Learning in Social Action: Contribution to Understanding Informal Education (Global Perspectives on Adult Education and Training) (Hardback) By (author) Griff Foley

Full bibliographic data for Learning in Social Action

Title

Learning in Social Action

Subtitle

Contribution to Understanding Informal Education

Authors and contributors

By (author) Griff Foley

Physical properties

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 160
Width: 135 mm
Height: 216 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight: 290 g

Audience

College/higher education
General/trade
Professional and scholarly

Language

English

ISBN

ISBN 13: 9781856496834
ISBN 10: 185649683X

Classifications

BISAC category code: EDU003000
Dewey: 374.001
Nielsen BookScan Product Class: S3.8
BISAC category code: EDU034000
BISAC category code: EDU002000
Dewey: 374

Illustrations note

notes, bibliography, index

Publisher

ZED BOOKS LTD

Imprint name

ZED BOOKS LTD

Publication date

16 July 1999

Publication City/Country

London/GB

Main description

This book seeks to increase our understanding of those non-educational contexts and informal circumstances in which people learn. Adult educators, Professor Foley argues, ought not to neglect the importance of the incidental learning which can take place, in particular, when people become involved in voluntary organisations, social struggles, and political activity of every kind. In developing the argument that such involvement can provide extraordinarily powerful learning opportunities, he uses case studies from the United States of America, Australia as well as Third World countries - Brazil and Zimbabwe - and embracing very diverse environmental, women's, worker and political struggles. He is particularly interested in how involvement in social action can help people to unlearn dominant, oppressive ideologies and discourses and learn instead oppositional, liberatory ones, even if such processes of emancipatory learning are inevitably complex and contradictory. He relates these processes of informal learning in contested contexts to current thinking in adult education and points the way to a somewhat different, and more radical, agenda in adult education theory and practice. For adult educators, community workers and others working with socially engaged citizens, the insights and lessons of this book ought to be especially useful as they try to develop their own practice in such contexts.

Review quote

'For adult educators who really want to assist in the struggle for democratic and radical solutions to massive social and political inequalities, there are few better places to begin their understanding than with this book.' - Jane Thompson, Ruskin College, Oxford "A powerful and lyrical account of how engagement in social struggle can lead to learning that transforms power relations, confidence and capacity to handle change. Generous spirited, clearly written and refreshingly open, this timely book reminds us of resources for hope to set alongside global economic restructuring." - Alan Tuckett, Director, NIACE 'A very illuminative contribution to current conceptualizations of adult education... Readers of this book will never again take informal learning lightly.' - Nelly P. Stromquist, Professor International Development Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Biographical note

Griff Foley is Director of the Centre for Popular Education, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Table of contents

Introduction: case studies; theoretical framework; writing the book. Part 1 Ideology, discourse and learning: ideology and discourse; the gynaecological clinic; Edison High; the insurance company. Part 2 Learning in a green campaign: setting and chronology; the campaign; learning. Part 3 The neighbourhood house - site of struggle, site of learning: contestation and critical learning; the houses; methodology; learning in the houses; conclusions. Part 4 Adult education and capitalist reogranization: restructuring or capitalist reorganization?; myths of restructuring; domination and struggle in capitalism; adult learning and education in a reorganizing capitalism; beyond capitalism reorganization. Part 5 Learning in Brazilian women's organizations: the broad political and economic context - authoritarianism, resistance, abertura and peripheria; micro-politics, discursive practices and adult learning; the church, the left and women's organizations; social action and learning in women's organizations; a distinctive gender interest; complexities of emancipatory learning; women's movements and political liberalization; conclusions and directions. Part 6 Political learning and education in the Zimbabwean liberation stuggle: liberation struggle and emancipatory learning; context; the development of political consciousness in the 1930s and 1940s; the shift to armed struggle; political learning and education during the early phase of armed struggle; the struggle within the struggle; political education within the liberation movements in the 1970s; mass political education and learning in the later stages of the liberation struggle.