Contested Spaces of Teaching and Learning: Practitioner Ethnographies of Adult Education in the United States

Contested Spaces of Teaching and Learning examines the educational experiences of adults as cultural practice. These practices take place in diverse settings from formal educational contexts to institutionally interstitial realms to fluid and explicitly contested everyday spaces. This edited collection includes twelve richly rendered ethnographic case studies written from the perspective of practitioner-ethnographers who straddle the roles of educator and ethnographic researcher. Drawing on distinct theoretical framings, these contributors illuminate the ways in which adults engaged in teaching and learning participate in cultural practices that intersect with other dimensions of social life, such as work, recreation, community engagement, personal development, or political action. By juxtaposing ethnographic inquiries of formal and informal learning spaces, as well as intentional and unintended challenges to mainstream adult teaching and learning, this collection provides new understandings and critical insights into the complexities of adults' educational experiences.

About the Author :
Carolyn Chernoff is faculty member at Moore College of Art & Design. Janise Hurtig is faculty member at DePaul University.

Review :
Through luminous, critical ethnographic vignettes, the contributors to this edited collection deftly explode dominant, pragmatist notions of adult education and demonstrate how educational practices and policies in the United States are riven by cultural politics.--Lesley Bartlett, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA In this groundbreaking book, we see the start of a much-needed conversation on the often neglected, yet critically important, ways that adults fight against the commodification of their experience. Eschewing a focus only on formal settings, the contributors explore multiple activist spaces in which adults are trying to exercise their collective power. This is a must-read for anyone interested in critical resistance and adult educational processes that animate people's agency.--Stephen D. Brookfield, University of St. Thomas The editors and authors of this essential volume deliver an ethnographic tour de force. Somehow, both gently and forcefully, using language of vernacular and theory, they contest our facile dichotomies of teaching and learning, practitioner and academic, school and out-of-school, adult and child. This remarkably diverse set of case studies introduces a panoply of enriching practices and understandings of adult education in the United States. It also enables readers to see afresh the dynamic cultural production that meaningful teaching and learning always entails.--Bradley A. Levinson, Indiana University This collection of critical ethnographies of adult teaching and learning is an exhilarating journey across educative spaces that contests conventional practices and definitions of teaching and learning. Through the examination of diverse settings in adult education, this anthology insists on the conceptualization of community spaces as locations where new social identities and learning communities are co-constructed within meaningful and enduring relationships.--Norma Gonzalez, University of Arizona Hurtig and Chernoff's edited volume features ethnographic studies conducted in spaces rarely considered in education, challenging traditional approaches to learning. This book will prove valuable to people interested in social activism and community-based learning. The variety of ways community members use alternatives and implement unorthodox approaches to learning and teaching is sure to aid readers in challenging their own practices. Highly recommended to ethnographers and educationalists, as well as current and pre-service educators. -- "Anthropology & Education Quarterly" [T]his is a very valuable book. . . For many engaged in the traditional academic study of adult education, taking up new research lenses from outside the field may feel like stepping into uncharted terrain. The ethnographies in this new collection offer scholars of adult education an excellent introduction to the landscape. And, as adult educators know, we make the road by walking. -- "Teachers College Record"