Discourses, Dialogue and Diversity in Biographical Research

An Ecology of Life and Learning
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-90-04-46589-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 10, 228 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 226 mm, Gewicht: 340 g

Reihe: Research on the Education and Learning of Adults

This book explores how narratives are deeply embodied, engaging heart, soul, as well as mind, through varying adult learner perspectives. Biographical research is not an isolated, individual, solipsistic endeavor but shaped by larger ecological interactions – in families, schools, universities, communities, societies, and networks – that can create or destroy hope.

Telling or listening to life stories celebrates complexity, messiness, and the rich potential of learning lives. The narratives in this book highlight the rapid disruption of sustainable ecologies, not only ‘natural’, physical, and biological, but also psychological, economic, relational, political, educational, cultural, and ethical. Yet, despite living in a precarious, and often frightening, liquid world, biographical research can both chronicle and illuminate how resources of hope are created in deeper, aesthetically satisfying ways. Biographical research offers insights, and even signposts, to understand and transcend the darker side of the human condition, alongside its inspirations.

Discourses, Dialogue and Diversity in Biographical Research aims to generate insight into people’s fears and anxieties but also their capacity to 'keep on keeping on' and to challenge forces that would diminish their and all our humanity. It provides a sustainable approach to creating sufficient hope in individuals and communities by showing how building meaningful dialogue, grounded in social justice, can create good enough experiences of togetherness across difference. The book illuminates what amounts to an ecology of life, learning and human flourishing in a sometimes tortured, fractious, fragmented, and fragile world, yet one still offering rich resources of hope.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Bainbridge, Alan

Formenti, Laura

West, Linden

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Lehrerausbildung, Unterricht & Didaktik Methoden des Lehrens und Lernens
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Teildisziplinen der Pädagogik Erwachsenenbildung, lebenslanges Lernen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

The European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (Esrea)

Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Towards an Ecological Perspective on Learning and the Stories People Tell

Alan Bainbridge, Laura Formenti and Linden West

PART 1: Discourses of Ecology and Learning

1 When Lake Erie Is Polluted, We Are Too

Laura Formenti and Linden West

2 Biographical Interviews and the Micro Context of Biographicity: Closely Listening for Meaning, Learning, and Voice

Rob Evans

3 Narrative Regimes: An Alliance between Descriptive Phenomenology and Biography

Hervé Breton

4 Biographical Research at the Boundary: A Careful Listening for the Micro, Meso, and Macro in End-of-Life Care

Kjetil Moen

5 Trying to Capture the Value of the ‘Live’ Conference Using an Ecological Approach

Hazel R. Wright and Marianne Høyen

PART 2: Dialogue on Learning Together, and Its Distress

6 Dynamic Ecologies of Person and Place: Dialogic Ethnographies as Public Engagement

Richard D. Sawyer

7 Beyond Truth: A Pragmatist Approach to Narrative Pedagogy in Professional Learning for Healthcare Practitioners

Laura Mazzoli Smith

8 A Key? Conflict, and the Struggle for an Ecology of Dialogue, Learning and Peace among Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Educators

Alan Bainbridge and Linden West

PART 3: Diversity as a Content and as a Feature of Biographic Enquiry

9 Understanding Women’s Lives through Critical Feminist Perspectives: Working-Class Women Students in Higher Education

Barbara Merrill

10 Some Reflections on the Meaning, Limits and Challenges of Critical Biographical Research

Fergal Finnegan

11 Storytelling, Culture, and Indigenous Methodology

Adrienne S. Chan

12 Profession Reimagined: Tackling Adult Educators’ Alienation through Multimodal Ways of Knowing

Gaia Del Negro

13 The PhD and Me: A Liminal Space

Paula Stone

Conclusion: An Evolution of Ideas: The Transformative Ecological Imagination in Adult Learning, Education, and Research

Alan Bainbridge, Laura Formenti and Linden West

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Alan Bainbridge, DClinSci (2012), is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. He has written the monograph Becoming an Education Professional (2015) and co-coordinates the ESREA Life History and Biography Network.

Laura Formenti, PhD (1996), is a Professor in General and Social Pedagogy at Milano Bicocca University, Italy. She is a co-coordinator of the Life History and Biography Network of ESREA and Chair of the Italian Universities Network for Lifelong Learning.

Linden West, PhD (1998), is Professor of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University. He was co-coordinator of the ESREA Life History and Biography Network, author of diverse publications and, with Laura, winner of the Cyril O. Houle prize for outstanding literature in adult education.