Enlivening popular education in community development: Action research with neighborhood Centres and Landcare groups in Australia

ABSTRACT

This article, drawing on an action research project, argues for the revitalized use of two under-utilized practice frameworks for community development in the pursuit of social change. The two frameworks – Participatory Development Practice and the Spiral Model of Community Education – support a citizen-led approach to practice, one that focuses on the relational and dialogical elements of group processes. Starting with stories of citizens’ lived experiences, a structural or community analysis about the root causes of oppression is enabled and supports community action that can be sustained over time. Findings from the action research showed that groups benefitted from foregrounding their own need for social sustainability and that the educational approach of Freire helped them shift from an antagonistic conflict mode to a dialogical or agonistic conflict mode which created confidence to engage in difficult conversations supporting their community development efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory development practice
• spiral model of community education
• neighborhood centers
• landcare

Introduction

With a unique conceptual framework bringing together two practice theories from the radical tradition of community development – Participatory Development Practice (Kelly & Westoby, 2018) and the Spiral Model of Community Education (Prokopy & Castelloe, 1999) – this article examines how participants in an action research project learn and value a citizen-led approach to practice, one that focusses on the relational and dialogical elements of group processes.

The nine-month action-research project involved partnering with two Australian state-based peak bodies¹ representing two sectors, Landcare and neighborhood centers. The project aimed to enhance their organizational mission and goals with knowledge informed by these stronger theoretical frameworks for community development (CD) practice.

The term “Landcare” has various meanings and can be viewed as an “ethic” or philosophy of stewardship and action against land degradation, a grassroots social movement, and a national model of Natural Resource Management (Ottesen, 2019). Neighborhood centers or houses in Australia are non-government social service organizations fostering place-based community development activities and programs. They provide supportive and welcoming spaces for community members to connect, learn, and grow (Neighbourhood Centres Queensland, 2021).

As is explored further in the results and discussion, participants in the action research came to value their own need for social sustainability as being equally as important as environmental sustainability. Second, because of existing vested interests and what we perceived as a type of binary consciousness (“Us” versus “Them”), groups reported they were making value judgments of others creating conditions for antagonistic conflict rather than co-operation or at least agonistic conflict, and thus stymieing their community development efforts. The adoption of these practice frameworks increased their confidence to engage in difficult conversations.

The context for our partners and background

The Landcare movement in Australia emerged in the 1980s with groups forming to promote sustainable natural resource management and conservation through education programs and on-ground works to rehabilitate, regenerate and revegetate land, soils, and waterways. Australia’s land, water and biodiversity are viewed as the foundation of human existence, providing abundantly for agriculture, tourism, resource industries and recreation. Natural systems are under extreme pressure with Australia’s current water crisis, extreme weather becoming the norm and the overall status of biodiversity being poor or worsening (National Landcare Network, 2019).

Landcare groups achieve a diverse range of positive environmental and community outcomes to increase social capital, community capacity and extend knowledge to achieve a myriad of environmental, economic, and health values (Ottesen, 2019). With over 100,000 volunteers and 5000 “Friends of” groups in Australia – Bushcare, Coastcare, Dunecare, and Rivercare, important partnerships form with farmers, landholders, and government.

Numbering approximately 1000, neighborhood centers or houses in Australia can be described as a contemporary expression of the global Settlement House movement, which commenced with settlements founded in the United Kingdom, United States and other countries in the late 19^th century. The International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers (IFS&NC) argue that the key idea behind settlements is that people concerned about social issues are only effective in making improvements if they have direct experience of existing problems by living among people in need and “settling” into their neighborhoods (IFS&NC, 2019).

In Australia, neighborhood centers are the main employers of community development practitioners and a great challenge for contemporary practice is that it is ensconced in a service delivery approach to or for clients, as opposed to the intent of community development being a citizen project (Lathouras, 2012). Watkins (2019) writes about the original intent of settlement houses and discusses the erosion of their mutual accompaniment focus because of a capitalist service economy. With the emergence of the welfare state in the 1930s and 1940s, a depoliticizing of citizens prepared to address structural injustice occurred. The model of voluntary residents partnering with neighbors in settlement house neighborhoods has transformed into a growing cadre of paid professional staff, working for those “in need of services” (Watkins, 2019, p. 58). People’s welfare has literally become the business of others within the flourishing nonprofit sector.

