Leona M. English

Third-Space Practitioners: Women Educating for Justice in the Global South

This article builds on qualitative research with 13 women (9 from Canada and 4 from Asia and Africa) doing international adult education in the Global South. The author examines the cases in light of the postcolonial literature of Bhabha, Spivak, and Khan, giving special attention to their theory of third space. The 13 participants are third-space practitioners who challenge the binaries of North/South, religion/development, and local/global. As development workers and educators, these women trouble existing categories of identity to practice progressive politics in the public sphere through third-space strategies of ritual, listening, negotiation, and subversion. This article’s main contribution is to show how these adult educators use and practice this radical position within the shifting (postfoundational) sands that are so often denounced as apolitical, noncommittal, or lost in linguistics.

A Foucauldian Reading of Learning in Feminist, Nonprofit Organizations

This article reports on research with eight board members and eight directors of 10 feminist, nonprofit organizations. A Foucauldian poststructuralist reading of the data gives voice to undertheorized aspects of learning in feminist organizations and makes visible the power relationships. It explores women’s learned practices of resistance and offers an in-depth and paradoxical view of women’s learning in nonprofit organizations. In focusing on women and on particular organizational sites, this study contributes to a contextualized and gendered reading of Foucault.

Community in Cyberspace: Gender, Social Movement Learning, and the Internet

Feminist nonprofit organizations are sites of informal and nonformal learning where citizens learn advocacy, literacy, and the practices of social democracy. With the growing use of information and communication technologies in the nonprofit sector, there are questions as to how well organizations are able to make use of this technology to further their goals of promoting social movement learning and activism. This article reports on a systematic analysis of 100 websites for feminist organizations in Canada. Websites are evaluated for content, currency, and maintenance to determine how well these sites contribute to the work of these organizations. Implications are drawn for learning and teaching in the community-based sphere.

Analysis of Contents, Contributors, and Research Directions: Mapping Publication Routes in the Journal

Abstract A content analysis of the journal Religious Education: An Interfaith Journal of Spirituality, Growth and Transformation was conducted for a 10-year period between 1993–2002 (Volume 88, 1–Volume 97, 4). A total of 325 articles (277 authors) were analyzed into 3 primary research directions (theoretical, qualitative, and quantitative). Author institutional affiliation, religious identity, position, geographic location, and number of contributions were also computed. Implications for the Journal and the field of religious education are discussed.

Spirituality And Adult Education

A colleague and one of us exchanges knowing glances when a student declares an interest in spirituality. It makes us a little uneasy although we are both church attached and appreciative of spirituality: We wonder what we will have to deal with? Is there an altar call or, worse yet, a smudging ceremony in the works? At issue for us, and we imagine for many of our colleagues in adult education, is the extremes of belief and practice, and what some would call the flake factor. We sigh with relief when we realise the student is full of energy and is just willing to explore and seek some answers to his or her own lifes existential questions. Most often the student is seeking meaning, connection and a relationship with a higher power. That is close to what we see as spirituality in our practice as adult educators.

A 10‐year Retrospective of the British Journal of Religious Education: An Analysis of Contents and Contributors

An analysis of the British Journal of Religious Education was conducted for a 10‐year period between 1992 and 2002 (Volume 15(1) ‐ Volume 25(1)). A total of 156 articles (131 different authors) was analysed into three primary research directions (theoretical, qualitative and quantitative). Author institutional affiliation, gender, religious identity, position, geographic location, and number of contributions were also computed. Implications for the journal and the field of religious education are discussed.

AN APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY INTO THE SPIRITUAL VALUES OF CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

This article explores how institutions of higher education that declare themselves to be Christian can move closer to their mandate and mission. What is their spiritual mission and focus? How can they embody a Christian spirituality in their orientation and focus? The paper explores current issues in Christian higher education and highlights the obvious need for a reappraisal of existing paradigms. The authors use the appreciative inquiry methodology as a positive approach to recovering spiritual values and mission.

An Adult Learning Approach to Preparing Mentors and Mentees

Abstract This article approaches mentorship through an adult education lens. The author argues that using an adult education design for the initial preparation and continuing professional education of mentors and mentees enhances the value of the educational experience by making it responsive to adult learning needs and by communicating the importance of continuous learning. From this perspective, mentorship is seen as having tremendous potential to make a major contribution to adult learning for educators. By contributing to a philosophy and practice of lifelong learning, mentorship can breathe new life into the education profession.

Partnering for research: A critical discourse analysis

Using a critical discourse analysis, informed by poststructuralist theory, we explore the research phenomenon of coerced partnership. This lens allows us to pay attention to the social relations of power operating in knowledge generation processes, especially as they affect feminist researchers in adult education. We propose an alternative vision of partnership which politicizes the term partnership, attends to civil society, maps resistances and values the process by all partners.

Feminist Identities: Negotiations in the Third Space:

This article presents two cases of women doing development work for civil society organizations in the Global South. The author uses the cases to explicate the relationship of global civil society, development work, feminism, and Christianity. The case studies were collected through life history interviews with the participants. The cases, interpreted in light of the ‘third space’ cultural theory of Homi Bhabha, destabilize the fixed identity of these women as ‘development workers’, ‘feminists’, ‘Western’, and ‘Christian’.