Biography
Alberto Melo, born in Lisbon in 1941, has made an innovative and long-lasting impact in lifelong education and learning and rural development in Portugal. He has contributed in policy, teaching and fieldwork for lifelong learning, after his country became a democracy in 1974 following nearly 50 years of dictatorship. His work was then instrumental in designing a public strategy of support to Popular Education that led to the first National Plan for Adult Literacy and Basic Education in Portugal in 1979. He worked for several years at the Open University in Milton Keynes in the UK, the Paris University of Dauphine, and has been an occasional consultant for UNESCO, OECD, the European Commission, and the International Bureau of Education. In his homeland, he spent many decades promoting adult education in three different domains: in academia as a professor at the University of Algarve, in the public sector as a director-general for lifelong education, and in the voluntary sector with his support to establish and develop a national umbrella for lifelong education (APCEP) and later to create an association to foster territorial development and welfare (In Loco).
Since 1985, he has led a series of projects to promote integrated development and general welfare in the rural inland of southern Portugal and to find out what local groups were currently doing and could actually do to overcome a long-drawn and deeply rooted condition of poverty, illiteracy and underemployment at a time when nearly 40 percent of the Portuguese people in the countryside were still unable to read and write. The efforts of the team he coordinated combined community education and cultural and economic development and led to the opening of early childhood care centres and to the creation of income-generating activities for unemployed village citizens, mostly women.
At the end of the 1990s, Melo managed a national task force whose remit was to design a system of integrated adult education and training for 21st century Portugal. A main feature of this system was and still is the accreditation of experiential learning carried out by numerous local centres spread over the country. Another innovation was the design of education-training courses (EFA) combining general and work-related contents and leading to double-valued certificates. As a researcher, Melo published works on a variety of topics, including education and training for local development, integrated rural development, adult education and lifelong education, migrant cultures, and multicultural education.In 2003, he received a national commendation awarded by the President of the Portuguese Republic in recognition for his work in adult and community education. He is currently heading the Directive Board of APCEP.
Selected Publications:
Melo, A., & Benavente, A. (1978). Educação popular em Portugal (1974-1976). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte.
Melo, A. (1981). Educação de adultos: Conceitos e práticas. In M. Silva & M. I. Támen, Coord., Sistema de ensino em Portugal. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, pp. 355-382.
Melo, A., Queiroz, A. M., Silva, A. S., Rothes, L., Ribeiro, M., & Salgado, L. (1998). Uma aposta educativa na participação de todos. Documento de estratégia para o desenvolvimento da educação de adultos. Lisboa: Ministério da Educação.
Melo, A., Matos, L., & Silva, O. S. (2001). S@ber+, Programa para o desenvolvimento e expansão da educação de adultos (1999-2006). Lisboa: Agência Nacional de Educação e Formação de Adultos, ANEFA.
Melo, A., Lima, L. C., & Almeida, M. (2002). Novas políticas de educação e formação de adultos: O contexto internacional e a situação portuguesa. Lisboa: ANEFA.
Melo, A. (2003). Capítulo 11. A acção local dos cidadãos como meio de resistência à nova vaga de colonização global: O caso da Associação In Loco no sul de Portugal. In B. de Sousa Santos, Org., Produzir para viver: Os caminhos da produção não capitalista. Porto: Edições Afrontamento, pp. 373-402.
Melo, A. (2012). Passagens revoltas, 1970-2012, 40 anos de intervenção por ditos e escritos. S. Brás de Alportel: Associação In Loco & Lisboa: Sítio do Livro.
