Action Learning for Social Action

Action Learning for Social Action
Author: Mike Pedler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2020-11-30
Genre: Active learning
ISBN: 9780367500498

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.

Service-Learning and Social Justice

Service-Learning and Social Justice
Author: Susan Benigni Cipolle
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2010-03-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1607095203

Service-Learning and Social Justice provides everything administrators and teachers need to build service-learning programs that prepare students as engaged citizens committed to equity and justice. Cipolle describes practical strategies for classroom teachers along with the theoretical framework so readers can deftly move beyond the book to a meaningful program for their schools. Writing in a conversational style, the author explains service-learning's unlimited potential in terms of student empowerment and academic achievement and as tool in developing a student's a lifetime commitment to service and social justice. This book's contribution to new knowledge and practice is three-fold as it promotes (a) understanding of how individuals become committed to social justice, (b) identification of how one's orientation to service-learning and social justice changes as one develops a more critical consciousness, and (c) practical strategies that teachers can use to support and guide students as they become more critically aware. Practitioners will improve their service-learning programs and have a framework for preparing students for their experiences, as well as ideas for reflection activities. Educators will gain a better understanding of the psychology and sociology of developing a commitment to service for social justice.

Learning Futures

Learning Futures
Author: Keri Facer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2011-03-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113672821X

In the twenty-first century, educators around the world are being told that they need to transform education systems to adapt young people for the challenges of a global digital knowledge economy. Too rarely, however, do we ask whether this future vision is robust, achievable or even desirable, whether alternative futures might be in development, and what other possible futures might demand of education. Drawing on ten years of research into educational innovation and socio-technical change, working with educators, researchers, digital industries, students and policy-makers, this book questions taken-for-granted assumptions about the future of education. Arguing that we have been working with too narrow a vision of the future, Keri Facer makes a case for recognizing the challenges that the next two decades may bring, including: the emergence of new relationships between humans and technology the opportunities and challenges of aging populations the development of new forms of knowledge and democracy the challenges of climate warming and environmental disruption the potential for radical economic and social inequalities. This book describes the potential for these developments to impact critical aspects of education – including adult-child relationships, social justice, curriculum design, community relationships and learning ecologies. Packed with examples from around the world and utilising vital research undertaken by the author while Research Director at the UK’s Futurelab, the book helps to bring into focus the risks and opportunities for schools, students and societies over the coming two decades. It makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationship between education and social and technological change, and presents a set of key strategies for creating schools better able to meet the emerging needs of their students and communities. An important contribution to the debates surrounding educational futures, this book is compelling reading for all of those, including educators, researchers, policy-makers and students, who are asking the question 'how can education help us to build desirable futures for everyone in the context of social and technological change?'

Education for Social Change

Education for Social Change
Author: Douglas Bourn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2022-01-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 135019283X

This book introduces students to education as a vehicle for social change. Douglas Bourn begins by providing historical context of how education has been linked to social change around the world and moves on, in the second section of the book, to discuss potential theoretical and conceptual frameworks for thinking about education for social change. The third sections covers how social change has been explored and promoted within different areas of learning, including schooling, youth work and higher education. The fourth section looks at the opportunities and challenges for promoting education for social change and reviews current international initiatives including those of global citizenship and climate change. Key theorists are introduced throughout the book including bell hooks, Dewey, Giroux, Gramsci, and Freire. Each chapter begins with an opening question and ends with bulleted concluding points, questions for discussion and a further reading list. The book includes a foreword written by Tania Ramalho (State University of New York, USA).

Learning from Communicators in Social Change

Learning from Communicators in Social Change
Author: Jan Servaes
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811582815

This book presents the perspectives of some of the main players, both academics and professionals, in communication for sustainable development and social change so as to provide valuable lessons for future generations of change agents. It places emphasis on both the theoretical foundation and practical applications and ethical concerns in communication for development and social change. Most of the available historical accounts in development communications make a distinction between the modernization paradigm, the dependency paradigm and the multiplicity or participatory paradigm. These historical accounts have been dominated by framing developments within these paradigms, as the logical offspring of the Western drive to develop the world after colonization and the Second World War. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in the late eighties, together with the rise of the U.S. as the only remaining ‘superpower,’ the emergence of the European Union and China, the gradual coming to the fore of regional powers, such as the BRICS countries, and the recent meltdown of the world financial system has rendered disastrous consequences for people everywhere. This book responds to these changes and challenges in presenting a rethinking of the “power” of development, and consequently the place and role of communication in it. It is aimed at both emerging research students, policymakers and social research practitioners who are interested in the history of communication for development and social change and the role and place of mayor players in it. This is most applicable to the political and educational sector, as well as scholars of history, social work, and human rights. The book will provide valuable insights for beginners in these fields who are not yet familiar with the increasingly important and emerging field of global social change.