Based on these contexts, conversations with the two partners helped us co-design the project and informed the conceptual framework for the research. The project came about because of the lack of strong frameworks in community development practice and because its emancipatory potential was not being realized. The circumstances facing our partners led us to posit at the outset that the radical tradition of community development, drawing on Popular Education theory through the Spiral Model of Community Education (Prokopy & Castelloe, 1999) would be helpful to their organizational mission and goals. To further support the aims of our partners, this educational approach was supplemented with another robust practice framework enabling highly participatory community work known as Participatory Development Practice (PDP) (Kelly & Westoby, 2018).

Traditions of CD and issues of citizen inclusion and de-politicization

Community development draws from many different philosophical traditions that inform practice. The wisdom embedded in those traditions means practitioners, either consciously or unconsciously, are cultivating a sense of being on “firm ground” or perhaps “standing on the feet of giants” (Westoby et al., 2020, p. 3). Despite the truism that democratic process work is central to CD, issues about citizen inclusion and their potential de-politicization through CD are highlighted in the following review of relevant literature.

Well-established traditions include Assets Based Community Development (ABCD), first theorized by Kretzmann and McKnight (1993). With an emphasis on inside-out development, community mapping processes focus on assets and capabilities rather than needs and deficiencies, resulting in energy being directed toward development opportunities at the community level (Coady International Institute, 2022). Also within this tradition is the Community Capitals Framework (CFF) which is a process to quantify social assets (human, social, cultural, and political capitals) (Mueller et al., 2020). Drawing on such strength-based approaches, and particularly the aim to build social capital reflects central tenants of CD. Writing about ABCD, with its focus on consensus-building and “win-win” relations, DeFilippis (2012, p. 35) critiques these types of approaches as forms of “neoliberal communitarianism.” The concepts have a core belief that society is conflict-free and thus results in the de-politization of the practice.

Radical community organizing (Reisch, 2013) on the other hand, is another community development tradition that has an analysis of inequality and stratification in society, acknowledging inherent conflicts that exist in society whereby certain groups gain and hold power and influence over others. Community development from this perspective has a core focus on access to basic necessities: employment, food, shelter, health care, housing, education, and social services. With a structural analysis of the root causes of oppression, this practice involves strategies and tactics to wrest power from the powerful creating opportunities to challenge capitalist relations and assist those groups that believe are oppressed to achieve gains (Popple & Quinney, 2002).

Community planning, sometimes referred to as social planning, are processes where communities define their needs, and how existing services and resources can be used to best effect (Ife, 2016). Participatory planning processes are often led by non-government agencies with a social planning mandate, or local government bodies also establish mechanisms for planning at the community level (Ife, 2016). First theorized by Kania and Kramer (2011), a newer type of planning practice that has been shown to lead to sustained community development outcomes is Collective Impact (CI). Their research has shown that CI processes have five conditions that when used in unison produce powerful results: a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support organizations (Kania & Kramer, 2011). Walzer et al. (2016) argue that CI is particularly useful in larger regional settings as it uses a collaborative approach to address complex social issues. In Australia, CI is a practice in the early stages of development as a framework for change and has also been criticized for its failure to adequately address equity, include community members in decision-making, and seek policy and systemic change (Commonwealth of Australia, 2017). Evaluators of projects employing CI argue that they are more likely to be effective if community members are included in decision-making and evidence for effective strategies is examined (Commonwealth of Australia, 2017).

Conceptual framework

Popular education is a tradition well known in parts of the world, but not a theory of which Australian practitioners have deep knowledge. The process sees a shift from community members’ mere inclusion in decision-making to their integrality. First theorized by Paulo Freire (1970) it is a form of community education that is rooted in the personal concerns and hopes of groups of people; is overtly political and critical of the status quo; and committed to social change (Etmanski, 2014). At the same time as Freire’s radicalizing practice was transforming adult literacy in Latin America, his contemporary in the United States, Miles Horton, co-founded the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Horten was using similar processes to work with poor and working-class people, and for over 60 years Highlander taught leadership skills to thousands of people in the face of segregation laws challenging social, economic and political structures of the segregated south of the United States. This work continues today through the Highlander Research and Education Centre (see https://highlandercenter.org/).

