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23 - Community-Based Education

from Part VI - Education and Engaged Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2024

By
Moisés G. Contreras ,
Virginia Downing ,
Carl D. Greer  and
Bianca J. Baldridge
Edited by
Brian D. Christens
Brian D. Christens
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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Summary

In their rich history, community-based educational spaces (CBESs) have afforded communities room to build young people’s critical consciousness, to organize for social change, and to create learning environments that foster a political – and, in certain respects, a more meaningful – education. Broadly speaking, CBESs meet the specific needs of communities, such as providing access to food and opportunities for learning and identity exploration. In this chapter, the authors overview the scholarly literature related to CBESs and their power-building features that facilitate community power and psychological empowerment processes, as well as the tensions in CBESs that can hinder power-building. Amid this discussion, the authors highlight Urban Underground, a CBES in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as an organization that exemplifies the humanizing education, youth empowerment, and power-building possible within CBESs. Through this chapter, the authors contend that CBESs have the power to bring about social change in their communities and spur transformative change for those they serve.

Keywords

community-based educational spacesyouth empowermentrelational organizing
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Community Empowerment , pp. 580 - 605
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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