ARE SELF-ORGANIZED COMMUNITES A LEARNING SITE? (A case study of informal learning and social action in Maribor, Slovenia)

Апстракт

Article deals with participatory democracy as an informal experience-based learning process in communities. It investigates the mutual community learning that takes place through collaborative public action and elaborates the insights into the processes of social learning in self-organized district communities’ assemblies in the second largest Slovenian city, Maribor.
Research, conducted in 2015 and 2016, is based on observations of democratic participatory practices in different communities, 12 interviews with participants of self-organized community assemblies and a focus group with self-organized community assemblies’ member. Following the Schugurensky’s research (2013), where he developed methodology for informal learning that occur in the public deliberation and community direct decision-making process, in our research we tried to reveal participant’s personal biography on civic and political engagement and reasons to join self-organized communities, participant’s positive and negative experiences with it and democratic and political learning. The ‘learning outcomes’ were measured through a series of indicators considering knowledge, values, skills and practices and by 5-point Likert scale. Comparison with related scientific work, especially with Schugurensky pioneer study on informal learning through participatory budgeting by assemblies in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay (Schugurensky 2013; 2001; 2000; Schugurensky & Pinnington 2010), is made. Results show a strong emphasis on the collective nature of learning, the production of knowledge from below and ‘learning democracy by doing it’. Self-organized community assemblies create epistemic communities where new knowledge is produced, shared and communicated, and where several social learning strategies are generated.