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.

This book presents leading-edge perspectives and methodologies to address emerging issues of concern for professional learning in contemporary society. The conditions for professional practice and learning are changing dramatically in the wake of globalization, new modes of knowledge production, new regulatory regimes, and increased economic-political pressures. In the wake of this, a number of challenges for learning emerge: more practitioners become involved in interprofessional collaboration developments in new technologies and virtual workworlds emergence of transnational knowledge cultures and interrelated circuits of knowledge. The space and time relations in which professional practice and learning are embedded are becoming more complex, as are the epistemic underpinnings of professional work. Together these shifts bring about intersections of professional knowledge and responsibilities that call for new conceptions of professional knowing. Exploring what the authors call sociomaterial perspectives on professional learning they argue that theories that trace not just the social but also the material aspects of practice – such as tools, technologies, texts but also bodies and actions - are useful for coming to terms with the challenges described above. Reconceptualising Professional Learning develops these issues through specific contemporary cases focused on one of the book’s three main themes: (1) professionals’ knowing in practice, (2) professionals’ work arrangements and technologies, or (3) professional responsibility. Each chapter draws upon innovative theory to highlight the sociomaterial webs through which professional learning may be reconceptualised. Authors are based in Australia, Canada, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the USA as well as the UK and their cases are based in a range of professional settings including medicine, teaching, nursing, engineering, social services, the creative industries, and more. By presenting detailed accounts of these themes from a sociomaterial perspective, the book opens new questions and methodological approaches. These can help make more visible what is often invisible in today’s messy dynamics of professional learning, and point to new ways of configuring educational support and policy for professionals.

Feedback is a crucial element of teaching, learning and assessment. There is, however, substantial evidence that staff and students are dissatisfied with it, and there is growing impetus for change. Student Surveys have indicated that feedback is one of the most problematic aspects of the student experience, and so particularly in need of further scrutiny. Current practices waste both student learning potential and staff resources. Up until now the ways of addressing these problems has been through relatively minor interventions based on the established model of feedback providing information, but the change that is required is more fundamental and far reaching. Reconceptualising Feedback in Higher Education, coming from a think-tank composed of specialist expertise in assessment feedback, is a direct and more fundamental response to the impetus for change. Its purpose is to challenge established beliefs and practices through critical evaluation of evidence and discussion of the renewal of current feedback practices. In promoting a new conceptualisation and a repositioning of assessment feedback within an enhanced and more coherent paradigm of student learning, this book: • analyses the current issues in feedback practice and their implications for student learning. • identifies the key characteristics of effective feedback practices • explores the changes needed to feedback practice and how they can be brought about • illustrates through examples how processes to promote and sustain effective feedback practices can be embedded in modern mass higher education. Provoking academics to think afresh about the way they conceptualise and utilise feedback, this book will help those with responsibility for strategic development of assessment at an institutional level, educational developers, course management teams, researchers, tutors and student representatives.

Lifelong Learning: A Symposium on Continuing Education is a selection of papers presented at the December 1965 meeting of the UNESCO International Committee for the Advancement of Adult Education. Contributors focus on the importance of lifelong learning and its practical implications, offering views on a wide range of topics such as continued professional education, industrial education, the media of mass communication, and the role of schools, colleges, and universities in promoting adult education. This book is comprised of nine chapters and opens with a discussion on the idea of lifelong learning and its implications for formal educational institutions. The following chapters deal with professional education; industrial education; the media of mass communication; and whether voluntary associations, whose ends are not primarily educational, should think of themselves as having some responsibility for helping their members to achieve lifelong learning. The responsibility of libraries and museums as well as public authorities in promoting adult education is also examined. The final chapter evaluates lifelong learning in relation to social and economic policy. This monograph will be of interest to educators and policymakers.

The authors argue that the aim of research should be to improve practice through a process of critical reflection. Focusing clearly on the everyday concerns and problems of practitioners, they emphasize the importance of practical knowledge. Their definition of ‘practice’ is wide, and includes the generation of theory and the doing of research as well as front-line teaching. They show how notions of ‘adult learning’ and ‘the adult learner’ have been constituted mainly through theory and research in psychology and sociology, and examine action research as a mode of understanding. They conclude by looking at the curriculum implications for the teaching of adult education as reflective practice.

Prompted by the ongoing debate among science educators over ‘nature of science’, and its importance in school and university curricula, this book is a clarion call for a broad re-conceptualizing of nature of science in science education. The authors draw on the ‘family resemblance’ approach popularized by Wittgenstein, defining science as a cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional system whose heterogeneous characteristics and influences should be more thoroughly reflected in science education. They seek wherever possible to clarify their developing thesis with visual tools that illustrate how their ideas can be practically applied in science education. The volume’s holistic representation of science, which includes the aims and values, knowledge, practices, techniques, and methodological rules (as well as science’s social and institutional contexts), mirrors its core aim to synthesize perspectives from the fields of philosophy of science and science education. The authors believe that this more integrated conception of nature of science in science education is both innovative and beneficial. They discuss in detail the implications for curriculum content, pedagogy, and learning outcomes, deploy numerous real-life examples, and detail the links between their ideas and curriculum policy more generally.