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Learning Journeys in Women's Organisations

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Learning Journeys in Women's Organisations Introduction Women’s organisations provide significant learning opportunities for their members. Those opportunities often extend outwards into the wider community through the activities of the organisations and their members. This thesis examines the way learning opportunities arise in women’s organisations, the way women benefit from them and how the learning extends into the community. My original purpose in beginning my candidacy for a doctoral degree was to create a history of women’s contributions to the field of adult education in Australia. I had discovered that the only relatively broad history of adult education (although confined to liberal education and decades old) almost completely ignored women except for a few token mentions.1 I very soon found that the field which comprises women in adult education is a vast, barely- researched area which would be impossible to cover in many volumes, much less one PhD thesis. Paring down the field even to women’s organisations, again little researched, remained too large, and so I chose to focus on a few of the many women’s organisations operating in New South Wales, Australia. The thesis establishes the relationship of learning in women’s organisations with, or outside, established theoretical boundaries, the way the organisations teach and the way their members learn. It also looks at the extent to which each of the selected organisations can be seen as a learning community. The examples given act as case studies to begin a conversation about the role and contribution of women to adult education in Australia. This thesis is overtly inspired and shaped by my own experiences as an adult learner and thus differs from a formal academic treatise based solely on theoretical discussion. At the outset I must point out that this is a cross-disciplinary study which ranges across the fields of history and sociology, as well as adult education. Because of my own background in the humanities, as well as the particular content, I have elected to use the more flexible convention of footnoting rather than the author-date referencing system used in education. As well, I use examples based on my own and others’ life experience through oral history interviews and personal conversations. I originally wrote a chapter on the history of women’s organisations, focusing especially on those in the study, but space and lack of relevance to the research focus on learning did not permit its inclusion. Brief comments are included 1 D. Whitelock, The Great Tradition: A history of adult education in Australia, St Lucia, Queensland University Press, 1974. 9 throughout, where relevant, on each organisation’s founding. Publication which includes some of this work has begun with a paper on the CWA in a postgraduate conference at the University of New England in 2007.2 Each of the women about whom I have written in the thesis, some quoted from recorded interviews, has her own story of learning which contributes to the often unconventional way that women learn in their lives and as they participate in their organisations. In order to show the ways these women learn, I give examples of what they learn. My own involvement as a participant in the research and the impact my own learning journey has had on my thinking introduces an element of memoire in the thesis. ‘The self- reflexive turn’ in the academic field has meant that memoire and autobiography have become ‘part and parcel of academic texts’ according to Leona English in her introduction to the encyclopedia of adult education which she edits.3 I begin with my own story to demonstrate the way that my unique journey set me on my path as an adult learner. My Own Journey as an Adult Learner There was more than one catalyst to my own learning journey, each in itself a deeply disruptive event. The first was the death of my sixteen year old daughter, Judith, from malaria in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1982. No parent is ever the same again after the loss of a child; there is an inbuilt expectation that children will outlive their parents and such a loss therefore brings profound change. Following the family’s return to Australia I became ill and required major surgery, but before I was able to recover my husband decided to move the family to England, his country of birth. Five years later the marriage – which had always been difficult – ended, and I returned home to Australia as a single parent with my nine year old son. My self- esteem was virtually non-existent and I had no confidence even in my ability to support the two of us, although I was able to acquire a casual job in a fabric retail chain because of my skill in dressmaking, largely self-taught. This supplemented my social security payment, as well as some bridal dressmaking, but the nervous and emotional toll on me was enormous, particularly with no practical or financial support from my former husband for our son, and at one point I was hospitalised when my stress resulted in physical illness. 2 Robyn Hanstock, ‘Changing Women: The Country Women’s Association of NSW as a Learning Site’, Bridging the Gap Between Ideas and Doing Research, Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, 3-6 July 2007, Faculty of Education, Health and Professional Studies, and Faculty of Economics Business and Law, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2008, pp.27-35. 3 Leona M. English (ed), International Encyclopedia of Adult Education, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p.5. 10 My first foray into adult education was a lay pastoral care course which I undertook with my church denomination, as I believed that I could use my own experience to help other women in similar situations. I felt quite unable to consider university, convinced that I did not have the intelligence to undertake such a demanding course of learning. It is not always easy to discern specific moments of enlightenment leading to change – ‘epiphanies’ – but perhaps mine was in a state school staff selection panel, where I was involved as Parents’ and Citizens’ Association representative. Some of the applicants were not, I felt, suitable for the position, and I remember thinking ‘I could do this, I should be on the other side of this table’. By this time I had remarried, four years after my separation and divorce and, with the support of my husband, I applied to the University of Western Sydney for admission as a mature student but was rejected as their quota had been filled. Undeterred (amazingly for me), I decided to improve my chances by enrolling in a Tertiary Preparation Certificate course with the Institute of Technical And Further Education (TAFE). I continued to write to the university requesting a reconsideration of my application, and I was accepted for mid-year enrolment after completing only one semester of the TAFE course. My two English teachers in that course had been unstinting in their assistance in essay- writing, so that I was able to gain a high distinction in history in my first semester of the Bachelor of Arts degree. Probably those two women were the ones responsible, more than any others, for showing me how to think and reflect on what I was learning. In effect they set me on the successful learning journey which has continued to this day. As well, they were responsible for my introduction to teaching at the TAFE college. I had returned to thank them after I graduated with my honours degree from Sydney University, to where I had transferred, and one of the women asked me to fill in for her during her long service leave. Consequently, feeling I needed further qualification, I enrolled with the University of New England as an external student and some time later I graduated with a Graduate Diploma of Adult Education & Training before moving into working towards a doctoral degree. Family commitments and work on this research have precluded further teaching for the time being. This journey would not have been possible for the person I was before, a timid individual with no self-worth and no concept of my own abilities. It was not until my transformation in understanding – ‘learning that I could learn’ – that I was able even to imagine the possibility of ever standing in the Great Hall of Sydney University before the Chancellor to receive a testamur for a first-class honours degree in history. Such a possibility had always been something quite outside my frame of reference. 11 Throughout these formal education experiences, and in some cases before, I have also retained active membership in a number of women’s organisations (although some of these do have a very limited number of male members): the New South Wales Embroiderers’ Guild, Christian Women’s Conventions International (CWCI) as a member of a Know Your Bible (KYB) study group, the Quilters’ Guild and other smaller women’s groups not included in this study. I have joined others for the purposes of this research. These organisations are places for friendship, fulfilment and, on reflection, much learning. Here I have learned – and continue to learn – specific skills in, for example, embroidery and also social skills, confidence, reflective learning and empathy with the needs of other women. These are all primarily experiences of women learning from women and with women and are all what is classified as ‘really useful knowledge’ – knowledge that is outside the realms of academia. This knowledge is, according to Barr, concerned with ‘the articulation of problems, interests and desires (of) people other than academics’.4 My learning journey made me wonder about how many other women are out there who, like me, have changed their lives by realising their own abilities.
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