Popular education and radical community organizing intersect, in that they both rely on having a structural analysis of the root causes of oppression to inform action. But Popular Education focuses on the specific educative practices leading to conscientization. Theorized first by Freire (1970), this is a form of radical education that starts with democratic processes for learning and aims to replace, transform and rebuild society, thus allowing for equal participation in society. Importantly, when leading the Highlander School, Horton’s perspective about community organizing was that practitioners needed to view themselves as radical educators first (albeit of the radical, not reformist kind), and organizers second. This was to ensure that any organizing that followed was highly participatory, fostering democratic decision-making and was owned by all involved (Lathouras, 2020).

As a contemporary expression of this theory, the Spiral Model of Community Education was used for our current research as an approach to assist participants to tell their stories, develop a structural analysis of the root causes of issues and to strategize collective actions. See Figure 1 below. The five-step model is built on the thinking of Bell et al. (1990) and involves: i) sharing and documenting individual stories with the use of stimulus questions; ii) working with people to make connections among their experiences, and collectively “look for patterns” in the data; iii) examining the root causes or structural factors of issues by introducing outside information to complement people’s own knowledge; iv) applying the skills and knowledge learned with strategies for actions; and v) taking action and returning to the group to reflect upon that action (The Change Agency, 2016).

Figure 1. The spiral model – dialogue for collective action.

Perhaps, a lesser-known tradition in global North contexts outside Australia is Participatory Development Practice (PDP). For the past 45 years in Australia, a cohort of CD teachers and practitioners associated with The University of Queensland (Lathouras, 2010) have learned from grassroots practitioners in South Asia (particularly India) and development theories as articulated by the likes of Robert Chambers, to develop an approach known as Participatory Development Practice (Kelly & Westoby, 2018). This approach, best understood through its “method framework” posits an interconnected framework across levels of practice. See Figure 2 below.

Figure 2. The participatory development practice method framework.

Starting with Implicate Method (Kelly & Westoby, 2018, pp. 29–58), practitioners methodically and reflexively position themselves and find their unique voice for the work. Finding its ultimate expression in an individual practice framework that represents practitioners’ best efforts to name important embedded values, principles and theory, it literally frames their work, guiding their thinking, decision-making and actions.

At the heart of PDP is the craft of Micro Method (Kelly & Westoby, 2018, pp. 59–87), the dialogical practice used to build purposeful and helpful relationships. Arguably the most crucial process of community development, dialogue requires the suspension of assumption-making and interpretation, enabling an accurate understanding of the perspectives of community members. Drawing on heuristic logic (Kelly & Sewell, 1988), keywords are elicited through dialogue providing a focal point that evokes a common understanding between storyteller and listener/questioner (practitioner), drawing people together around shared human realities. Such relational work enables a bonding process, inviting people to commit to action with others.

Mezzo Method (Kelly & Westoby, 2018, pp. 89–120), is the tentative work where steps are taken to form participatory action groups. These processes could be seen as tentative because principles of mutuality and reciprocity are central. The aim is to build self-help and mutual aid amongst group members, and to maintain the community-led or bottom-up nature of this work practitioners need to resist a co-ordinating type of stance, but rather lead from behind. This is a critical aspect of the practice because otherwise, community members may look to the practitioners for leadership, rather than working to create the synergistic energy of the group that enables members to band together and take ownership of their projects. Dialogical conversations are facilitated across the group enabling projects to emerge, and if the aim is to sustain the practice over longer periods of time, community organizations may also form.

The formation of community organizations is the work of Macro Method (Kelly & Westoby, 2018, pp. 122–146). Referred to as “people’s organizations” community development processes build organizations that are community-based and community-owned. They are founded on the principle of subsidiarity, which foregrounds linkages between the mezzo and macro-levels, ensuring the latter does not control the former. Practitioners privilege downward rather than upward in the organization, and guide practice in partnerships with the poorest or most dispossessed. If groups are considering structuring into an organizational form, careful and critical questions and thinking are required. These include knowledge and skills for governance and management, checks and balances for public accountability, and if there are deficits, the willingness to build capacity over time.

