Category: Refereed article

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Literacy mediation in neighbourhood houses

Author: Sally Thompson

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  Interactions between staff in Neighbourhood Houses, and the socially and educationally disadvantaged community members who visit Neighbourhood Houses, have been viewed through many lenses, including community development, social support, caring and compassion. This paper looks at Neighbourhood Houses as sites of pedagogical practice. More specifically, it explores the role of Neighbourhood House administrative staff as literacy mediators — as people who assist others with reading and writing.

Literacy mediation has gained attention as part of a focus amongst New Literacy Studies researchers on the social uses of literacy. In this case study of four staff members working across two neighbourhood houses, I identify that literacy mediation in the neighbourhood houses
is common, complex and growing in demand.

A further area of focus of the paper is the invisibility of the literacy mediation in Neighbourhood Houses — to funding bodies, committees of management and even to other staff. It also identifies the role of emotional labour in both facilitating mediation but also as a contributing factor to the lack of recognition of informal literacy work in Neighbourhood Houses.

Keywords: adult literacy, literacy mediation, neighbourhood houses,
informal learning

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Memories in Motion: learning, process, history and art in public space

Author: Debbie Qadri, Victoria University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  This essay presents an art project as an example of two aspects of public pedagogy. The first, is that the project critically examined how history is made, and through art-making and installation it performed an alternative publishing of history. Secondly, the art project was utilised as both a process and outcome within public space, and through this contributed to raising awareness for both participants and audience about the politics of public space. Through both aspects the project shed light on acts of public pedagogy as a process of questioning our normal relationships with history and public space. Memories in Motion was a project where learning took place within a particular public space by moving through, documenting and researching it. This learning was generated into artworks, which were then taken and placed back into that space. These actions disrupt the normal conventions of learning about history and of public space, and shift the agency of telling history and using public space to the students.

Keywords: public art, history, community, public pedagogy

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

 

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A space for memory

Author: Karen Charman, Victoria University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  In this article I examine the possibilities of reparation in an era of privatisation and de-industrialisation. I examine the effect of a recent project Sunshine Memory Space, a space, designed to evoke memories of a de-industrialised urban Melbourne suburb Sunshine. This project offered the opportunity for the effects of industrial change to be publically represented, remembered and valued. I offer an analysis of the significance of relational localised curatorial work.

Keywords: memory, de-industrialistion, curation, psychoanalysis.

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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The meaning of learning on the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage

Author: Kyung-Mi Im, Howon University, Korea; JuSung Jun, Soongsil University, Korea

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of travellers on the Camino de Santiago in order to find out the pattern of their travel lived experience and the meaning of learning experience. For this purpose, eight Korean travellers were selected for the study; the study was performed using the hermeneutic phenomenological method. The findings are as follows: First, the pattern of lived experience -’the four Existentials, lived time, space, body and human relation’- on the Camino de Santiago was summarized into ‘slow and composure’, ‘meditation and spirituality’, ‘companionship’, and ‘the dance of self-mortification through physical pain’ in the four existential aspects of time, space, relationship, and body. Second, the lived experience of participants had profound meaning as a learning experience in terms of biographical learning, the theory of autopoiesis,
and spiritual learning.

Keywords: Learning experience, Lived experience, Four Existentials, The Camino de Santiago

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Motivating and enabling adult learners to develop research skills

Author: Grace McCarthy, University of Wollongong

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  Adult learners undertaking a coursework masters are understandably nervous about undertaking research projects. However if done well, such projects represent a way to encourage the quantity and quality of practitioner research, which is important in all management disciplines, not only the emerging discipline of coaching. This paper offers an alternative to the individual master-apprentice model to which many research students are still exposed. Addressing the motivational needs identified in self-determination theory (autonomy, competence and relatedness) as well as self-efficacy and incorporating good practices in feedback, it outlines a way to make the process of learning how to do research more engaging than sitting listening to lectures. The paper reports the findings of a survey of the participants in the 2012 cohort who were asked if their competence and confidence in undertaking a research project had changed before and after undertaking the class, and if so, to list what they, their peers or staff had done to contribute to this change. The paper concludes that the approach offers a useful way to help adult learners develop research skills.

Keywords: coaching, research skills, adult learning, self-determination theory.

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Work-based researchers and Communities of Practice: Conceptual and gestational dilemmas

Author: Andrew Sense, University of Wollongong

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  Drawing on a presumption that a Community of Practice (COP) can add significant value to the situated learning development of adults in any context, this paper exposes and analyses the challenges faced in facilitating the development of a COP involving part-time work-based researchers. Using an empirical case example involving a collaborative research network of five industry organisations and a university, the specific purpose (and outcomes) of this paper are to (a) conceptualise
a researcher COP involving part-time work-based PhD and Masters of Philosophy candidates (b) examine the pragmatic dilemmas these part-time researchers face in seeking to develop such a supportive social learning construct in respect to their research activities (c) tentatively indicate some challenges that higher education institutions and industry organisations confront in facilitating and nurturing such learning structures which span industry and academia contexts. Through its analysis, this paper draws attention towards the complex issues involved in developing a functioning rather than the often idealised COP in the part-time work-based researcher space.

