Discourses, Dialogue and Diversity in Biographical Research: An Ecology of Life and Learning(10 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.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
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.