Innovations in Lifelong Learning

Critical Perspectives on Diversity, Participation and Vocational Learning

Sue Jackson, Sue Jackson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136846915
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book opens up ways to engage critically with what counts as innovatory practice in lifelong learning today, locating its discussion of innovations in lifelong learning within an international and comparative framework.

Innovations in Lifelong Learning engages first hand with issues and concerns from around the globe, offering an international perspective on current trends through its range of contributions from across the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US. The broad focus allows for diverse information on the nature of these changes to come together under an assortment of empirical, theoretical and methodological approaches.

The book takes three key elements of lifelong learning:

• learning communities
• participation and non-participation
• work-based learning and learning through work.

It links these with themes on diversity, social justice and economic and global development so as to negotiate and re-negotiate the constant importance of innovation with employers, learners and educational institutions.

All those working in the broad arena of lifelong learning will benefit from this comprehensive examination of current debates in the field, including policy-makers, researchers, teachers, lecturers, educational managers and employers engaged with work-based learning.

Part I
Learning communities

Introduction

Sue Jackson

In this first Part, and therefore also as an introduction to later themes and issues in the book, the authors explore questions relating to ‘learning communities’ in their diverse forms. Whilst effective learning communities can be – and often are – part of formal learning environments in classrooms both for children and for adults, as well as in the workplace, in this Part the interest is in the ways in which learning communities become established outside of formal institutions, including the formal institutions of work (see Part III). The chapters in this Part also move beyond much existing work on community education or learning, although they do engage in discussions of learning in the community and of community networks (Coare and Johnston, 2003). Rather they are interested in developing wider understandings of how people engage in learning in and through the communities in which they live and through which they try to make liveable lives (Butler, 2004).

In considering ways in which learning communities develop and are valued (or not), all four chapters are interested in critiques of lifelong learning which are taken as a common good, too often linked to a discourse of inclusion which leaves no spaces for critical discussion (Burke and Jackson, 2007). In the opening chapter, Shibao Guo and Zenobia Jamal begin a discussion that will weave throughout the book, asking how inclusive educational environments can be built that will help to achieve social justice and equity in lifelong learning when the acts of learning and teaching are too often separated from issues of social justice, democracy and citizenship.

The chapters by Guo and Jamal and by Avoseh develop the theme of cultural and other diversities, which will continue throughout the book. Guo and Jamal are interested in ways in which educational environments can be built that help achieve equity and social justice. They argue that lifelong learning is currently at a crossroads or intersection where debates about cultural diversity and inclusive education are shaped within global economic, social and cultural contexts. Such debates are exemplified in Mejai B. M. Avoseh’s chapter on community learning in Africa, where he challenges readers to confront the dominance of Western thought in constructions of lifelong learning, arguing that there are unique differences between Western and traditional African value systems and thought patterns, the latter of which is imbued with holistic understandings of community learning.

Throughout Part I, authors raise key issues that will appear and reappear throughout the book, including constructions of knowledge and of power. These themes run through the chapters by Jan Etienne and Sue Jackson and by Barry Golding, both of which develop the debate through empirical research carried out in the UK and in Australia, examining gendered understandings of lifelong learning. They argue that the informal learning that takes place in communal but gender-specific spaces can enhance the ability to resist power relations elsewhere. Nevertheless, they also note the ways in which hierarchies of power are played out, as do Guo and Jamal. Avoseh, on the other hand, is interested in ways in which (inter)-generational hierarchies of privilege and knowledge can enhance community learning. Thus the opening Part of the book clearly sets a critical discussion of innovations in lifelong learning within an international and global framework that spans four continents: Africa, Australia, Europe and North America.

Whilst supporters of lifelong learning argue that it is or can be holistic and visionary (Delors, 1996), its critics are concerned that it has lost any radical edge it may have had, and has become profoundly conformist (Field, 2000). The authors of the opening chapter, Shibao Guo and Zenobia Jamal, explore ways in which an inclusive education can be built when lifelong learning is, as they argue, at a crossroads. As countries and their education systems become increasingly ethno-culturally diverse, social and demographic changes create both opportunities and challenges for lifelong learning. As the authors show, many nations are becoming increasingly ethno-culturally diverse with evolving patterns of mass migrations. Partly as a result, classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse, although cultural diversity is both opportunity and challenge. The aim of this opening chapter is to explore an innovative framework that can be used to provide a broader perspective that incorporates issues of democracy, citizenship and social justice for diverse communities of learners. The chapter concludes that to embrace cultural diversity in a context where teaching is a political act, an antiracist model of education is the most appropriate for implementing change in lifelong learning.

In Chapter 2, Mejai Avoseh continues some of the issues raised in the opening chapter. He explores ways in which understanding the informal and lifelong dimensions of community learning in Africa may contribute to debates and developments of lifelong learning more broadly, arguing that the dividends of lifelong learning must first accrue to the individual before it is possible to re-invest into the community. Drawing in part on personal experiences, Avoseh outlines and deconstructs some of the institutions of community adult education in Africa, which include acquisition of knowledge regarding community culture and history, as well as the development of skills for professional practice. He argues that community learning includes developing the art of communal living broadly conceptualised, something that is missing from much dominant discourse on lifelong learning (Burke and Jackson, 2007).

