UNIVERSITY OF CASTILLA-LA MANCHA

Albacete’s Faculty of Education

Subject: Contemporary trends in education
Teacher: Antonio Cebrián Martínez
Academic year: 2017-2018

LEARNING COMMUNITIES:
SCHOOL “LA PAZ” (ALBACETE)

Student:
Antonio Morcillo Martínez
Optional Extra Project
Master degree in Primary Education
2nd course group
 LEARNING COMMUNITIES:
SCHOOL “LA PAZ” (ALBACETE)

1. What is “Learning Communities”?

The concept of “Learning Community” can be defined in a simple way as a group of
people who learn in common, using common tools in the same environment.
Learning Communities is a project based on a set of successful educational actions
aimed at social and educational transformation. This educational model is in line with
international scientific theories that highlight two key factors for learning in today's
society: interactions and community participation.
Learning Communities involve all people who directly or indirectly influence the
learning and development of students, including teachers, family members, friends,
neighborhood members, associations, organizations, volunteers, etc.
The project, which began in compulsory education in 1995, currently has more than 120
Learning Communities centers, one example we can find here in Albacete, with “La
Paz” school.
Due to its success, Learning Communities have been extended internationally, and is
becoming consider as a successful action for the promotion of social cohesion through
education, achieving a double objective: to overcome school failure and improve
coexistence.

Learning Communities arises in response to those needs and challenges of 21st

century education proposing:
a) Overcoming inequalities. A commitment to educational equality in the information
society is necessary to combat situations of inequality and the processes of social
exclusion in which many people find themselves, thus inverting the tendency to failure
of students belonging to families where none of its members has higher education
b) Provide all people with a quality education that responds to the actual needs.
The school is a space where all the people spend a few years so it can be considered the
key space to develop the capacities, the instruments that allow everyone to face the
new situations within the information society. Some of these capabilities are:

 Processing, selection and creation/ application of information.

 Flexibility, team work, decision making, autonomy, etc.

c) Provide all people with the capacity for dialogue and criticism for the
construction of an egalitarian, intercultural and solidary society. The school is a
key socialization space to develop this dialogue capacity.

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The dialogue between different groups, cultures, and the different agents that form part
of the community: students, teachers, families, non-teaching staff, associations,
educators, etc.

Regarding the methodology, it is based on the Paolo Freire’s model, that suggests
abandoning the traditional concept of education (the teacher issues knowledge and the
student accumulates it and stores it and then dumps them into an exam), Freire proposes
a pedagogy in which students become active participants in a learning community
that exists within a social context, and assume responsibility for their own learning.

According to the school we have in Albacete, in CEIP “La Paz”, they look for an active
dynamic in which the child feels involved and can learn through practice. It is
important the role of the families within the school so that children are motivated.

What is used in learning communities?

 Interactive groups (cooperative groups + volunteers).
 Assemblies: to detect previous conflicts and to solve them.
 Home tutoring: teachers go students’ houses to be closed to families, to ease
communication between teacher-student-family.
 Dialogical gathering: they use reading to work emotional intelligence. Through
reading, students can show personality features.

The benefits of learning communities are well known:

 Dialogue is the central pillar of the process. Well managed, greater interaction
and participation can be achieved, and better attention in the teacher/student
relations.
 Shared responsibility, all members of the community participate in the learning
process.
 Knowledge is understood as dynamic, acquiring it does not imply ingesting list
of items to be played in an exam, but build an understanding own of matter.
 It is an active and collaborative process. This helps to avoid the passivity that
frequently exhibits the student in other approaches.

2. BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Díez, J. y Flecha, R. (2010). Comunidades de Aprendizaje: un proyecto de
transformación social y educativa. Revista Interuniversitaria de Formación del
Profesorado continuación de la antigua Revista de Escuelas Normales.
- Elboj, C. y Oliver, P. (2003). Las comunidades de aprendizaje: Un modelo de
educación dialógica en la sociedad del conocimiento. Revista Interuniversitaria de
Formación del Profesorado.
- Video: Presentación comunidad de aprendizaje “La paz” and blog.