 Community
education
Community education is a process used to:
- Create awareness of an issue - I had never
noticed that before
- Enhance people’s knowledge, understanding and skills -
I didn’t know that
- Influence people’s values and attitudes - That
upset me/ I’m really excited about it
- Encourage more responsible behaviour – This
is what I personally am doing about it
Community education incorporates aspects of adult education and
training, community development, public participation and social
marketing. Our preferred way of working with community education
programs is to accept the role of co-learners and work in partnership
with the community to define the project, discover solutions, reflect
on what we have all learnt and celebrate it.
Many of us still carry a notion of education as a process of filling
empty vessels with knowledge. This ‘banking’ view of
education considers learners as passive and empty and the educators
job is to fill them with knowledge. This drastically underestimates
our ability to learn actively in the context of what we already
know.
A range of different educational methods are available and often suit particular target audiences as defined in the Diffusion of Innovations model we developed. For more information click here.
Evaluation
Meg has recently completed training in evaluation and is a member of the Australasian Evaluation Society. We incorporate evaluation into projects from the early planning stage and include a map of activities and associated linkages and impacts which help in prioritising activities and the key information to be gathered. Where possible we develop a critical path analysis and an outcomes hierarchy.
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