Youth and adult education, popular education and awareness processes: intersections in daily life

Abstract

This article presents relationships between popular education and Youth
and Adult Education (YAE). It also names some possibilities of contribution
from community social psychology to educators’ practice, in his/her
educational/literacy work at the present days. Common epistemological
origins are identified since the sixties, when literacy works, awareness and
social movements started. Gradually, some differentiation among those two
areas happened, while the country entered in its redemocratization period.
Similarities, differences and intersections are identified among those two
areas, especially some ‘reflections’ direct to educators’ practice, which are
based on Paulo Freire’s philosophy and popular emancipation practices and
guided by community social psychology works. The text is followed by a
psychosocial analysis of tensions and paradoxes that appear in educators’
practice and analyses the psychosocial repercussions and impacts that can
contribute to progresses or backwards in the awareness processes, both in
relation to educators and students. At the end, some suggestions are presented
to the educators’ formation according to a perspective of awareness and
participation in daily life.