RECENSÕES

Ostrouch-Kaminska, Joanna; Vieira, Cristina C. (Eds.) (2015), Private world(s). Gender and informal learning of adults, Rotterdam, Sense Publishers, 194 pp.

Edmée Ollagnier Emeritus¹

 

¹Professor of Adult Education, University of Geneva, Switzerland

 

«Gender and adult learning» is a concern for the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults for more than 15 years. Researchers, engaged in this network, meet regularly to share their work and questions on this topic. Mostly composed by female researchers, the network allowed them to transmit these results to a wider public through several thematic collective publications. Joanna Ostrouch-Kaminska and Cristina C. Vieira edit the fourth production of the network. This book, result of selected papers from the session which has been hired in Coimbra, Portugal, focuses on gender and informal learning, a topic which appeared as a very important issue for all the members of the network. Even if the topic of gender is still not very visible in adult education publications, we can find in literature more and more results concerning gender and formal education, with quantitative as well as qualitative researches. Universities, schools and vocational education are worlds that have been particularly explored with gender glasses. The question of informal learning gives here the opportunity for all of us to discover how unusual contexts can be important for the learning process of people and groups. It is probably the strongest contribution of this book, which drives the reader in non-traditional and sometimes very surprising worlds. This notion of informal learning needed to be revisited. In their introduction, the editors insist on this point. What do we include in this notion often but differently conceptualised? With the reference to various authors, they bring us to the heart of this debate. They show how this part of learning, staying most of the time invisible by our occidental society, is connected with the gendered process of socialisation and its consequences for the place of each individual in the society.

Joanna and Cristina organise this publication into three sections. It is interesting to notice that those three sections are, on my point of view, connected with three different socialisation’s steps of informal learning situations. The first one: «private sphere», with four writings is fully related to intimacy, with approaches digging the emotional states of the concerned persons and which let us interiorise those emotions. The second section: «minorities and activism» drives us into the collective life of persons who learn together because of their choice or their situation. Solidarity seems here to be the motor of the learning process of groups and which inspire us to participate to a collective challenge. The third section: «(Non) formal contexts of informal learning» with four writings brings us closer to formal education situations, but where the non-formal process of learning is at the centre. Those training programs and work contexts don’t produce only expected knowledge and skills, but open to a wide range of unpredictable learning processes, which let us understand the complexity of any educational situation.

 

«Private sphere»

In their research: «Gender printed in a social mask», Katarine Popovic, Maja Maksimovic and Aleksandar Bulajic focus on how the valorisation and the demonstration of hyper masculinity, related to the Balkans conflict in the 90’s, create resistance amongst men to learn. Interviews conducted with young males in Belgrade show how the social structures based on «masculine», physical and political power caused a collective regressive transformation in Serbia. These identity constructions, based on previous informal learning elements, cause an identity filter, a resistance to learning issues and question the relevance of their learning choices and perspectives.

Joanna Ostrouch-Kaminska, in: «(L)earning power: gender and power based on the commitment to marital relation» maintains us in the sphere of power, with a bio-graphical research done with dual-career couples in Poland. She shows how respectful power relations are gained by both women and men through a learning process related to behaviours, a shared understanding of reality and a mutual respect. Those couples transgress the traditional defined roles in the polish culture with a mutual professional involvement, strategies of support and a high level of communication. The process of learning and «earning» power becomes the process of constructing gender equality.

The following pages: «Not just for women: breast cancer, gender and informal learning in an exceptional situation» by Astrid Seltrecht, drive us to the context of the breath cancer. This research in Germany concentrates on the connection between the stages of knowledge about the illness, the informal learning process it generates and the biographical metamorphosis it might cause. Referring to women, the learning process interacts with the physical and emotional appropriation of the disease. For the interviewed men having breath cancer, the previously learned sexgender-borders norm is destabilized and their daily life is dominated by their illness trajectory. The author ends with the necessity to increase information and education for such patients.

