Collaborative communities: Knowledge and experiences with vulnerable youth in non-formal education

Abstract

 This work is part of the research carried out for the R+D+I project “Ecologies of learning in multiple contexts. Analysis of expanded education projects and citizenship formation”. For this paper we delve into the data of one of the "Case Studies" that is developed in an Intercultural Association, settled in a little village in Andalusia, Spain.

The work method was a narrative-biographical case study, which was developed in a shared process with the participants, using strategies and instruments that enabled participatory narrative meetings. The interviews allowed us to deepen how learning ecologies allow us to go beyond the institutional limits of secondary education and understand how young people learn in non-formal and informal education contexts.

From the results emerged learning processes regarding a constant interactivity, the reconsideration of the times, the group activity necessary to learn, the search for a funny and challenging way of expressing oneself, and the production of audiovisual material to express ethical and social justice questions. One of the contributions of the discussion, interesting and with repercussion in the educational field, and particularly in secondary education, is the need to promote dialogue between formal, non-formal and informal education to rethink a curriculum based on emotional, axiological and interpersonal.