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Master’s in Popular Education at Unicauca reflects on the role of social moveme...

Master’s in Popular Education at Unicauca reflects on the role of social movements today

19 February, 2026

With the participation of Professor Alfonso Torres Carrillo from the National Pedagogical University, the postgraduate program at the University of Cauca held the seminar “Popular Education in Its Relationship with Social Movements.”

The postgraduate program at the University of Cauca, Master’s in Popular Education, held the seminar “Popular Education in its Relationship with Social Movements” on March 28 and 29 at the Faculty of Natural, Exact, and Education Sciences. The event, which featured the participation of Professor Alfonso Torres Carrillo from the National Pedagogical University, allowed for an analysis of the shortcomings of social movements when they remain at the local, personal, or community level and do not extend to more political or societal dynamics that imply transformations.

“One of the advantages of this Master’s program is that a large portion of its students participate in organizations, community processes, and social movements, and some even identify within their own and popular education. This allows for reflection on the prior knowledge they bring, but also offers them a Latin American perspective on what is being done and thought about in other countries, so that we emerge strengthened,” indicated the popular educator, Alfonso Torres.

Regarding the theme of his seminar, the professor notes that a characteristic feature of contemporary societies is the presence of movements, social organizations, and dynamics of collective mobilization that go beyond established institutions. People, united by common interests, act to build new institutions, within which they transform their perspective, gain skills, and develop new values. In other words, there is a whole educational potential in what is happening.

“The place where Popular Education thrives the most is in social movements. However, Popular Education can also take place in schools and other spaces, but historically and in the future, the great stage has been social movements, because in them those new desires and meanings that seek to build alternative forms of social life become visible, and this is possible only through education with solid formative proposals,” adds Professor Alfonso Torres, recalling the renowned Brazilian educator, João Francisco de Sousa.

For Alfonso Torres, another Achilles’ heel of social movements is that, once they gain access to institutional political spaces, they may fall into bureaucratization and highly institutionalized structures that hinder the development of the movements themselves.

“This is the dialectic between the instituting and the instituted. When these movements do not incorporate solid formative proposals, which also carry new content and new ways of working, many times what they end up doing is reproducing precisely what is being criticized. They fall into formats that are contrary to what one would expect.”

Nowadays, Popular Education seeks not only to focus on the intellectual, on the cognitive, but also on all the other dimensions that shape us as human beings. “It is a permanent recreation, affirming the transformative political meaning that gives it its identity, while recognizing that these transformations occur at different scales, on different levels. The intellectual is as important as the emotional, the volitional, everything that makes us human,” concludes the popular educator Alfonso Torres.

The Master’s program in Popular Education arises from the need, both in the region and the country, to train individuals who aim to transform social and educational processes. Furthermore, it proposes a comprehensive and reflective view of reality, recognizing its various factors, in order to construct a collective exercise that motivates processes of transformation of one’s own realities, acknowledging the dialogue of knowledge, critical reflection, and participation as central pillars of its approach.

The axes around which these reflections are articulated are centered on continuous problematization, guiding the various research and in-depth projects of each participant in the Master’s program (both mentors and students).