Fielding Graduate University in Partnership With FEAA Receives Three-year $360,000 Federal Research Grant

Dawn Jackman Murphy

Olympia, WA —Thanks to the work of Fielding doctoral student, Dawn Jackman Murphy, and faculty member, Dr. David Willis, who served as the primary investigator, Fielding Graduate University in partnership with the Folk Education Association of America (FEAA), has received a three-year $360,000 federal research grant through AmeriCorps Office of Research and Evaluation.

This study will work with a distributed national network of Folk Schools and Folk Educators, examining how participatory research approaches may support social cohesion and collaboration between these independent local organizations. This research seeks to strengthen what is, at present, a somewhat decentralized Folk Education Network comprising over 90 organizations that support the craft economy and community participation across the US.

David Blake Willis, Ph.D.

“Folk schools have a long history of inspiring social change by awakening, enlivening, and sustaining the communities in which they are located,” Dawn Murphy, VP of FEAA said. “For folk educators, to be a human being is to accept and take pride in one’s community connection and cultural identity. Individual identity cannot be separated from community, and the wholeness of the individual happens in the connection with community. Folk education means placing our human identity at the core of education.”

The mission of the Folk Education Association of America (FEAA) is to identify, support, and facilitate community-based, learner-led education as a strategic tool for community organizing. FEAA uses the term folk education as an umbrella to include the many traditions of peer education that allow community members to work together to critically analyze oppressive systems, build a knowledge base, and apply this knowledge to create alternative possibilities for institutions that shape our lives. FEAA believes that this democratic method of analysis and action should be one basis of organizing, and they focus their work on supporting this education. This process entails “participants,” “learners,” or “constituents” being seen as leaders, collectively finding ways to use their voices and actions for social change. Folk education, by its nature, is applied research that grows directly out of people’s real-life situations.

Rather than focusing on a single issue area, FEAA’s work seeks to support this type of political education as a tool in a range of community initiatives, including increased economic equality, workers’ rights, work against racism and sexism, as well as alternatives to environmental degradation, environmental racism, militarism, and the weakening power of people’s voices in the face of unaccountable politicians and corporations. Learn more at folkschoolalliance.org.