David Wallace

David Wallace is a lecturer in Community Education.  For the better part of forty years he has been a passionate advocate for change through informal, collaborative and community based education.  Serving as an activist in his youth, his subsequent professional career trajectory has developed through practitioner posts in youth work and adult education, local and strategic management posts in local authorities, and through teaching, management and strategic development roles in academia.

Academic and teaching posts have seen David’s engagement with the implementation of pedagogies for undergraduate and post graduate courses that lead to professional qualifying awards for practice in the fields of teaching, community education and adult literacies in Scotland. In this latter capacity, for six years, he led a Scottish consortium in the design and implementation of a new professional qualification for adult literacies teachers. His research interests have mirrored an engagement with distinctively Scottish practices in community education and with an overarching concern for social justice.  For sixteen years he has taught across a range of modules on the undergraduate and post-graduate community education programmes at the University of Strathclyde and the University of the West of Scotland. Teaching specialsisms have included lifelong learning, community learning and development, adult education, power and empowerment, social justice in professional roles, management, critical pedagogy, practice research methods and youth work).  He currently teaches across the B.A. Community Education programme in the Hamilton campus at University of the west of Scotland.

Specialising in knowledge exchange and other income generating contracts, career earnings (2002-2016) are just over £1.75m.

I am predominately though not exclusively a qualitative researcher utilising ethnography and mixed methods. Critical pedagogy, social policy and social justice are framed by expertise in community education.  Core research interests are embodied in informal education, social purpose democratic education and praxis as represented by learning for activism and citizenship.  These interests are explored through an exposition of community education as routinely represented by the interconnected domains of community based adult learning, youth work and community development.  The sociology of education and associated governance, policy and professional development frameworks provide lenses for critical engagement with these research interests.

I am currently engaged in research into activism in communities and the dialectic or learning through praxis.  Seeking to develop a European network on studies in activism, research funding sources are currently being pursued in the interests of identifying with and collaborating on a European framework for community based activism studies.