This original and challenging book introduces the ground-breaking concept of ‘invisible education’, theorising it with critical posthuman concepts and demonstrating it through a wide range of empirical research. Invisible education is the learning that happens in everyday life: it is invisible because it is purposively ignored and devalued, and it is education because it is powerful and formative. Far from being marginal, this is where the future is being formed. The book challenges the feel-good fiction of social mobility through formal education, replacing it with the new concept of future mutabilities, shaped through invisible education. The book is the first to bring together lifelong learning and critical posthumanism and does so in ways that are mutually illuminating. The book draws on a wide range of funded empirical research on invisible education: exploring landscapes, animals and things (material, immaterial and uncanny), activism, volunteering and work, home lives and care, and global contexts of conflict. It charts how invisible education plays a crucial role in the lives of marginalised people, including young people, activists, postverbal people, carers, women escaping domestic abuse and many others. Combining posthuman ideas with memoir, poetry, art and fiction, it is creative, intellectually stimulating and readable.

This original and challenging book introduces the ground-breaking concept of ‘invisible education’, theorising it with critical posthuman concepts and demonstrating it through a wide range of empirical research. Invisible education is the learning that happens in everyday life: it is invisible because it is purposively ignored and devalued, and it is education because it is powerful and formative. Far from being marginal, this is where the future is being formed. The book challenges the feel-good fiction of social mobility through formal education, replacing it with the new concept of future mutabilities, shaped through invisible education. The book is the first to bring together lifelong learning and critical posthumanism and does so in ways that are mutually illuminating. The book draws on a wide range of funded empirical research on invisible education: exploring landscapes, animals and things (material, immaterial and uncanny), activism, volunteering and work, home lives and care, and global contexts of conflict. It charts how invisible education plays a crucial role in the lives of marginalised people, including young people, activists, postverbal people, carers, women escaping domestic abuse and many others. Combining posthuman ideas with memoir, poetry, art and fiction, it is creative, intellectually stimulating and readable.

This book explores the potential for lifelong learning in dementia. A growing social issue, dementia has previously been understood as a wasteland for learning: at best, those with dementia are helped to hold on to some pre-existing skills. This book draws on extensive qualitative data with people with dementia and their families to demonstrate that new forms of learning can happen in dementia, with positive outcomes for both the learner and those around them. In doing so, this book demonstrates that those with dementia help us to understand learning differently, thus providing a breakthrough in our understanding and theorising of lifelong learning. Using posthuman theory to scaffold and discuss the findings, this pioneering book will appeal to scholars of dementia, lifelong learning and the posthuman.

Using theory drawn from Education, Cultural Studies and Human Geography, this work explores the related issues of belonging, learning and community. This book draws on a range of research studies conducted with adult learners both nationally and internationally in formal and informal contexts (including universities, voluntary sector and community based projects, work and leisure). It uses interdisciplinary theory drawn from Education, Cultural Studies and Human Geography to explore the related issues of belonging, learning and community. It critiques dominant ideas and practices of learning community in Higher Education and Lifelong Learning as simplistic and regulatory and argues that learners gain most benefit from creating their own symbolic communities and networks, which help to produce 'imagined' social capital. It demonstrates how such imagined social capital works, using a rich variety of empirical data. It then considers how these new critical perspectives can help us to rethink education as a cultural practice. "Continuum Studies in Educational Research (CSER)" is a major new series in the field of educational research. Written by experts and scholars for experts and scholars, this ground-breaking series focuses on research in the areas of comparative education, history, lifelong learning, philosophy, policy, post-compulsory education, psychology and sociology. Based on cutting edge research and written with lucidity and passion, the "CSER" series showcases only those books that really matter in education - studies that are major, that will be remembered for having made a difference.

How do women academics survive? How can we empower women students? How can we develop feminist strategies in teaching and learning in higher education? Published in conjunction with the Women in Higher Education Network, this text explores these fundamental questions and presents strategies for changing and challenging the mainstream curriculum in higher education. In the first section, contributors present the problems women face in mainstream higher education, often using their own experiences to illustrate the issues. The experiences range from coping with motherhood and academics, to the situations faced by black and lesbian women. The second section explores methods of dealing with some of the issues that arise and suggests ways of empowering women in higher education. The final section examines strategies for adapting and challenging the mainstream curriculum in a range of disciplines. Containing chapters written from lecturer and student perspectives, this diverse collection should be of interest and practical use to all women lecturers and students in higher education on a personal and professional level.

This volume critically explores themes of belonging, learning and community, drawing on a range of research studies conducted with adult learners in formal and informal contexts and employing interdisciplinary theory from education, feminist theory, cultural studies and human geography. Dominant but simplistic and regulatory ideas and practices of learning community in higher education and lifelong learning are critiqued. Instead, Jocey Quinn argues that learners gain most benefit from creating their own symbolic communities and networks, which help to produce imagined social capital. A rich variety of empirical data is used to explore and demonstrate how such imagined social capital works. >