular) and how they are coordinated and combined in the service of democratizing education and leadership
- Engaged in the design of collaborative learning, by combining elements of learning design into collegial workflows
- Synthesized the shared knowledge, experiences and interactions explored during the course into an integrated personal vision for education and leadership with a view to engaging in pedagogical and democratic leadership in a local context.
