Learning Communities and Imagined Social Capital Learning to Belong [Paperback]

This volume critically explores themes of belonging, learning and community, drawing on a range of research studies conducted with adult learners in formal and informal contexts and employing interdisciplinary theory from education, feminist theory, cultural studies and human geography. Dominant but simplistic and regulatory ideas and practices of learning community in higher education and lifelong learning are critiqued. Instead, Jocey Quinn argues that learners gain most benefit from creating their own symbolic communities and networks, which help to produce imagined social capital. A rich variety of empirical data is used to explore and demonstrate how such imagined social capital works.

Introduction \ 1. Learning to Belong \ 2. Critiquing Learning Communities and Communities of Practice \ 3. Conceptualising Imagined Social Capital \ 4. Re-imagining Educational Spaces \ 5. The Joy of Knowledge \ 6. Conclusion: Who Can Learn to Belong? \ References \ Index

Jocey Quinn is Professor of Education at the University of Plymouth, UK, and former Professor at the Institute for Policy Studies in Education at London Metropolitan University, UK. She is also Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter, UK.