Research and Teaching Areas

My coming to UVic’s Leadership Studies programme in July 2004 has meant a broadening of the concept of leadership. Courses include a focus on community leadership (voluntary and non-governmental organizations, the workplace and community schools) around areas/themes and issues such as:

• Feminist and women’s leadership and educational activities at local and global levels
• Adult and environmental adult education
• Cultural leadership and social transformation through arts and crafts-based learning.
• Citizenship, democracy and governance and globalisation
• Social movements and activism
• Healthy and learning communities
• Community development

Current Research Projects

Women, Arts/Crafts-Based Learning for Change

I am currently undertaking an international comparative study funded by SSHRC of the ways women in Canada and New Zealand/Aotearoa use the arts such as drama, murals, fabric crafts, photography, music, and storytelling as tools of critical adult learning within communities and catalysts for resistance, defiance, cultural and civic literacy, anti-racisms and social and environmental change  http://www.educ.uvic.ca/communityarts/index.html

Culture and Adult Education: State of the Field

The purpose of this study funded by the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) is to bring together a diversity of existing sources of information on arts and adult education across Canada in order to:

a) Highlight best practices and contemporary issues in communities vis-à-vis arts and learning;

b) Deepen understandings of theoretical and community debates;

c) Identify spaces of support for and challenges to community arts-based adult education;

d) Identify gaps in our knowledge base and to organisations;

e) Provide some research strategies to begin to address the gaps.

Women, Health, Community Development and Technology

I am in the process of concluding a project with Dr. Carol Harris, and funded by SSHRC, in five coastal communities in southwest Newfoundland. My specific focus in this project was the ways women as community leaders, adult educators and health care practitioner-educators were using (or not) new technologies (video-conferencing and broad-band internet) that had been introduced.

Most Recent Publications

Books

(Forthcoming 2006). The Art of Social Justice: Re-Crafting Activist Adult Education and Community Leadership (with Joyce Stalker), Liecester, UK.: NIACE.

(Forthcoming 2006). Adult Education, the Arts and Social Justice (with Joyce Stalker). Special edition of Convergence.

(2004) Adult Education for Democracy, Social Justice and a Culture of Peace, Proceedings of the Joint International Gathering of the Adult Education Research Conference and the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, (with assistance of J. Shinaba & C. Etmanski), Victoria: University of Victoria.

(2003) Environmental Adult Education: Ecological Learning, Theory, and Practice for Socio-Environmental Change (with Lilian Hill), New Directions in Adult and Continuing Education, Volume 99, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(2003) Global Perspectives in Environmental Adult Education: Sustainability, Justice and Transformation, Frankfurt/New York: Peter Lang Publishers.

(2000) The Nature of Transformation: Environmental Adult Education, Second Edition (with Shirley Follen and Budd Hall). Toronto: Department of Adult Education, Community Development and Counselling Psychology, OISE/UT (A limited number of copies available still available – contact the author).

Chapters

(Forthcoming 2006). Environmental Adult Education, in S. Scott, T. Nesbit and B. Spence, Learning for Life: Canadian Readings in Adult Education (2nd Edition)

(2005)  Environmental Adult Education. In L. English (Ed), International Encyclopaedia of Adult Education. New York: Palgrave,  pp.218-222.

(2005) Social Movement Learning (with Budd L. Hall). International Encyclopaedia of Adult Education. New York: Palgrave,  pp.584-588.

(2002) Towards Transformative Learning: Ecological Perspectives for Adult Education, In E. O'Sullivan, A. Morrell & M.A. O'Connor, (Eds.) Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning, , New York: Palgrave Publishing.

(2001) Youth Action and Learning for Sustainable Consumption in Canada, in Youth, Consumption Patterns and Lifestyles, Paris: UNESCO/UNEP, pp.73-103.(Also through MOST Publishing House at www.unesco.org/education/youth_consumption.

Articles

(2005) Sewing Stories and Acting Activism: Women’s Leadership and Learning Through Drama and Craft. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 5(4), pp. 629-642.

(2005) Agency, isolation and the coming of new technologies: Exploring dependency’ in coastal communities of Newfoundland through participatory research, (with C.E. Harris). Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 51(1), pp.18-33.

 (2003) Feminist Arts Practices of Popular Education: Imagination, counter-Narratives and activism on Vancouver Island and Gabriola Island (with G. Markle). New Zealand Journal of Adult Education, 31(2), pp.36-52.

(2002) Traversing the Gap: Conscientazacion, Educative-Activism and Environmental Adult Education. Environmental Education Research, 8(3),  pp.315-323

(2002) The Craft of Teaching Adults. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 16(1), pp.97-99.

Most Recent Research Presentations (and Conference Proceedings)

(2005) Social Learning and Defiance through Feminist Arts-based Education (with K. Atkin & C. Hamilton), Proceedings of the 24th National Conference of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, University of Western Ontario, London,  pp.49-55.  

(2004)  Feminist popular education and community leadership: The case for new directions. International Gathering of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education and the Adult Education Research Conference (USA), Adult Education for Democracy, Social Justice and a Culture of Peace, University of Victoria, pp.89-94.

(2004) Environmental Adult Education in a Globalising World (with D. Kappor,, B. Hill, L.Hill and J. Sumner).  International  Gathering of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education and the Adult Education Research Conference, Adult Education for Democracy, Social Justice and a Culture of Peace, University of Victoria, pp.570-571.

(2004) Technical Rationality in Five Costal Communities of Newfoundland: Historical and Contemporary Challenges to Lifelong Learning (with C. Harris), International  Gathering of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education and the Adult Education Research Conference, Adult Education for Democracy, Social Justice and a Culture of Peace, University of Victoria, pp.570-571 pp.196-201.

(2004) Promises and Problems of Technology in Creating the World They Want In Costal Communities of Newfoundland: Reflections on a Participatory Research Workshop. Proceedings of the Learning and the World We Want Conference, (B.L. Hall and C. Rodriquez, Eds.) University of Victoria, www.educ.uvic.ca/leanring/proceedings.pdf, pp. 99-105

September 2002 Feminist Artist-Educators: Resistance, Defiance and Community Change, Universidad de Barcelona, International Popular Education Network Conference

March 2002 Aesthetic Activism: Artist-Educators and Socio-Environmental Change, In Pursuit of Knowledge Series, Continuing Education, University of Victoria.

February 2002 Intersections Between Leadership and Adult Education, Adult Education Brown Bag Lunch Series, University of Victoria.

(2001)  Feminist Artist-Educators and Community Revitalisation: Case Studies from Toronto, Canadian Association for the Studies of Adult Education (CASAE), Laval University, Quebec City, pp.43-48.

March 2001 Women's Cultural Animation Work as Tools of Social Movement Learning: Two Case Studies from Toronto, International Conference on Social Movement Learning, University of Toronto.

update Jan. 16 . 06

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