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Community‐driven learning activities, creating futures: 30,000 people can't be wrong—Can they?
Author(s) -
Dowrick Peter W.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1007/s10464-007-9089-0
Subject(s) - health psychology , psychology , futures contract , sustainability , community psychology , work (physics) , community organization , literacy , public relations , medical education , social psychology , pedagogy , public health , engineering , business , political science , medicine , nursing , ecology , mechanical engineering , finance , biology
A major vehicle for the practice of community psychology is through the organization of community‐based activities. My colleagues and I have developed many programs for community learning centers, in‐school and after school programs, and community technology centers. In the last 10 years, 30,000 people (mostly children) have participated in activities designed for enjoyment and learning, with a view to adding protective factors and reducing negative factors in at‐risk communities. Development of these programs for literacy, education, life and work skills, has increasingly followed a community responsive model . Within each program, we created explicit images of future success. That is, people could see themselves being successful where they normally fail: self modeling with feedforward . Data reports show that individuals generalized and maintained their new skills and attitudes, but the sustainability of programs has been variable. Analysis of the variations indicates the importance of program level feedforward that brings the future into the present. The discussion includes consideration of how individual‐level and community‐level practices can inform each other.