Learning through Community: Exploring Participatory Practices

The Turbulence of Learning to Publish As researchers, we learned about working together and collaborating across multiple dimensions of space, time and our own identities. … We learned and we are still learning. We are learning as we write and revise this book. We learn as we begin to see this book through the eyes of others who have not lived through the process of discovery with us in the field. … We learn as we go “back to work,” … to try to figure out how our learnings can make a difference. (Jackson, 2004, p. 289) It took 10 years to create this book. Of course, none of us intended to take so long. Like a lot of things that appear to be individual pathology, our tardiness was socially produced. The first defining relation was the collegial way in which Nina Bascia, Eric Shragge and I selected contributors for this volume. As co-editors, we sought cont- butions from academics who had produced case studies for the Toronto-based 1 research network called NALL: Network for New Approaches to Lifelong Learning.

This book is a collection of case studies that explore the learning that people do through community engagement. Developed within a network of Canadian researchers and their community partners, it explores learning that is organized by the learners themselves, collectively, rather than as individuals. Reflecting the contributors’ political priorities, the volume begins with groups that are highly marginalized in our society: immigrant women, sex trade workers, senior citizens, garment workers, women doing community economic development, and people who identify with disability and anti-poverty movements. It then shifts to consider groups whose members have been accustomed to seeing themselves as ‘centered:’ or mainstream: teachers, for example, and employees of the new ‘learning organizations.’ Regardless of their location, the people involved are learning to labour and to survive the turbulence of rapid socio-economic change in the global economy. These case studies trace the enduring effects of gender, class, language, race, and governmentality on their efforts. Significantly, they also probe the possibilities for oppositional action.

"It makes a timely and significant contribution to adult learning theory and practice. It does so at a time when adult learning is very much on the agenda of academics, policy makers and organizational leaders in both formal in informal sectors around the globe."

Nancy Jackson, OISE/UToronto, Canada