Framing educational groupwork

This article sets out a framework for groupwork that is educational in the Freirian (1972) sense of education for liberation as opposed to domestication. It reworks the idea of ‘critical social science’ (Carr and Kemmis, 1986), to describe a form of practice which is not an event but a process of working towards a preferred future. The three-stage process is illustrated with reference to a case study in which the work moves beyond personal development and consciousnessraising to social action. The article may encourage others to consider their own experience more carefully, or to engage critically in a dialogue about their ideas and sources. It concludes with a justification for the value, place and usefulness of theoretical frameworks .