The final methodological process in the Kelly and Westoby framework is Meta Method, with an emphasis on making connections from the local to the global (Kelly & Westoby, 2018, pp. 147–169). This method involves structuring processes with regional, national, and global networks or institutions, and incorporates the grounded, person-to-person, group-to-group, and group-to-organization elements of micro, mezzo, and macro methods. With a structural analysis of the root causes of poverty and oppression practitioners’ thinking and action move beyond the local. Models of practice include locality linking, structural partnerships and the formation of “people’s institutions” (p.164), that is, those with the same participatory ethos as central to all the methods, enabling the qualities and voice of the people experiencing the issues at the local level. With similarities to the community organizing tradition, people’s movements or nascent social movements also feature in this method and involve campaigning and advocacy through direct social action. Significantly though, with integrality as a key principle, the local level provides the context, motivation, and political shape of any action.

Concluding this review of relevant literature, the common thread that informs the theoretical underpinnings and methodological aspects of the research draws from the critical tradition of community development (Ledwith, 2011). Key ideas in the critical community development tradition seek to build social solidarity and provide a lens through which existing societal structures and practices are examined pursuing more egalitarian, supportive, and sustainable alternatives for a “world as it could be” (Shaw, 2007, p. 34). Paulo Freire’s (1970) transformative theory of lived reality, where dialogue is based on relations of trust, mutuality, and respect forms the basis of praxis. Moreover, Ledwith’s (2011, p. 70) “critical” approach to community development posits that storytelling holds the potential for radical change in everyday life. This occurs when “counternarratives” emerge from dialogue (Ledwith, 2011, p. 71), or when CD practitioners as radical educators, devise a range of imaginative learning opportunities based on people’s stories, so they learn how to analyze their experiences and take action in the hope of transforming those experiences.

Materials and methods

Banks et al. (2017) argue that action-oriented and participatory research is increasingly popular in academic, policy, and practice contexts contributing to an evidence base for policy and practice. In this type of research, actors work together to co-produce or co-create a research process, challenging the more established linear model, when through recursive cycles results are fed into the system being researched, changes made, and further research is undertaken.

Drawing from this research paradigm, our partnerships with two state-based peak bodies ensured the design of the research was tailored to our partner’s needs, which was to assist their organizational mission with training and support for community development practices. To form two distinct research teams with each partner, we drew from Kelly and Westoby’s (2018) participatory development Mezzo Method to form purposeful relationships enabling the movement from “I” and “You” to a collective “We,” fostering empowerment and capacity building (Kelly & Westoby 2018, p. 119).

Project design and data collection

Human ethics approval was obtained from the University of the Sunshine Coast and the project was designed to move through three phases. See Table 1, Project Design, below.

Table 1. Project design.

Project phase	Dates/Networks	Activities	Data collection methods and analysis
1. Preparation		Establish research teams; Human Ethics clearance; Recruit participants; gain consent.
2. Intervention	Neighbourhood Centres Network June – July 2019 December 2019	a) Three one-day popular education knowledge exchange workshops; b) Community of practice workshop exploring PDP.	Pre and post-workshop questionnaires; Transcribed notes from Spiral Model processes.
	Landcare Network August 2020 August 2020	a) A PDP workshop; b) A one-day popular education knowledge exchange workshop.	Pre and post-workshop questionnaires; Transcribed notes from Spiral Model processes.
3. Reflection	July 2019 – December 2020 – Neighbourhood Centre Network November 2020 – Landcare Network	Meetings with peak body research partners. Community of practice on-line meeting.	Survey responses collated and analysed. Notes from CoP Researchers’ journal notes analysed.

The first “preparation” phase set up the research teams with the peak body workers in leadership roles. Those workers were responsible for promoting the research project through their networks and inviting potential participants, their members, into the study. They also attended all workshops and activities and were pivotal in the subsequent reflection phase.

