Gender and Lifelong Learning
This insightful book is ideal for students, researchers and policy makers wanting a sound overview of the critical issues of gender in lifelong learning. Asking pertinent questions relating to discourses on policy, the authors offer the reader a rare view of lifelong learning from a gender-focused perspective, filling a gap in the literature and moving current debate on into new areas. Questions addressed include:\ \ To what extent can the policy discourses and institutional contexts of...
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Lifelong learning is a key feature of the educational landscape today. This important book breaks new ground in examining issues of gender in relation to lifelong learning. Drawing on policy analysis and research in the UK, European and global arenas, Gender and Lifelong Learning demonstrates the ways in which patterns of access to, participation in, and outcomes of lifelong learning reflect gender divisions and power relations. The scope of the book is wide-ranging. Divided into three sections, the discussion encompasses school, adult, community, further and higher education. The issues covered include gendered subject 'choices', reasons for non-participation and pedagogies of lifelong learning. There are also fascinating chapters that explore the widening of participation, the experiences of disabled students, and the visibility/invisibility of black women in higher education. Utilizing many different theoretical and methodological approaches, the book offers a range of critical feminist engagements to make visible, understand and critique gender inequalities in lifelong learning. A key theme throughout the book is a critique of neoliberalism and of the dominance of economic rationales in shaping the concept of lifelong learning. Yet the book offers not only criticism of current policies and practices, but also alternative visions, different possibilities and new ways of conceptualizing and doing lifelong learning that might better reflect social justice concerns. It also includes many ideas and suggestions that can be practically drawn upon, and the concluding chapter ends with a summary of key implications for both policy-makers and practitioners.
List of illustrations viiNotes on contributors ixAcknowledgements xiiiIntroduction: gendering lifelong learning Carole Leathwood Becky Francis 1The policy context 7Unprotected participation in lifelong learning and the politics of hope: a feminist reality check of discourses around flexibility, seamlessness and learner earners Jill Blackmore 9Locating the learner within EU policy: trajectories, complexities, identities Jacky Brine 27Gendered constructions of lifelong learning and the learner in the UK policy context Carole Leathwood 40Accessing lifelong learning 55Troubling trajectories: gendered 'choices' and pathways from school to work Becky Francis 57Masculinities, femininities and resistance to participation in post-compulsory education Louise Archer 70Fair access? Exploring gender, access and participation beyond entry to higher education Penny Jane Burke 83Experiences of lifelong learning 95Community education: participation, risk and desire Lyn Tett 97From childcare practitioner to FE tutor: biography, identity and lifelong learning Helen Colley 108Disability, gender and identity: the experiences of disabled students in higher education Sheila Riddell 121The in/visible journey: black women's lifelong lessons in higher education Heidi Safia Mirza 137Older women as lifelong learners Barbara Kamler 153War and diaspora as lifelong learning contexts for immigrant women Shahrzad Mojab 164Conclusion Becky Francis Carole Leathwood 176Bibliography 184Index 207
