Learning Journeys in Women's Organisations: Adult Education Outside Conventional Settings

Abstract

The thesis examines a selected number of women's voluntary organisations in New South Wales, Australia, to find what learning takes place in them, and how their members learn from the organisations and from each other. It uses the framework of conventional adult learning theory to establish whether the way women learn in the environment of a voluntary organisation complies with those conventions or deviates from them. As well, it uses a feminist approach that adopts multiple methods of amassing relevant information. Organisations examined include creative guilds and service organisations, the Country Women's Association and a number of church organisations. Research was carried out through the use of recorded interviews with members, informal conversations and attendance at meetings of the organisations, some of which the researcher joined or already held membership in. In addition, primary records, newsletters and histories published by the organisations were consulted, as were sources such as women's magazines within the sphere of interest of the organisations. Theorists in the field of adult education have only quite recently begun to look more deeply at the way learning occurs outside educational institutions, and whether this learning is of significant value to the individual and society. This scrutiny has been particularly neglected in the case of women's learning in social situations such as women's voluntary organisations. This research addresses this void.