Joana Pisco Véstia da Silva and Cristina C. Vieira enclose this part with «The value of informal learning for illiterate older women across the lifespan: perception of elderly women from a rural region of Portugal». The interviews carried out with those old women permitted to identify their learning contexts, learning strategies and the differential socialisation in their families. Women, mothers, wife born during the Portuguese dictatorial regime, submitted to a traditional male authority, these women were and still are illiterate, they did not have a professional activity before. As retired and old, they have very low economic resources. But they have been able to question their lifestyle and to valorize it as a cultural heritage.

 

«Minorities and activism»

To make visible the male domination in places of power, a French feminist group wearing artificial bears: «la barbe» burst in different strategic spaces during official media events. Catherine André and Elisabeth Hofmann show us how those «Bearded Women and this Feminist Activism of ‘La barbe’ is a Form of Adult Learning and Education». With the lighting of Mezirow’s principles on transformative learning and a focus on the notion of empowerment, they show, through interviews, how such a political collective action implying different phases, constitutes a real informal learning process for those women involved in this movement.

Still in France, Letitia Trifanescu proposes a research in identifying situations «Against Patterns of Domination. Migration as an Act of Empowerment and Learning». The life narratives of illegal migrants point out the path from cultural predestined trajectories full of gendered collective familial traditions to stages of empowerment, self-learning and transformation in their new environment. This social environment pushes them to constantly negotiate and question their identity and posture within the dynamic process of becoming empowered subjects.

This part ends with the «Community men’s sheds and informal learning: an exploration of their gendered roles» from Barry Golding in Australia and Lucia Carragher in Ireland. Men’s sheds movement grew up in the last decade in Australia as well as in Ireland, UK and New Zealand. The authors show how those sheds allow learning process in male gendered spaces. In exploring the history of the movement, they found that women played important roles in the setting and the support of men’s sheds. But some women show resistance because some men’s sheds, in which they might be actively involved, went into social services delivery, traditionally recognised as offering professional and personal perspective to women.

 

«(Non) Formal contexts of informal learning»

A parish in Portugal has a growing old population. Susana Villas-Boas, Albertina Oliveira and Nátalia Ramos analyze in «Gender and Intergenerational Programmes» how such programs might play a positive role on gender roles. They are based on reciprocal orientation processes, influences, exchange, non formal learning and solidarity between the members of two or more generations on the basis of a common goal. But the authors also mention the necessity to take in account the risks of reproduction and consolidation of gender inequalities.

The following writing from Ma_´lgorzata Ciczkowska-Giedziun conducts us in the polish social work training system considering that «(In)formal Education as a Space of Creating Personal Beliefs on Gender». For the author, the students’ beliefs, including gender questions, have an influence on their attitudes toward clients. The complementarities between a formal and an informal education during the vocational training’s years are the guarantee of future gendered behaviours.

In the same spirit, Martina Endepohls-Ulpe, Elisabeth Sander, Georg Geber and Claudia Quaiser-Pohl show, through biographies, how female German and Austrian scientists have dismounted gender stereotypes because of their informal learning environment. «How They Became Different – Life Courses of Women Working Successfully in the Field of STEM» is due to their parents, family and peers. Aside these childhood contexts and the fact they were interested into sciences, they strongly integrated beliefs and attitudes in refusing typical female role models.

The last writing concerns «Informal Learning at Work Place – Gender Differences» analysed in a management school in Bulgaria by Elmira Bancheva and Mariya Ivanova. After a rich discussion on informal learning theories about the workplace, the authors use quantitative data sources to show the different influence of organizational cultural factors on men and women. They conclude with the report according to which women are left with a sense of inequality, regardless of their rank and culture.

The book ends with «a revision for the future» from the editors in which they remind us that «private worlds provide knowledge to construct alternative systems of meanings, to transgress the dominant interpretation of the world … and will equip women and men to understand culture and social world in which they live». In conclusion, we can say that the richness of this book is related to different factors: the variety of learning contexts and represented countries, the wide range of theorical references and debates and the diversity of inquiries methods. It is the testimony of the importance of the ESREA gender network in our formal research world.