Canalblog
Editer l'article Suivre ce blog Administration + Créer mon blog
Formation Continue du Supérieur
31 août 2009

Researching Gender, Participation, Flexibility and Identity in Adult Learning

http://www.esrea.org/content/1/c6/07/08/21/ESREA%20%236b%20-%20webisda.JPGESREA (European Society for Research on the Education of Adults) Gender Network Conference, 8 to 10 October 2009 | University of Hull, UK.
Conference Theme, Researching Gender:  Participation, Identity and Flexibility in Adult Learning.
    * Gender and participation in lifelong learning
    * Gender and identity in adult learning
    * Flexibility , gender and adult learning
    * Gender and informal learning
Aims-themes of the network: The gender issue is visible in research in the Educational Sciences, but it mainly concerns formal education and children. The purpose of this ESREA network is throw more light upon this field of research in adult education in Europe. Reports of research are discussed in terms of their theoretical aspects such as gendered learning, gender in higher education, gendered biographies, masculinities-feminities, gender in adult training, but also in terms of their methodological dimensions.
Network Convenor: Joanna Ostrouch University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland
Publications: Dybbroe, B. & Ollagnier, E. (Eds) (2003), Challenging Gender in Lifelong Learning: European perspectives, Roskilde: Roskilde University Press. Ostrouch, Joanna / Ollagnier, Edmée (eds.) (2008) Researching Gender in Adult Learning Frankfurt: Peter Lang. European Studies in Lifelong Learning and Adult Learning Research Vol. 3 Edited by Hake Barry J. / Salling Olesen Henning / Tippelt RudolfSecond Call for Papers.
Abstract: Emmanuel Da Silva Université de Bretagne Ocidentale, Brest, France.

Becoming a welfare worker in France means more than just a professional socialization. The University is not in charge of these courses, they depend on schools, which have quotas (sort of a numerus clausus) and specific recruitments: nearly all students are middle-class young women. In the field used for this Phd work, there are 7 men on the three year course, and 71 women. Learning how to be a welfare worker means learning specific knowledge (from psychology to sociology) but also social skills or interpersonal skills, which are never objectivised. Those social skills are « known » as professional qualities, but teachers hardly define their contents. These « qualities », necessary to be a « good » welfare worker, deal with normative conception of the behaviour of welfare work, as the selection at the entry of the social school shows. Those qualities (care, empathy and detachment) are known as feminines; but this « femininity » is also defined from a social position, the white middle-class stand-point.
In this context, if gender « is the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one's sex category » (West and Zimmerman, 1987), the formation of welfare workers in France is a gender socialization. Coming in the form of a professional socialization, welfare work formations are institutions of gender socialization. This approach is especially relevant for adults in a lifelong learning project. Their age seems to put them in a situation of unfavourable differentiation ; although lifelong education is a French political will, critics from the others involved in the course (peers, teachers, professionals...) question their social skills and legitimacy. In such a situation, adults do a gender singularization: they do gender to save face in the interaction. That means they promote relative gender norms - related to other social experiences - and try to legitimate their activities in light of these norms. My research aims to point out that whatever the social category used to critic the behaviour of lifelong learning adults (class, age), adults subjectively translate it in a gender questioning.
Commentaires
Newsletter
49 abonnés
Visiteurs
Depuis la création 2 783 012
Formation Continue du Supérieur
Archives