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interdiac Common Concepts
1. Key Approaches
Seeking Conviviality: The process of rethinking community diaconia from the perspective of ‘Seeking Conviviality’ started in interdiac and was taken up by the Lutheran World Federation. The main questions to be faced are:
‘How can we live together?’ (‘con vivere’)
‘What kind of economic and social policy supports living together?’
‘How can social action and diaconia contribute to people living a good life together?’
Conviviality is a concept which is inherently relational, and which emphasises being over having. The word ‘conviviality’ derives from the Spanish word ‘convivencia ‘and relates to the historical experience when Moslems, Catholics and Jews lived together in relative peace on the Iberian Peninsula. The more recent use of the word was by Ivan Illich in an oft-quoted book, ‘Tools for Conviviality’. Illich was a Croatian-Austrian with Jewish and Catholic parents. He founded a training and research institute. The aim was to train people who were going from the USA going to work in projects in Latin America, so that they would not impose their US values but work with empathy. He used the word conviviality to mean the autonomous and creative relationship between people, people and their environment and with technology. He considered conviviality to be freedom realised in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. interdiac uses the phrase:
‘Seeking Conviviality – the art and practice of living together’
The phrase focuses on ‘practice’. It provokes the questions:
‘What are the everyday actions and behaviours and the related values and attitudes which support conviviality?’
and
‘Where do we find these practices in our local context?’
It invites reflection on our everyday life in terms of openness and relatedness. But it also invites a reflection on professional practice and the ways in which professionals be they deacons, social workers, pastoral workers or others working in relation to people to reflect how their own ‘service model’ and their own organisation or church is also seeking conviviality. It also has implications for structures of the economy and society and, therefore for politicians and those involved in organising work and economy.
Using the word ‘art’ emphasises that conviviality is built on creativity and imagination – and like any art, seeking conviviality or living in conviviality is based on and may reinforce personal values, vocation and the development of skills through informal and formal learning. It puts emphasis on the creative and intuitive capacity among ‘ordinary people’ and recognises their primary contribution to convivial living together.
CABLE Approach - Community Action Based Learning for Empowerment - the CABLE approach is a learning process rooted in experience, observation, and analysis. It produces personal knowledge which impacts on professional work. It can also be used in community-based work with people who are or want to be involved in working for change. For professionals and long-term volunteers and activists, the CABLE approach leads, by relating biography and the roots of vocation or service leads to a grounded understanding of practice, which is close to everyday life. When used with community or church groups, it identifies the different perceptions of the same issue or area, also based on biography and experience.
Ecological Approach - Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977) pictured human life contexts as a series of concentric circles with the individual nestled at the heart. Each concentric circle represents a level of the ‘system’ which is less immediate and more abstract to the individual. These circles go from microsystem – immediate environment of a person (family, school peers, religious affiliations, neighbourhood, etc) to mesosystem – in the wider environment (school system, service-providers, etc) and then exosystem – is the environment where the person is not directly involved, but which still affects him or her (economical system, political system, etc). And then the broader context embraces these environments with macrosystem of overarching beliefs and values and chronosystem, which implies time dimension. The ecological approach means that we see our own ‘life-world’ and of other people in interactive way, related dynamically to the context. It is important not to see this a system of ‘levels’ because in every person all ‘levels’ are present and therefore this approach helps to appreciate the complex impact of context and situation on those with whom professional diaconal workers work (including their norms and values).
Learning & Practice
Exposure is a part of the CABLE approach to community empowerment and the development of personal vocation and service. It is an inclusive method of learning, which can be understood from the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology. It means taking an experiential learning approach to phenomena, in which the participant has a persona in the learning process. The hermeneutic approach refers to reflection on the experienced phenomena. Close personal reflection, which leads to new forms of analysis in turn motivates people to action.
Empirical observation of the environment is the central focus of the process. The exposure approach does not seek merely to identify the familiar phenomena and artefacts (environment), but to create awareness and analyze what is strange or unfamiliar to the learner and vice versa - and to ask ‘why’. Therefore, in addition to being a structured method of observation and reflection, exposure is also a way of knowledge production. This approach when used with a diverse group supports the process of ‘learning by difference’.
Dialogical Learning always implies the genuine interest of people in each other. It aims at revealing and affirming the relational nature of each person. An important condition for dialogical learning is bringing a holistic ecological view of the person into dialogue. Such a view challenges the model of social status which is reflected through profession, education, nationality or other social constructs. Dialogue helps to build up awareness of the phenomena in the context of biography and socialisation and related ideas, values and attitudes. It is in dialogue, as the open communication of equals and with an ethical consensus, that the ‘power of a word’ and the ‘giving of a name’ to a phenomenon creatively builds up knowledge and fosters an open exploration of the ‘truth’.
