Promote opportunities for community development learning
Overview
This standard is about people learning through action and experience. It involves practitioners enabling people involved in community development to engage in different ways of learning through:
- reflecting on their own and others' experiences,
- learning from others, and
- promoting and creating informal and formal opportunities for people to learn together.
This standard is relevant to all community development practitioners.
The community development standards are arranged in six key areas:
- Understand and practise community development
- Understand and engage with communities
- Group work and collective action
- Collaboration and cross-sectoral working
- Community learning for social change
- Governance and organisational development
This standard is within Key Area Five.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- promote the benefits of learning to community practitioners
- promote the value of learning from communities to organisations and policymakers
- empower people to have the self-belief to access learning opportunities
- use learning opportunities that arise from community activity to share ideas, skills, knowledge and experience amongst practitioners
- identify and promote examples of good practice to aid own and others' understanding of community development practice
- reflect on own practice to inform own future ways of working
- support communities and other organisations to develop learning plans for their organisation's staff and volunteers
- identify resources to meet the learning needs of community development practitioners
- use a range of methods to promote learning opportunities to different organisations and practitioners
- engage in the co-production of learning with learning providers and communities
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
- the role of learning in promoting trust, understanding and respect within and between communities
- barriers to learning and ways to overcome them
- anti-oppressive practice in the provision and delivery of learning
- approaches and methods to facilitate learning
- how to facilitate reflecting on experience and active participatory learning
- methods for sharing learning from diverse experiences, perspectives and practice
- how to identify current and future learning needs for people engaged in community activities
- how the outcomes of learning in community development contribute to promoting change
- the nature of community-based learning and resources available to support it
- current community development learning frameworks and qualifications
- formal and informal learning support networks and how to access them
Scope/range
Scope Performance
Scope Knowledge
Values
Community development is underpinned by a set of values which distinguish it from other, sometimes related, activities in the community. These values are at the core of community development and underpin each of the standards. The values are;
- Social justice and equality
- Anti-discrimination
- Community empowerment
- Collective action
Working and learning together
The following examples illustrate how each of the community development values might inform practice in this standard. These statements are not part of assessment requirements.
opportunities are created for people to learn about the social, political, cultural, environmental and economic issues that affect their communities
- barriers to participation in learning are recognised and steps are taken to overcome them
- different perspectives and experiences are recognised and valued when planning learning
- opportunities for people to learn together and from others is incorporated into learning programmes
- connections are made with the experiences of communities locally, nationally and globally to enhance learning
Behaviours
Skills
Glossary
Anti-oppressive practice and approaches
Challenge the structures of society, and the use of power, where they are being used to maintain the exclusion and marginalisation of some groups.
Community
The web of personal relationships, groups, networks, traditions and patterns of behaviour that can develop among those who share a geographic area or identity or interest.
Collective action
Working together with others to achieve a common aim.
Community development learning
A developmental process that is both a collective and an individual activity, based on the sharing of skills, awareness, knowledge, and experience in order to bring about sustainable desired outcomes.
Community development practitioner
A person doing community development work as a paid worker, unpaid worker, group member, community activist or volunteer.
Community Engagement
A way to build and sustain relationships within and between communities, community groups or organisations, public sector, third sector and other agencies. It provides a foundation for collaboration helping them to understand and collectively take action.
Co-production
Delivering products and services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between service providers, users and the communities in which they live.
Empowerment
A process where people gain control (eg confidence, knowledge, skills, resources) to affect decisions impacting on their communities.
Learning
Can be informal, formal and non-formal:
- Informal refers to experiential and personal learning
- Formal learning refers to what we gain from courses, academic studies and continual professional development
- Non-formal education is that which can be informal or formal but occurs in non-traditional settings e.g. in communities.
Organisation
Any collection of people in the community, voluntary, public and private sectors and any hybrid configuration across these sectors. It refers to community groups, charities, community and social enterprises, statutory agencies, businesses.
Resources
This covers any physical or human resource that supports the community development process and could include technical equipment, IT-based resources, buildings, sources of specialist knowledge, local assets
Support
The work a community development practitioner may undertake to ensure the group can pursue its aims. The types of activities may include: providing information, moral and motivational encouragement, researching particular topics, identifying sources of help, listening to group members' ideas and thought processes and reflecting them back, facilitating decision-making, acting as an advocate, coach, mentor, critical friend.
Technology
This refers to both hardware and online tools/apps which can be used in practice and communication (including social media).