Learning through Community: Exploring Participatory Practices

The Turbulence of Learning to Publish As researchers, we learned about working together and collaborating across multiple dimensions of space, time and our own identities. … We learned and we are still learning. We are learning as we write and revise this book. We learn as we begin to see this book through the eyes of others who have not lived through the process of discovery with us in the field. … We learn as we go “back to work,” … to try to figure out how our learnings can make a difference. (Jackson, 2004, p. 289) It took 10 years to create this book. Of course, none of us intended to take so long. Like a lot of things that appear to be individual pathology, our tardiness was socially produced. The first defining relation was the collegial way in which Nina Bascia, Eric Shragge and I selected contributors for this volume. As co-editors, we sought cont- butions from academics who had produced case studies for the Toronto-based 1 research network called NALL: Network for New Approaches to Lifelong Learning.