17th September 2021 – Building Community Democracy and Dialogue: Adult Education for Change (Part 2: Inclusion, Life Stories and Life Histories)
This was the first event in 2021 that followed the theme within the difficulties introduced during COVID:
Resources for Hope
Events in 2021 provided an opportunity to learn about existing practices, meet and think about different forms of democratic adult education and imagine new forms of critical engagement. 50 adult educators, from across the UK, Italy, Bulgaria and Canada, joined together to listen to presentations and discuss key questions and emerging themes in small and large groups. During, and after, this first event series participants highlighted the power of learning about existing practices and ways of re-shaping new forms of adult lifelong education with an explicit social purpose.
This event is split into three different parts, all of which can be accessed using the menu on the left:
- Part 1: Adult Education on the Edge
- Part 2: Inclusion, Life Stories and Life Histories
- Part 3: Higher Education, Partnership and Voice
Part 2 is split into 3 videos, which can be found below.
‘Clever but not Posh’ – Accessing HE: Narrative Inquiry into the Self-Construction of Social Capital of Working Class Women from Access to HE Programmes.
Cheryl Hedges’s research stems from work with adult women encountered in her FE classroom. Working class women often left school with few formal qualifications, and were looking to get a “proper job”, where they wanted to make “a difference” for others and their family. When considering university selection with these learners, discussions would cover identity, fitting in and belonging to university. Learners were either highly critical or discussed practical problems associated with studying at the local red brick university.
Through the use of narrative inquiry I reflect on 5 case studies of self-described “ordinary” working class women from 3 FE and 3 HE institutions. Their stories offer some insights into:
- The practical and institutional actions that would encourage greater participation, and feelings of belonging.
- The social and employment networks that facilitated their success.
- Their individual habitus and continued parental expectations which continue to haunt their identities into their 30s and 40s.
- The part played by the working class academic in being a guide and navigator in the complex and often exclusionary academic environments.
Cheryl is a first-generation university graduate from a working-class family in South Yorkshire. After study at the University of York, she went into successful school teaching career, which ended with a school leadership role in 2015. She then worked part-time within an FE college teaching adults on Access to HE programmes. It is this teaching experience that re-awakened her own working-class identity and the cultural dissonance experienced when moving away to university in the early 80s.
Citizenship, Community, Education: A Practice Perspective on Learning Among Older Activists
Dr John Miles provided the following introduction to his presentation.
As a white English male who grew up in ‘the sixties’, I’m confronted, generationally, by the neo-liberal crisis in politics and social justice, the climate crisis, the extremes of technological change and related shifts in oppression and identity. What better-off older people like me should do is a pressing question, how to do it usefully and well even more so. There’s a tendency to withdraw – the cruise ship, the U3A group, the retirement village – which has to be countered. My current alignments are within educational gerontology, the everyday community life of an inner city London neighbourhood and the politics and governance of (mostly) small, unfunded networks and associations. This activity falls outside formally constituted community education but relates to self-directed learning and peer support at a time when older people’s participation in education has been in decline in Britain for two decades. I explore briefly three propositions or paradoxes. First, it has probably to be accepted that an interest in later-life learning is largely an outcome of growing older. Second, that purposeful learning becomes harder as we enter later life so that a kind of lay pedagogy is called for. Third, that, as all committed learning involves risk and exposure, reflective and informed teaching remains of vital importance. I suggest that it is in their overlapping and intersecting that these propositions reveal their important dynamic potential.
John Miles is a community development worker and social gerontologist. He completed his PhD on the City of Manchester’s intergeneration initiatives at Keele University in 2014 and works in a voluntary capacity with small associations and support networks in north and east London. Formerly a member of the executive committee of the British Society of Gerontology he convenes the Special Interest Group for Educational Gerontology and is acting chair of the Association for Education and Ageing. In those capacities, he contributed to the work of the Centenary Commission on Adult Education. As research associate with Kilburn Older Voices Exchange he helped establish the Toilet Manifesto for London earlier this year. His main research interest is in the cognitive and cultural changes affecting memory in later life and in the way we experience and respond to them.
A Story of Hope: The Lifelong Dyslexic Learner
Dr. Beverley Hayward with Mia Greenslade provided the following to introduce a poem contribution to the event.
My contribution is a poem, entitled: A Story of Hope: The Lifelong Dyslexic Learner. I wrote a version of this poem two years’ ago that I often use in my teaching practice to expose my own vulnerability, with the expectation of putting my students at ease. The intention is to encourage those that have a learning difference or disability not to give up on their education, but to continue in a collective community of learning. In that community of support and encouragement a democratic pedagogical experience can be fostered to initiate a dialogue to help each other through challenging times. Only recently have I had the confidence to speak out about my own literacy difficulties, but in sharing my experiences, I feel I have fostered a more authentic approach to teaching. In finding my own voice and telling my story, I hoped to facilitate a horizontal approach to enable adult learners to feel comfortable to speak their truths and be successful in their/our lifelong learning journeys.