Paul Kolenick

This practical paper explores, and illustrates, the potential of photovoice to promote transformative learning, particularly among graduate students enrolled in a master’s degree program in adult education. A 7-step process for photovoice is implemented in an online learning environment in graduate adult education with implications for other learning contexts, including face-to-face undergraduate programs and community-based service learning with interests in social justice issues.

Key Words: Graduate adult education, online learning, transformative learning, aesthetic expression, photovoice, social justice

In this proceedings paper, self-study research methodology is applied toward an understanding of social presence as transformative learning in my educative practice online with graduate adult education students. The paper offers a brief account of social presence and transformative learning theories in response to research questions about adult educator roles in support of transformative learning through social presence, and the educator's transformative process with attention to an integrative, or holistic, approach to transformative learning, inclusive of its extrarational and spiritual realms.

In 2008 astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured an image of sunlight as it passed through the Earth's thin atmosphere, described as the thin blue line of "all that stands between life on Earth and the cold, dark void of space." At the center of sustainability education is a discourse of climate change and life's demise on the planet. In this short article, the contributing role of the United Nations University's Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs) for sustainability education is explored with respect to community-based climate change adaptation, notably through RCE Dhaka (Bangladesh) as an example of the challenges and opportunities for climate change adaptation in one of the most heavily populated megacities of the Global South.

Three decades ago Julius Nyerere (1990) wrote Challenge to the South. In response to the legacy of colonialism, Nyerere challenged the nations of the Global South to advance their development and to free their people. These concerns are as relevant today as they were in the 1990s. Established for the United Nations Decade of Education Sustainable Development in 2005, there are now over 175 Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs) on Education for sustainable Development (ESD). This paper offers a case study of RCEs worldwide with a particular focus on challenges, and responses, including a focus on the select Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of poverty and health. Further, an account is given of RCEs which have attended to the recognition of Indigenous and traditional ways of knowing.

Social presence in online learning, particularly through graduate programs in adult education, is considered through the use of “small story” (Georgakopoulou, 2015) and Bhabha’s (1994) thirdspace. Attention is given to the theoretical development and history of social presence research, including social presence within the framework of online communities of inquiry (Garrison, 2009) as a model of online learning. Storied presence, as small story applied to social presence, is explored within this framework with the intention to use small story as a way to help graduate students come to terms with challenges experienced, for example, through differences in culture, race, and gender. In this sense, storied presence may serve as a form of experiential learning that draws upon lesser known aspects of adult education with attention, for instance, to emotions, relationships,and spirituality in learning, as well as a sense of belonging among graduate students. Prospective research will include an inquiry into the effects of emotion-laden experiences upon the self (Dirkx, 2018), and potentially the Buddhist notion of non-self or “anatta” in adult learning. Further research will also explore the presentation ofself in online learning environments through reflective practice (Bolton, 2014) with consideration of theatrical masks as metaphor (Ross, 2011), including masks of protection, disguise, performance, discipline, trace, and transformation.Keywords: Social presence, community of inquiry, thirdspace, small story, sense of belonging, emotions in adult learning.

The role of adult education is considered within the post-secondary context. In this paper, sustainability education, and particularly, the recent emergence globally of the United Nations University's Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs) provides an example of how adult education may continue to serve in the 21st century, an era that has already proven itself in peril with issues of social and environmental justice-spanning wide ranging challenges of gender, race, and ecology. Le rôle de l'éducation des adultes est étudié dans le contexte postsecondaire. Dans cet article, l'éducation au développement durable et notamment l'émergence récente sur l'échelle mondiale des Centres régionaux d'expertise de l'Université des Nations Unies, offre un exemple de la mesure dans laquelle l'éducation des adultes peut continuer à être utile au 21e siècle, époque qui s'est déjà avérée aux prises avec des problèmes de justice sociale et environnementale qui couvrent un vaste éventail de défis liés au genre, à la race et à l'écologie.

