Projectification—an elephant in the rooms of popular education? An action research study of an adult educator’s developmental practices

The aim of this study is to examine projectification in Finnish popular
education from an adult educator’s perspective. The research question is:
How do the projectified ways of working enable and constrain an adult
educator’s developmental practices in different phases of a project? The
research is conducted as a case study based on first-person action
research. The research data consists of the researcher’s notes, meeting
memos, observations, communication material, and group interviews
collected when the first author worked as a coordinator in a popular
education project. The empirical data are analysed using the theory of
practice architectures. The results show that projectified ways of working
enable experimental ways of carrying out adult education interventions,
but at the same time, projects constrain how developmental practices can
take place. In projects, adult educators need to develop rhetorical means
of persuasion rather than reflect on their educational practices. Even
though projects allow for new encounters, they call for goal orientation
rather than open-ended dialogue. The challenges of projects are widely
recognised, but they are kept silent out of fear of risking future funding
opportunities. If popular education wants to contribute to important local
and global debates, further critical self-reflection on projectified practices
is needed.