Local Dynamics, Socio-Communitarian Resources and Organizational Rationales

Recommended Prerequisites

Students should have intermediate knowledge of written and spoken Portuguese, English and Spanish.

Teaching Methods

This curricular unit gives priority to lectures and active learning methods, although other methods and strategies will be used in classes.Taking in consideration the theoretical-practicalx of this Curricular Unit students will discuss interventions, analyse legal documents, and compare practices, context in which it is mobilized active method. In adittion to content exposition interrogative (e.g., analysis of practices ans pojects) and demonstrative methods will also be used.     

Learning Outcomes

1.Critically analyse educational models for community intervention and local development.

2.Elaborate circumstantiated diagnoses which identify exclusion or potential exclusion, identifying educational answers that promote integrated and sustainable development in the territories and their communities.

3.Implement atrategies and initiatives that support the development of innovative educational projects which promote  personal and community changes.

4.Plan, develop and assess projects of community intervention and local development.

5.Identify, assess and mobilise social, economical and organizational resources (within and between organizations), aiming at the progressive construcion of educative communities;

6. Critically analyse documents and legal norms that support the the generation and implementation of iniciatives within this specific scope, developing local and community strategies to improve it.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

1.Local development and community intervention: aims; definition of key-concepts; theoretical and metodological fundamentals.

2.Communities as enhancement centres of personal and social changes, promoters of inclusion, and integrated and sustainable development

3.Territories as spaces and times of will and project

- From centralizing policy approaches to the recognition of the territory's specificities.

- Guidelines and structural practices for the promotion of development and citizenship

- Special features of bottom-up approaches

- Comprehension models of local dynamics in Portugal and in the EU

4.Differentiated characteristics of the local and community development projects

5. The dimensions of inclusion/exclusion and strategies of the local and community educational intervention

6. The social-community resources and the promotion of (in)formal networks for continuously promoting equity and participatory democracy.

Assessment Methods

Final assessment
Exam: 100.0%

Continuous assessment
Synthesis work: 50.0%
Project: 50.0%

Bibliography

Silva, A. S.; Sociedade civil, democracia local e desenvolvimento. Democracia: novos desafios e novos horizontes. J. M. L. Viegas, A. C. Pinto & S. Faria. Oeiras, Celta Editora: 11-34., 2004

Hendersen, P. e Vercseg, I, (2010). Community Development and Civil Society. University of Bristol: Policy Press

Castells, M. (2002), A Sociedade em Rede, Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

Jolland, Michael (2001). L'évaluation des politiques éducatives: regard externe et processus interne. In G. Figari & M. Achouche (Eds.),  L' Activité Évaluative Réinterrogée (pp.276-279). Bruxelles: De Boeck Université.

Ferreira, A. I. e Martinez, L. F. (2008). Manual de diagnóstico e Mudança Organizacional. Lisboa: Editora RH.

Ferreira, F. I. S. (2003). O estudo do local em educação: dinâmicas socioeducativas em Paredes de Coura. Braga. Universidade do Minho.