Chapters 3 and 4 move on to extend the discussion to explore issues of gender in communities of learning, exploring gendered informal learning which is also constructed through differences of social class (Jackson, 2003; Reay et al., 2005), age (Finsden, 2005), and intersectionality (Brah and Phoenix, 2004). Whilst Jan Etienne and Sue Jackson, in Chapter 3, are interested in women-only spaces of informal learning, Barry Golding (Chapter 4) is concerned with social inclusion and well being for men, who are often excluded from lifelong learning. Both chapters are concerned with the project of becoming and the impact of developing community participation. Older people are often rendered invisible in a society that values youth over age, and one way to claim back an identity is through community participation and through the learning that takes place in informal and safe gender-specific social spaces, which involves the re/construction of identities (Jackson et al., 2010 forthcoming).

In Chapter 3 the authors draw on empirical research developed in the UK through a research project on lifelong learning, community and the Women’s Institutes (WI), funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. Traditional images of the WI involve the construction of older women as homemakers, with the most dominant images being ones of jam and cake making, flower arranging, and the development of other homecraft skills. However, in the chapter the authors demonstrate that older women are still active citizens, with a strong political voice in their local communities and nationally. They explore ways in which the WI enables women to fully participate in communities of (informal) learning and community practice into old(er) age.

The concern of the final chapter in this Part is about the informal learning that men might seek and undertake when not in the paid workforce, and the potential benefits of that learning to men’s wellbeing. Golding argues that men’s disengagement from formal adult learning is particularly acute for men not in paid work. Drawing on empirical research, he uses the case of community men’s sheds in Australia as illustrative of how educational innovation need not start from the top down, but can instead emanate from a loose network of community-based grassroots organisations. Golding concludes that this sort of informal learning may be able to break intergenerational cycles of unemployment for men through community involvement and identify opportunities for marginalised men to develop more positive masculine identities.

References

Brah, A. and Phoenix, A. (2004) ‘Ain’t I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality’, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5: 3, pp. 75–86.

Burke, J. and Jackson, S. (2007) Reconceptualising Lifelong Learning: Feminist interventions, London: Routledge.

Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender, London: Routledge.

Coare, P. and Johnston, R. (eds) (2003) Adult Learning, Citizenship and Community Voices: Exploring community-based practice, Leicester: NIACE.

Delors, J. (1996) Learning: The treasure within, Paris: UNESCO.

Field, J. (2000) Lifelong Learning and the New Educational Order, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.

Findsen, B. (2005) Learning Later, Malabar, FL: Krieger.

Jackson, S., Malcolm, J. and Thomas, K. (eds) (2010 forthcoming) Gendered Choices: Learning, work, identities in lifelong learning, Dordrecht: Springer Academic Press.

Chapter 1
Toward inclusive education

Embracing cultural diversity in lifelong learning

Shibao Guo and Zenobia Jamal

Introduction

Many countries in the world are becoming increasingly ethno-culturally diverse as a result of mass migrations between states. Among major immigrant receiving countries in the West, Australia has the highest proportion of foreign-born population at 22.2 per cent, followed by Canada at 19.8 per cent and the United States at 12.5 per cent (Statistics Canada, 2007). Even among countries that provided emigration in the past, such as Greece and Ireland, their foreign-born population has also surged well above 10 per cent. When immigrants arrive in a new society, they bring with them their values, language and culture, contributing significantly to the diversity of their host countries. Without a doubt, the resulting demographic, social and cultural changes create new opportunities for development as well as new challenges in acknowledging and responding to this diversity. Although inclusion ‘is a favourite keyword of those engaged in discussing lifelong learning’ (Rogers, 2006, p. 127), this language often masks the realities of how lifelong learning is conceptualised and implemented. One of the challenges of addressing issues of inclusion is the fear of diversity (Palmer, 1998), partially resulting from a lack of knowledge and readiness to respond to cultural diversity. Furthermore, despite the claim that lifelong learning is a holistic, visionary, normative and value-laden concept in the same way as ideas about democracy or equality (Tuijnman and Boström, 2002), many critics point out that lifelong learning has lost sight of the radical dimension of education and has become ‘profoundly conformist’ (Rogers, 2006, p. 128). As a consequence, democratic processes are being stifled and active citizenship downplayed (Crowther, 2004; Jarvis, 2006).

To foster diversity and inclusive education in lifelong learning, a central question we need to ask is: How can we build inclusive educational environments that will help achieve the goals of social justice and equity in lifelong learning? Related to this are questions such as: Is the field of lifelong learning ready for these changes? Are lifelong educators equipped to respond to the challenges? Similarly, do our curricula and teaching approaches reflect this diversity? The purpose of this chapter is to explore issues of cultural diversity and to suggest frameworks that can be used to provide broader perspectives on lifelong learning that incorporate notions of equitable participation, democracy, citizenship and social justice. Some common approaches used to nurture cultural diversity in lifelong learning, particularly for the purpose of enhancing teaching and learning, are critically examined, with the hope that these endeavours will have global relevance for adult educators in responding to the challenges of cultural diversity and lifelong learning.

The chapter is organised into four parts. It begins with a definition of cultural diversity, followed by an examination of the politics of teaching. The third section reviews three models that can be used to address cultural diversity in lifelong learning, including an intercultural education model, a multicultural education model and an anti-racist education model. The chapter ends with an evaluation of these three models, their application in a variety of settings and contexts and a discussion of their pedagogical applications. A critical review of the models conc...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Learning communities
• Part II Participation and non-participation
• Part III Work-based learning and learning through work
• Index