Collective Learning from and with Social Movements

Abstract

Public policy is a dynamic process of interaction between administration and the collective expression of demands from publics expressed through social movements. Social movement scholars have pointed to the role of collective learning in the articulation of interests and policy intervention. Movements become ’schools’ in which people are educated in issues of concern, as well as the means of realising these, both within existing policy frameworks, and also by intervening to seek to change policy.

How can educators in public administration learn from these social movement processes to enhance our own pedagogy? This chapter will describe work conducted at Queen Margaret University in collaboration with the feminist social movement, drawing particularly on a programme in the policy field of gender-based violence. The chapter draws out certain commonalities in pedagogical methods and approaches which can be applied in other areas of public policy, as well as the challenges that this brings.