The second, “intervention” phase commenced when working with the neighborhood centers sector and with participation from 20 of the 35 neighborhood centers in their state-based network. Three workshops were held in June and July 2019 in three separate regional locations, but near the local neighborhood centers in which the participants were based. Fifty people in total attended one of three workshops. Participants were comprised of paid workers and volunteers engaged in programs operating in their local neighborhood centers. Entitled a “Popular Education Knowledge Exchange”, the purpose of the workshops was the explore the Spiral Model of Community Education and its application to participants’ diverse practice contexts. At the conclusion of the workshops, participants were invited to form communities of practice with support from us and the peak body workers and to continue exploring the practice in-situ. Resulting from that work and to supplement participants’ knowledge about CD, in December 2019 one follow-up workshop with 15 people was held with the second author to provide further training and support in the Participatory Development Practice (PDP) approach (introducing the “method framework” articulated above).

Based on our experience with the neighborhood centers sector, where participants wanted more opportunities for CD reflection not just the Spiral Model, with the Landcare sector we adapted and co-joined the two theoretical practice traditions into one event over 2 days. Seventeen participants attended a PDP workshop held in July 2020 one afternoon and evening, followed by a full-day Popular Education Knowledge Exchange and Spiral Model workshop the next day with 15 of those same participants. One participant was a paid worker for local government, two were paid workers in the environment sector and the remaining were volunteer members and activists of various Landcare and Coastcare groups in the region. Our reflection was that a more general workshop on participatory community development followed by the specific training on the Spiral Model made for a deeper engagement of the theory and was more pedagogically helpful to participants’ learning. These participants too were invited to form communities of practice with support from us and the peak body workers.

Participatory development practice workshops

These were a facilitated journey through the participatory and dialogical approach to community development over a full day. Processes assisted participants to explore: Martin Buber’s theory of dialogue and its application in micro-level practice; Paulo Freire’s theory of banking versus dialogue and its application to mezzo-level practice; and macro-level practices, such as structuring the work, project, and program cycles and partnership building.

The popular education knowledge exchange workshops

These commenced with introductions and a questionnaire to gain an overview of the most pressing needs for their organizations in terms of community development; to gauge knowledge of Popular Education theory and its relevance to their practice; and their hopes for participation in ongoing communities of practice.

At the neighborhood centers’ workshops, the next session entitled “Seeing with Head, Heart and Soul” warmed the groups up to dialogue with stimulus statements:

1. I have come to this knowledge exchange on CD and pop ed because …

2. When I think about the state of the world …

3. When I think about my contribution to the world …

At the Landcare workshop, the stimulus statements for dialogue were slightly tailored to that group:

1. The work I do (unpaid and paid) in the environmental sector is …

2. I have come to this workshop because …

3. I stay motivated in this work because … .

This was followed by the main experiential learning component applying the Spiral Model of Community Education. To enable the collective conversations across a diverse group of people we chose to have a dialogue about something everyone could relate to, that is, how technology is impacting our lives. Stimulus statements included: “I love my iphone/ipad because it enables me to … .” and “The downside of smart phones/computer in my life are … .”

Enabling technical, practical, and emancipatory knowledge (Westoby & Shevellar, 2012), the Spiral Model was taught, experimented with, and reflected upon. In practice, the first step of the model to hear people’s stories can also use a Freirean code. Known as “codification” (Freire, 1974) it is a way of triggering dialogue that would support emancipatory knowledge and can be a range of stimuli – a poem, short reading, cartoon, or song pertinent to the subject matter of the dialogue. For our conversations about technology, we followed the stimulus statements with a code, Prince Ea’s (2014) rap poem “Can we auto-correct humanity?” This elicited rich stories and analyses about how technology is impacting our lives. For example, about the politics of attention and how being connected to social media and many other facets of modern life is destroying our ability to concentrate (Hari, 2022); as well as issues with surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019), where the systematic extraction of internet-use data is used to predict consumer behavior.

The final afternoon workshop session explored the use of codes and the art of designing a good question, tailoring content to the issues participants indicated the model could be useful. This was followed by a process to elicit feedback about participants’ interest in forming communities of practice going forward, and a post-questionnaire to gauge their knowledge of Popular Education theory and expectations about the application of the Spiral Model for their community development practice.

The phase three “reflection” phase of the project was informed by analysis of the survey responses and captured reflections from meetings with our peak body research partners and the community of practice (CoP) group that formed following the workshops. No CoP groups formed with us as researchers from the neighborhood center sector. We suspect that a strong culture of consuming “training” for professional development may have influenced this and our project about the Spiral Model was just one on their professional development schedule for that year. One CoP group formed with the Landcare sector and is discussed in the Results.

