Popular education in an association – expert by experience and work in tandem

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the dynamics of popular education in the Associação Cultural Moinho da Juventude focusing on the expert by experience and the work in tandem. The expert by experience is someone who has personal life experience of poverty and social exclusion and who has also undergone specific training in these areas. The work in tandem is a work methodology involving two individuals and grounded on the complementarity of knowledge. The empirical data was collected using participatory action research. In conceptual terms, the paper is framed by critical theory and popular education.. The research findings point to diversified and continuing popular education dynamics in the initiatives of this association, managed by residents in several interdependent areas (social, cultural, urbanistic, educational, etc) across a long time period. Its practices are geared towards emancipation and the construction of a more just world, with less inequality. Popular education has contributed both to the qualification and the promotion of the power to act of the experts by experience who take action in the neighbourhood, in tandem, in various areas of intervention.