Community education in urban contexts

The educational challenge of educating cities

Abstract

Community education is the theoretical and conceptual framework that responds to the challenges of global educational policy when it comes to guaranteeing the right to education for all. When community education lands in urban contexts, it develops different formats: learning communities, educating cities. An educating city is an urban territory with its own identity that decides to join the worldwide movement of educating cities promoted in the nineties from an international conference that took place in Barcelona (Spain). This commitment to join means that community education is launched: the group of social and educational agents of the city become aware of their educational co-responsibility, and develop concrete actions to articulate support networks and educational dynamism among them. All this dynamic is specified in a educating city project. Educating cities are a social macro-strategy of an inclusive nature, so that all citizens and groups in the city are invited to actively participate in the process. In this sense, the construction of an educating city project, as the backbone of the educating city vision, is a good opportunity to activate meeting and work spaces between people of different cultural, social, religious or linguistic origins.