Social movements are pedagogical spaces for collective learning across difference. Divergent worldviews, interest and identity, historical legacies and relations of power complicate notions of allyship and solidarity for common cause. In this article, we draw on social movement and transformative learning to reflect on our experiences of learning…

The article is principally written for adult educators. It models an auto-ethnographic approach situating this within a critical pedagogic orientation. As an adult educator working in the Republic of Ireland, I draw from two instances in my own life that helped me to re-think my racialised identity. By reflecting on discomforts in terms of my own…

Writing on social movement learning and environmental adult education invokes particular views on knowledge that need further examination and development in relation to food social movements. Although food social movements take different forms, the paper argues that the politics of food knowledge is at the centre of many of these movements.…

Noting the ever-increasing encroachment of discourses and practices from the private sector on public education providers, this paper argues that such organizations exist within competing sets of differences that seek to define and fix the meaning of "education" and "business". We report on fieldwork conducted in an adult…

Can the current education programme of the Australian trade union movement contribute to reviving union growth and union culture, develop new activists and leaders, and encourage and facilitate the organisational change needed to re-orient unions to develop broader alliances? Twenty-five Australian trade union leaders were asked to describe the…

Public policy in the UK has adopted employability to define the relationship of globalisation, work and learning. This article claims that employability serves the interests of capital. It helps capital to exercise its domination/hegemony over labour and employs a redefined vision of learning as its principal vehicle. Employability is a term that…

This paper is a research-informed response to the paradigm shift that has taken place in the world of teacher education for the further education sector in England during the last few years. We begin by outlining the various changes that have taken place in terms of regulation of the sector and show how this has impacted upon the agency of those…

This paper stems from a dialogue on the subjects of learning and learners: one forged out of experiences in research and teaching, and the application of psychodynamic insights, developmental psychology and recent work in the neurosciences, to thinking about adult learning and subjectivity. We argue that some notion of the self needs to be…

In this paper, I report on the work of a practitioner inquiry group that went awry when the sponsor refused to publish and disseminate the participants' final reports, stating that they were of poor quality and did not contribute to the knowledge base. I, the facilitator of the group, disagreed strongly with her. I suggest that the difference…

The potential of practitioner-led action research (PLAR) to contribute to professional development in adult literacies work is considered from two perspectives. First, a recent initiative in Scotland is examined to illustrate PLAR implemented as professional development. The structural factors needing to be addressed for PLAR to contribute to…

This paper argues that even though there is continuous research work on participation in adult education, the current state of research is not satisfactory. It develops this assumption by discussing studies that focus on social status and social milieu as explanatory factors for adult education. The authors draw on findings from a research project…

This paper critically examines popular discourses of pedagogy circulating in adult education theory and practice: pedagogy as (heroic or nurturing) person, as prescriptive strategy, as political purpose, and as situated practices. I argue that problematic conceptions and desires can be identified across these discourses that lead to orientations…

This article explores the question of what we might understand to be a learning context within discourses of lifelong learning. If we identify learning as both lifelong and lifewide, how then can we frame a meaningful notion of context and what is its relationship to learning? These are important questions that have been explored within work on…

The notion of learning community has assumed an important position in discussions about the education of adults. The vision of a network of learning communities each producing forms of social capital is actively promoted as the key to lifelong learning. Universities are increasingly being positioned within this network. This article explores and…

This paper argues that there is no other way to describe history, and particularly the personal life history of people, apart from in the form of a narrative. It also suggests that as history is not understandable, save in the form of a narrative, the narration as such "makes" history. Drawing on the findings of a research project on…