Results

“Back to basics”

As researchers, we were keen to find out if the Popular Education tradition could disrupt or challenge existing thinking about community development. For the neighborhood centers, despite being the organizations in Australia that mostly employ community development practitioners, we found their knowledge of CD practice was limited. This became evident at the Popular Education Knowledge Exchange when participants requested follow-up training on community development method. Reflection with the peak body research partner concurred with Watkins’ (2019) arguments about settlement houses being ensconced in the capitalist service economy, where the nonprofit sector service culture is strong and has synergies with our Australian context. Neighborhood centers operate as hubs of community development, service navigation, place-based service delivery, social connection, activity groups, education, and advocacy (Queensland Families and Communities Association, 2020). The extent to which these activities are holding the citizen-led, participatory ethos though, can be questioned. One peak body worker participant reflected,

We had community development and neighbourhood centres in common and everyone had a common goal to make our communities better. But [the workshops] got them thinking about going back to basics again.

This thirst for ongoing basic community development knowledge was apparent with the peak body representatives requesting further training, where another 15 people attended a PDP workshop.

Valuing the “social”

For the Landcare sector groups, a key theme that emerged from the workshops is that groups are so focused on their environmental actions – often in forms of resistance to “the opposition” – that they give little attention to the social both within their own groups (the social ties that ensure activists can keep working together cooperatively) and with those “Other” social groups seen to be the opposition or enemy. With a focus primarily on their on-ground environmental conservation efforts, one participant commented that “there is not a very strong facilitation culture here” – referring to the caring attention to relationships within the activist group. The community of practice (CoP) with Landcare groups revealed participants are so focused on the environmental elements of practice, this tends to undermine effectiveness and impact as the social is deeply intertwined with the ecological.

The exposure to community development methods was readily taken up by members of the CoP group. For example, at an annual general meeting, the same participant quoted above led a session with her wildlife preservation group when they were considering matters about how to attract new members. She facilitated reflection with the existing members about why they joined and stay involved in their volunteer work. This led to a deeper discussion about how to mentor new members and build relationships with younger people. She commented, “we’ve had more communication and respect since the process was used; we know now how to listen to each other and be more strategic.” A different CoP participant highlighted the themes of “respect” and “connection” stating they have also been applied to another group’s engagement with First Nations young people, to instill greater cultural understanding between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people in terms of protecting landscapes and waterways. A third member of the CoP group reflected on a threat in her neighborhood when the local government authority announced they are turning a nearby parkland with views to the sea into a concreted carpark. This was the authority’s solution to an issue of “hooning.”² This participant facilitated a delegation to the local government to express their dissenting views about the proposal. She shared how,

You [workshop trainers/researchers] are so right in promoting that the attendees need to have their say. I kept thinking, “just let them talk.” They did. Their concerns in front of our Mayor were clear. And the solutions they offered were sound as well. The results promise to be good for us.

Another critical reflection that emerged from the CoP was the degree to which members of environmental groups tend to “Other” people who do not think like them. An example was offered from a member of a Coastcare group involved in dune restoration, who clear weeds from existing native plants with the aim to increase habitat for native bird species. These same beach dunes attract recreational trail bike riders and four-wheel drivers whose vehicles cause damage to the dunes. The workshops and use of the two frameworks helped the activists move from an either/or frame whereby the Other (trail bike and four-wheel drivers) are seen as antagonistic enemies toward a framework that would enable more dialogue, or at least respectful agonistic conflict (Mouffe, 2013) and possible points of similarity could be built upon rather than difference. This was not to deny difference, but it was to work from a place of dialogue and respectful difference rather than just antagonistic focus on difference. For example, drawing on the dialogical tradition of participatory community development, the emphasis is about persuading your opponents in contrast to beating your enemy.

The Spiral Model works

When asked via qualitative survey about popular education and ways participants intend to apply the theory in their practice, it was confirmed that the Spiral Model of Community Education is valued by practitioners and activists, and their responsiveness to dialogical learning in a community space showed that the model enables a citizen-led ethos for community development, as the literature espouses. The way the model starts at step one with stimulus questions, statements or a Code that elicits people’s stories was valued. One participant commented, “Stories with morals or values always impact, it helps the lesson to be learned.” Another highlighted the value of suspending judgmental thoughts about others when in dialogue and to, “see what the people see.”

