Shifting democracies: A case study of how the 2021 coup changed an alternative education programme in Myanmar

This study examines how an elite alternative adult education programme in Myanmar taught within, for, and through democracy – and how its operations ‘democratically’ shifted due to the 2021 military coup. Former faculty and students of the programme conducted a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study using a framework adopted from Sant’s (2019) theoretical review of democratic education. The research collective analyses how the programme embodied eight different discourses of democratic education (elite, liberal, neoliberal, multicultural, deliberative, participatory, critical, and agonistic) before the coup and how these democratic models transformed after the coup. The collective found that the coup caused a split in the programme resulting in institutional decision-making becoming more elite and neoliberal while operational decision-making and pedagogy became more deliberative, participatory, critical, and agonistic. We explore how conflict can be a democratic learning experience, and how education through democracy can make a learning community more resilient in the face of conflict.