Reconceptualising Lifelong Learning: Feminist Interventions

This book, "Reconceptualising Lifelong Learning: Feminist Interventions," presents alternative perspectives on lifelong learning. It challenges the current field of lifelong learning, which is based on hidden values and assumptions, and explores how exclusionary discourses and practices are perpetuated. The authors offer new ways of conceptualizing learning that consider diverse learners from different social contexts. The book is divided into four sections, each focusing on a different aspect of reconceptualizing lifelong learning. It draws on feminist and post-structural frameworks to critically analyze the current state of lifelong learning, shares stories of diverse learners, presents new understandings of learning, and proposes new approaches and practices for lifelong learning.

Arising from work by the Gender and Lifelong Learning Group of the Gender and Education Association, this book presents reconceptualisations of lifelong learning. It argues that the current field of lifelong learning is based on certain hidden values and assumptions and examines the mechanisms by which exclusionary discourses and practices are reproduced and maintained. The book opens up ways of conceptualising learning that takes into account multiple and shifting formations of learners from different social contexts. The authors broaden what counts as learning and who counts as a learner, offering different understandings of lifelong learning that are able to include currently marginalised values and principles. Organised in four sections the book looks at:

• reclaiming - it draws on feminist and post-structural conceptual frameworks to create a critical analysis of the current 'field' of lifelong learning
• retelling - it tells the tales of different multi-positions in lifelong learning
• revisioning - it moves from narrative to analysis and the authors present their revisioning of learning which provide the tools to reconceptualise the field of lifelong learning
• reconstructing - it furthers the discussion to outline new approaches to and practices in lifelong learning.