The Future of
Lifelong Learning and Work - International Conference
June 20-22, 2005 Toronto,
Ontario, Canada
SPEAKERS
SERIES,
2005
Welcome
to the Fall Season at WALL!
Here
is our list of upcoming events...
FALL
2005
Monday, October 3, 12:00 – 1:00pm, Room 12-274
Jill Blackmore
Unprotected
Participation in Lifelong Learning: A Feminist Reality Check of Discourses of Flexibility, Pathways, and Seamlessness
Lifelong
learning (LLL) has been a central theme in discourses mobilized
to restructure education and training during the 1990s. But what
does LLL mean, who benefits and what can research tell us about
the capacity of LLL to improve the educational and life opportunities
of girls and women? This paper draws on Australian empirical research
on women in education management, in community education, and
young women in school and vocational education to deconstruct
dominant discourses about lifelong learning and how they have
differential and sometimes dubious benefits for many of these
groups.
Dr.
Jill Blackmore is Professor of Education at the Faculty
of Education, Deakin University, Australia. She is former President
of the Australian Association of Research in Education, editor
of its journal and is currently on several editorial boards (e.g.
British Educational Research Journal). She teaches educational
administration and policy, and undertakes professional development
and policy consultancy with various education stakeholders.
Co-sponsored
by 
Wednesday,
October 12, 12:00 – 2:00pm, Room 12-274
Lucy Suchman and Peter Sawchuk
Doing
Tech Change in High Tech Industries: Critical Reflections on Recent
Research
Lucy Suchman will speak about her experiences
while at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in doing tech
change as ethnographically-informed, practice-based co-development.
She will use her last XEROX PARC project, which involved a civil
engineering project at the state dept of transportation, as a
case.
Peter
Sawchuk will discuss technological change and worker
responses in the context of the reform of social benefits delivery
work in the Ontario public service. He argues that participatory
technological design, inflected by a recognition of power struggles
in the workplace, can inform collective bargaining in new ways,
particularly when proposals are based in a recognition of technological
implementation as a ongoing, mediated, conflictual, developmental
(i.e. learning) process.
Lucy
Suchman is the acting co-head of sociology and the
co-director of the Centre for Science Studies at the University
of Lancaster. She worked for twenty years as a researcher at Xerox's
PARC. Her research has centered on relations of ethnographies
of everyday practice to new technology design.
Peter
Sawchuk is an Assistant Professor at the University
of Toronto teaching in the Sociology & Equity Studies in Education
Department (OISE/UT) as well as at the Centre for Industrial Relations
& Human Resources. Recent books include "Adult Learning
and Technology in Working-Class Life" (Cambridge UP 2003),and
"Hidden Knowledge: Organized Labor in the Information Age"
(co-authored with D.W. Livingstone, Rowman and Littlefield 2004).
Thursday,
October 20, 12:00 – 1:00pm, Room 12-274
Charles Chen
Proactive
Learning, Work and Well Being
With
a goal of promoting the psychological well being of adults, this
presentation is to explore the role of proactive learning in adults’
life career development. In focusing on enhancing the quality
of one’s learning experience, proactive learning draws attention
to both a comprehensive notion of learning and several key considerations
that facilitate the effectiveness of the learning process. The
presentation will first review a series of key concepts and tenets
from several major learning theories, leading to the formation
of a rationale that highlights the critical role of learning in
individuals’ life development experiences. It will then
point to the importance of not only understanding the notion of
learning but also improving the quality of learning. In doing
so, it will propose several principles and guidelines that can
help adults make their lifelong learning a more proactive, constructive,
and effective process of personal growth. Some proactive learning
strategies will also be highlighted.
Charles
Chen is Associate Professor of Counselling Psychology
at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University
of Toronto (OISE/UT). His publications include, among others,
articles and book chapters on a variety of topic areas in the
general domain of Counselling Psychology, including topics such
as stress and coping, cross-cultural transition and adjustment,
counsellor education and training, counselling in higher education,
Morita therapy, and Morita-philosophy-based career interventions.
In addition to these subjects, the majority of his published works
focus on the central theme of vocational and career psychology
broadly defined, studying a variety of life career development
issues through individuals' life span. He is the first and only
recipient of the 2005 David E. Hunt Award for Excellence in Graduate
Teaching at OISE/UT..