Keywords: Work-based researchers; Communities of Practice; Social learning.

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Listening to hear: Critical allies in Indigenous Studies

Author: Colleen McGloin, University of Wollongong

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  This paper reflects on a particular class in an undergraduate seminar in Australian Indigenous Studies where anecdote played a crucial role and where both the teacher and learners were challenged to consider their implication as racialised subjects in the teaching and learning process. The paper argues that student anecdote can be a vital bridge between theory and practice in adult learning. It suggests that all learners in Indigenous Studies, and also in studies of race and difference more generally, need to undertake effective listening and hearing practices in order to consider, imagine and engage with experiences and worldviews other than their own. Drawing from work dealing with critical alliances, discomfort in pedagogical contexts, and effective listening practices, this paper provides a conceptual analysis of the seminar in question extrapolating from this to engage critically with broader issues concerning Indigenous Studies and non-Indigenous critical allies.

Keywords: Critical allies, Indigenous Studies, white discomfort, antiracist pedagogy, listening practices.

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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What are the key ingredients for an effective and successful tertiary enabling program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students? An evaluation of the evolution of one program

Author: Lisa Hall, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary: Tertiary enabling programs have become an increasingly important part of the post-secondary schooling landscape. In recognition of the need for increased access for certain under-represented groups within the university population, enabling, bridging or foundational programs are offered by a large number of universities in Australia as alternative entry pathways. This paper explores the outcomes of an enabling program being offered to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults who are arguably one of the most under-represented groups within the university system in Australia. It explores, in two parts, the combination of factors that are resulting in these positive outcomes. Part one explores the ‘data story’ of the course and the factors that support retention and completion. Part two explores the ‘stories of transformation’ as told by the students themselves, providing insider accounts of richness and depth about the things that truly enable success in a tertiary learning environment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. While not ignoring the limitations of evaluating a course that is still in its infancy, the students undertaking this course are completing and moving on into higher education courses at an impressive rate, empowered by the skills, strategies and confidence they have developed through the course.

Keywords: enabling, Indigenous, education, bridging, foundation, Aboriginal

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Assessing the Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign: A developmental evaluation

Authors: Norma R. A. Romm and Mpho M. Dichaba, University of South Africa

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  In this article we explicate our way of assessing the South African Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign, and in particular its impact in the Eastern Cape. We provide an account primarily of focus group sessions conducted in 2013 and again in 2014 with volunteer educators and past learners in the campaign. We concentrate on the way in which relationships with these participants and with coordinators in the province were established towards the creation of findings. We outline how our evaluative purpose could be seen as incorporating a social justice agenda (as in developmental evaluation) in that it was aimed at strengthening literacy initiatives as a human right. We conclude with
some considerations around catalytic validity as a criterion for judging research practices. We reflect upon how this notion of validity can justify our research as being directed towards potentially activating
further options for literacy initiatives to contribute to personal and community development.

Keywords: developmental evaluation, literacy initiatives, catalytic validity

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Adult education and radical habitus in an environmental campaign: Learning in the coal seam gas protests in Australia

Authors: Tracey Ollis, Deakin University; Michael Hamel-Green, Victoria University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  This paper examines the adult learning dimensions of protestors as they participate in a campaign to stop coal seam gas exploration in Gippsland in Central Victoria, Australia. On a global level, the imposition of coal seam gas exploration by governments and mining companies has been the trigger for movements of resistance from environmental groups. They are concerned about the impact of mining
on their land, food and water supplies. In central Gippsland a group of ‘circumstantial activists’ comprised of farmers, tree changers and other local residents are campaigning against coal seam gas exploration. This unlikely coalition of environmental action groups has made effective use of a variety of community education strategies. This paper commences by outlining some of the key literature on learning and activism drawing on the education tradition of adult learning. We then draw on key concepts from Bourdieu’s writing on ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ to analyse the data from this research. We outline some of the learning practices of activists; through their involvement in this campaign, and the knowledge and skills they gain as they develop a feel for the game of protest. We argue circumstantial activists learn both formally and informally in the social environment of campaigning. Of particular
interest is the role of more experienced activists from Friends of the Earth (FOE), a non-government organisation (NGO), as they pass on knowledge, experience, tactics and strategies to the novice and less
experienced activists in this community campaign. We explore some of the contradictions of the protestors’ identification as activists using Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘doxa’ and ‘Ilusio’. The paper concludes by arguing learning in activism is a rich tradition of adult education and practice. However, Bourdieu’s writing on field and habitus makes an added contribution to interpreting the learning that occurs in the social space of a campaign or social movement.

Keywords: Adult learning, informal learning, activism, environmental movement, coal seam gas, Bourdieu, habitus.

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.