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.
Author Biography
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.