The Systems Work of Social Change

The Systems Work of Social Change
Author: Cynthia Rayner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2021-10-12
Genre: Social change
ISBN: 0198857454

The issues of poverty, inequality, racial injustice, and climate change have never been more pressing or paralyzing. Current approaches to social change, which rely on linear thinking and traditional power dynamics to 'solve' social problems, are not helping. In fact, they may only beentrenching the status quo.Systemic social challenges produce bewildering results when we try to solve them due to their complexity, scale, and depth. While strategies to tackle complexity and scale have received significant attention and investment, challenges that arise from deeply-held beliefs, values, and assumptions thatno longer serve us well have been largely overlooked. This book draws on stories of committed social changemakers to uncover a set of principles and practices for social change that dramatically depart from the industrial approach. Rather than delivering solutions or being lured by grander visionsof 'systems change', these principles and practices focus on the process of change itself. Simple yet profound, these stories distil a timely set of lessons for leaders, scholars, and policymakers on how connection, context, and power sit at the heart of the change process, ensuring broader agencyfor people and communities while building social systems that are responsive in a rapidly-changing world.

Measuring Social Change

Measuring Social Change
Author: Alnoor Ebrahim
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2019-07-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1503609219

The social sector is undergoing a major transformation. We are witnessing an explosion in efforts to deliver social change, a burgeoning impact investing industry, and an unprecedented intergenerational transfer of wealth. Yet we live in a world of rapidly rising inequality, where social sector services are unable to keep up with societal need, and governments are stretched beyond their means. Alnoor Ebrahim addresses one of the fundamental dilemmas facing leaders as they navigate this uncertain terrain: performance measurement. How can they track performance towards worthy goals such as reducing poverty, improving public health, or advancing human rights? What results can they reasonably measure and legitimately take credit for? This book tackles three core challenges of performance faced by social enterprises and nonprofit organizations alike: what to measure, what kinds of performance systems to build, and how to align multiple demands for accountability. It lays out four different types of strategies for managers to consider—niche, integrated, emergent, and ecosystem—and details the types of performance measurement and accountability systems best suited to each. Finally, this book examines the roles of funders such as impact investors, philanthropic foundations, and international aid agencies, laying out how they can best enable meaningful performance measurement.

Education and Social Change

Education and Social Change
Author: John Rury
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2010-04-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135666903

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Systems Thinking For Social Change

Systems Thinking For Social Change
Author: David Peter Stroh
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2015-09-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1603585818

"David Stroh has produced an elegant and cogent guide to what works. Research with early learners is showing that children are natural systems thinkers. This book will help to resuscitate these intuitive capabilities and strengthen them in the fire of facing our toughest problems."—Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline Concrete guidance on how to incorporate systems thinking in problem solving, decision making, and strategic planning—for everyone! Donors, leaders of nonprofits, and public policy makers usually have the best of intentions to serve society and improve social conditions. But often their solutions fall far short of what they want to accomplish and what is truly needed. Moreover, the answers they propose and fund often produce the opposite of what they want over time. We end up with temporary shelters that increase homelessness, drug busts that increase drug-related crime, or food aid that increases starvation. How do these unintended consequences come about and how can we avoid them? By applying conventional thinking to complex social problems, we often perpetuate the very problems we try so hard to solve, but it is possible to think differently, and get different results. Systems Thinking for Social Change enables readers to contribute more effectively to society by helping them understand what systems thinking is and why it is so important in their work. It also gives concrete guidance on how to incorporate systems thinking in problem solving, decision making, and strategic planning without becoming a technical expert. Systems thinking leader David Stroh walks readers through techniques he has used to help people improve their efforts on complex problems like: ending homelessness improving public health strengthening education designing a system for early childhood development protecting child welfare developing rural economies facilitating the reentry of formerly incarcerated people into society resolving identity-based conflicts and more! The result is a highly readable, effective guide to understanding systems and using that knowledge to get the results you want.

Entertainment-Education and Social Change

Entertainment-Education and Social Change
Author: Arvind Singhal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2003-12-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135624569

Entertainment-Education and Social Change introduces readers to entertainment-education (E-E) literature from multiple perspectives. This distinctive collection covers the history of entertainment-education, its applications in the United States and throughout the world, the multiple communication theories that bear on E-E, and a range of research methods for studying the effects of E-E interventions. The editors include commentary and insights from prominent E-E theoreticians, practitioners, activists, and researchers, representing a wide range of nationalities and theoretical orientations. Examples of effective E-E designs and applications, as well as an agenda for future E-E initiatives and campaigns, make this work a useful volume for scholars, educators, and practitioners in entertainment media studies, behavior change communications, public health, psychology, social work, and other arenas concerned with strategies for social change. It will be an invaluable resource book for members of governmental and non-profit agencies, public health and development professionals, and social activists.