Contested Spaces of Teaching and Learning : Practitioner Ethnographies of Adult Education in the United States

This edited collection of critical practitioner-based ethnographies explores how adults teach and learn across diverse formal and informal educational spaces. Contested Spaces of Teaching and Learning illustrates the myriad ways in which the process of adults teaching and learning is profoundly social, transformational, and linked to social change.

Contested Spaces is an edited collection of critical ethnographies that examine the educational experiences of adults as cultural practice. These practices take place in diverse settings -- from the formal and subtly negotiated educational contexts of school classrooms, parent or adult education programs; to the institutionally interstitial realms of a worker training program, Bible study class, prison yoga class, or refugee resettlement program; to fluid and explicitly contested everyday spaces: an LGBTQ choir, a public parade, or Latinx cultural programming.The compilation includes twelve richly rendered case studies written from the perspective of “practitioner-ethnographers” -- individuals who straddle the roles of educator and ethnographic researcher. A central premise of the book is that, even as the terrain of adult education is increasingly infused with the aims and ideologies of neoliberal capital, participants in specific educational programs and activities are continuously forging educational alternatives to neoliberal education. Each chapter examines educative practices that either directly contest conventions of adult teaching and learning, and/or subtly challenge conventional ways of understanding the practices of adult teaching and learning. Drawing on distinct theoretical framings, each author illuminates the ways in which adults engaged in teaching and learning participate in cultural practices that necessarily intersect with other dimensions of social life, such as work, recreation, community engagement, personal development, or political action. By juxtaposing ethnographic inquiries of formal and informal learning spaces, as well as intentional and unintended challenges to mainstream adult teaching and learning, Contested Spaces provides new understandings and critical insights into the complexities of adults’ educative experiences.