Lifelong Transformative Learning - The idea of lifelong education provides an intellectual basis for the comprehensive understanding of education as a continuing aspect of everyday life. However, it is often equated with simply acquiring new (up to date) knowledge and skills. By adding the word ‘transformative’ we signal that learning should be about ‘change’ – personal change and contextual change. The Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Freire sharpened the idea of learning as transformative experience. For Freire, education could never be neutral: its political function is either to liberate or domesticate. In other words, the process of education either renders people passive and unquestioning or creates critical, autonomous thinkers or it renders people passive and unquestioning. In his influential book ‘Pedagogy of Oppressed’ Freire draws a vision of liberating pedagogy and education as a process of transforming humanity, withdrawing from the oppressive obedience and paternalism which is usually supported by traditional education. Instead, learning is a mutual, cooperative endeavour defined by liberation and participatory democracy. Freire’s pedagogy comes in a form of learning based on ‘questioning answers rather than answering questions’. It is highly critical of the ‘banking model’ of education which is based on receiving knowledge from others and collecting it and the linking of learning to gathering certificates and qualifications. Freire envisaged a process of ‘extraordinarily re-experiencing the ordinary’. The cornerstone of his theory is that every person is capable of critically engaging in their world once they begin to question the contradictions that shape their lives. He emphasises that transformative learning begins in lived realities, in stories of the people, in relations of trust, mutuality and respect, and that dialogue is the basis of this praxis.
Phenomenon-Based Learning (PBL) - is a multidisciplinary, constructivist form of learning or pedagogy where learners study a topic or concept with a holistic approach instead of in a subject-based approach. PBL includes both topical learning, where the phenomenon studied is a specific topic, event, or fact, such as ‘unemployment among young people’ and thematic learning, where the phenomenon studied is a concept or idea such as ‘marginalisation’. PBL emerged as a response to the idea that traditional, subject-based learning is outdated and removed from the real-world and does not offer the optimum approach to development of 21st century skills. In interdiac PBL also takes into consideration learning for professional practice, asking which understandings of studied phenomenon are implicated in present practice and how the new learning transforms practice. Therefore, it is crucial to include the perspective of people affected by the phenomenon and then to build clear understanding of the role and motives of the professional practitioners in their engagement with them. Therefore, in its nature, PBL learning aims to start with transformation of the professional practitioners in their understanding of and perspective on the phenomenon. It then proceeds to transformative practice with people and for change in the environment.
See-Judge-Act is a process which was first developed by Josef Cardijn, a Catholic Priest who was concerned about the conditions faced by young workers. He developed a process of reflection leading to action which has three steps. First of all, people as what do the ‘see’ in their everyday work and life. This ‘seeing’ should not remain superficial but should be related to issues which affect people in their everyday situation. The second step (judge) brings the situation and a specific issue into dialogue with scripture and the social teaching of the church. After this evaluation, the third step is to get into action to change the situation/phenomenon which has been ‘seen’. These basic steps were later developed ecumenically in many contexts as an approach to ‘doing theology’ and into liberation theological approaches. interdiac learning processes often implicitly follow these steps.
Research in Practice - In the understanding of interdiac, professional practice can be viewed as a (participatory) process of research. As well as having the professional goals and practices, practitioners are collecting ‘data’ all the time. It can be about a phenomenon as it is experienced or about the situation in which they are working. The professional should organize and analyze this data preferably with the people affected where possible. interdiac is developing the concept of ‘practitioner-researcher’ which will give a structured framework for this process.
Practice Related Concepts
System World and Life World - ‘System World’ refers to the institutions and organisations which surround us, such as municipalities, government job offices, social service organisations, law and police in the public sector, the institutional church, as well as private and business systems. These systems have their own (often related) norms, codes, and values. ‘Life World’ refers to the everyday life of people and the communities and groups to which they belong. The diverse life worlds each have their own codes, norms, and values. People often find themselves being defined by the ‘system world’, which imposes rules, categorization and procedures on the ‘life world. The German scholar Jürgen Habermas, who developed these ideas, called it the ‘colonization of life world by system world’. Usually for social/diaconal worker it presents a challenge because he or she is expected to act between these worlds, being on the border, which is an unclear or ambiguous ‘liminal’ space. The second challenge is that the worker recognizes the diversity of the life worlds in any context and has to work on that, towards convivial life together,
Service Model - each person, as a worker has their own deeply rooted personal service model which is rooted in their life experience, beliefs, and values. In working life, the worker has to adopt and adapt a specific professional service model. Professional service models are produced through a wide range of conflicting demands imposed by the organisational and structural environment. These professional service models shape work with service-users. Therefore, each worker is involved in navigating the difference between their ‘personal’ service model and that of the profession and organisation at which they are employed. Increasingly professional service models are target and outcome driven, and practice may be elaborated in a protocol that has to be followed. There is usually a trade-off between personal norms, values and ethics (vocation) and professional definitions and institutional codes of practice. On the one hand, the different requirements of working life and expertise require a very flexible professional identity on the other hand and a strong self-image, perception of oneself is needed, so that flexibility is a requirement of different possible actions. Sharper awareness of one’s own personal deeply rooted service model as well as background, values and an awareness of the choices are the key-starting points for finding balance between strong self-image and flexibility. In continuous professional life, workers need the know-how to challenge the re-definition of re-shaping of professional identity. And consequently, it opens new perspectives on social, youth and diaconal work.
