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.