The final workshop session on the art of the good question and designing codes was particularly helpful when participants started to think more critically about the people with whom they wish to develop community, especially those perceived as having differing views or values from their own, eg the dune conservers and people who use the dunes for recreation. One participant said they started to think about how “to connect people emotionally with place,” crucial to their goals for environmental sustainability. Another participant commented, “The process helps with moving forward, eliciting stories but not with an agenda – just a context and seeking to achieve collective criticality.” These comments resonate with Ledwith’s (2011) critical CD approach, where radical educators devise a range of imaginative learning opportunities based on people’s stories and lived experiences.

Discussion

The aim of the research was to enliven popular education in community development. The research design, including full-day workshops exploring popular education methods and participatory development practice, was helpful and foregrounded the relational and dialogical elements of group formation processes. The apparent effectiveness of the training was ascertained by asking participants in the post-workshop survey, “How well do you think you understand popular education?,” and “What are your expectations of being able to use the spiral model processes in the future?.” Across the four workshop groups, 46 participants gave positive responses about their understanding and future application in their practice, while nine did not respond. Despite being invited into a partnership arrangement, and the hope for a longer-term relationship, we did not manage to establish several ongoing communities of practice as we hoped for in the research design. Our analysis is that: 1. the dominant culture to consume “training” created a type of knowledge transfer with we researchers/trainers seen as the experts. This is the opposite approach to knowledge development as articulated by Freire (1970), where a transformative theory of lived reality means dialogue is based on relations of trust, mutuality and respect which forms the basis of praxis; and with praxis implying an ongoing journey of action-reflection; and 2. The limitations of any “training intervention” whereby the learnings of the training event get swept away by the tide of busy-activism – is the very thing that appears to be undermining people’s attention to reflection and caring for the social.

A further reflection is that community development needs to draw from the radical community organizing tradition more with its emphasis on the stratification of society. With a focus on the social capital-building aspects of CD, but not working with communities to develop an analysis about poverty, class, un/employment, affordable housing etc., CD is missing the critical edge or analysis about the structural factors causing people’s poorer well-being, what Kenny (2011) refers to as “edgy practice.” Our research indicates that a framework for CD including popular education can help communities develop such an analysis. The Spiral Model’s third step, where participants examine the root causes or structural factors of issues impacting communities, enables appropriate responses and strategies for action.

A final reflection speaks to the strong “service” culture, discussed earlier, as the context for neighborhood centers. We observed the need for and responded to the request for basic community development knowledge and skills. The capitalist service economy that is dominating these types of organizations is what Watkins (2019) argues is eroding their original intent of mutual accompaniment, and we posit such accompaniment is crucial for a citizen-led developmental process. Pragmatically, we also acknowledge that neighborhood centers exist in a social services funding context and rely on such income for their financial security, which in turn supports workers’ livelihoods. The concern is when the delivery of services to communities diminishes the time it takes for practitioners to engage in the slower, more participatory citizen-led processes of CD. This begs the question if it is possible to do both types of practice simultaneously.

Conclusion

Lathouras (2010, pp. 25–26) argues that it is, and theorized a “developmental continuum,” one where practitioners traverse between bottom-up (citizen-led) practice and top-down practice (services delivered to people). Arguably, this requires a nuanced and keen analysis of where one’s practice might fall on the continuum at any stage of work with communities, and how one might work to push that practice into a more developmental, bottom-up frame when opportunities arise to do so. This alludes to the need for practitioners to work with a number of traditions and frameworks, employing differing skills and the potential for communities of practice to support the development of knowledge about what these practices look like and their efficacy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of the Sunshine Coast’s Industry Collaboration Grant.

Notes

1. Peak bodies in Australia represent an entire sector of industry or the community to government, undertaking advocacy, promotion, training, and networking with member organizations.

2. In Australia, a “hoon” is a pejorative term for a person who deliberately drives a vehicle in a reckless or dangerous manner to provoke a reaction from onlookers.