Learning through Community Exploring Participatory Practices

The Turbulence of Learning to Publish As researchers, we learned about working together and collaborating across multiple dimensions of space, time and our own identities. … We learned and we are still learning. We are learning as we write and revise this book. We learn as we begin to see this book through the eyes of others who have not lived through the process of discovery with us in the field. … We learn as we go “back to work,” … to try to figure out how our learnings can make a difference. (Jackson, 2004, p. 289) It took 10 years to create this book. Of course, none of us intended to take so long. Like a lot of things that appear to be individual pathology, our tardiness was socially produced. The first defining relation was the collegial way in which Nina Bascia, Eric Shragge and I selected contributors for this volume. As co-editors, we sought cont- butions from academics who had produced case studies for the Toronto-based 1 research network called NALL: Network for New Approaches to Lifelong Learning.

Out of Bounds: Situating Ourselves.- The Turbulence of Academic Collaboration.- Participation and Learning in Turbulent Times: Negotiations Between the Community and the Personal.- From the “Margins”: Case Studies.- Women, Violence and Informal Learning.- Stigma to Sage: Learning and Teaching Safer Sex Practices Among Canadian Sex Trade Workers.- Informal Civic Learning Through Engagement in Local Democracy: The Case of the Seniors' Task Force of Healthy City Toronto.- While No One is Watching: Learning in Social Action Among People who are Excluded from the Labour Market.- Knowledge Collisions: Perspectives from Community Economic Development Practitioners Working with Women.- Teacher's Informal Learning, Identity and Contemporary Education Reform.- Learning Through Struggle: How the Alberta Teachers' Association Maintains an Even Keel.- Formalizing the Informal: From Informal to Organizational Learning in the Post-Industrial Workplace.