As a central part of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) from 2005 to 2014 Regional Centres of Expertise (RCE) serve as agents of education for sustainable development through multistakeholder networks with an interest in the advancement of sustainable societies. In this article, the question is raised about the nature of 'expertise' found among RCE programmes directed towards the development of local green economies; and further, the implications of expertise with respect to the practice among RCEs of education for sustainable development worldwide. Regional Centres of Expertise have put into practice a range of approaches to ESD, some based on a knowledge-transfer approach to learning, which positions post-secondary education as well as other authoritative technical and research institutions as the principal overseers of knowledge and expertise; however, social learning through the facilitation, or convening, of dialogue has also been adopted as an approach to learning that is inclusive of civil society and marginalized others, with implications for social and environmental justice.

Abstract
The question is raised about the nature of transformative change with respect to sustainability in higher education. In particular, should this change be reserved for senior administration? Or alternatively, should faculty and staff as the “institutionalmiddle” of higher education be considered as best suited to lead sustainability on campus, and further, in partnership with stakeholders and others with interests in advancing sustainability within wider society? In this respect, Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs), established by the United Nations’ University (UNU) are considered as a way toward transformational change in higher education by bridging the gap between higher education and multiple stakeholders with interests in sustainability. Complexity theory, and particularly the notion of complex adaptive systems (CAS), is applied toward an understanding of RCEs as a venue for sustainability leadership in higher education.
Key Words: Complexity theory; complex adaptive system; Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs); sustainability education; sustainability leadership; transformative change

The theory and practice of communicative space is explored through three select action research studies from a past edition of Action Research, that focus on the practice of ''opening communicative space'' in action research. In an examination of these studies, a story is told of how the emancipatory interests of the marginalized (i.e. African-American students in public schools, the Aged in healthcare, and the Roma people of northeastern Hungary) can be realized through the opening and emergence of communicative spaces throughout the action research process. This story is told through successive themes that include the expectations and interests of action researchers, the challenges that they encountered once the action research process was underway, and finally, their reflective observations upon new communicative spaces that had emerged. While theoretical perspectives on communicative space are considered, such as the social theory of Jürgen Habermas, this article looks especially to the practical framework of William Isaacs on ''Fields of Conversation'' to understand how the opening of communicative spaces contributes to the emancipatory interests of action research.

As a perspective on education for sustainable development at universities, the purpose of this Chapter is to explore a reconceptualization of education for sustainable development through Stephen Sterling’s conceptions of education as an agent of change, and alternatively, as a subject of change. This study is a personal point of view that is speculative and limited to sustainability programs and curricula at Canadian universities with implications for the role of education for sustainable development within the realm of the prospective contribution of the social sciences to the study and practice of sustainability.

The dualistic nature of adult education as serving the instrumental needs of the workplace, for instance, while remaining committed to issues of social justice is examined in light of the "two worlds" metaphor borrowed from an Indigenous point of view. A brief and selective history of colonialism in Canada-specifically the Southern Numbered Treaties (1871-77) and the White Paper policy of 1969is presented in view of the implications of these historic flashpoints for adult education as educative practice in relationship with the marginalized of society, including Indigenous peoples, new immigrants, women, and the urban poor. Michael Welton's vision of a just learning society is considered as a renewed vision of adult education, characterized by a more inclusive, equitable educative practice. Questions are raised about the future of adult education, especially as situated within the academy, and what that means for the relationships of adult educators with communities beyond academia.

The Four Directions of the Indigenous Medicine Wheel are drawn upon in an inquiry of colonialism and its implications for educative and academic practice. In this endeavour, Gayatri Spivak's writings offer an account of the influence of colonial history upon the educative practice of the academy in its relationship, for example, with Indigenous peoples and communities.

Two action research projects of the Community-Based Master of Education program at the University of Regina are featured with particular attention given to a developmental progression that takes place through a series of action research cycles, involving a significant shift from a classroom-based to a community-based teaching practice. In taking an Indigenous perspective on community-based education, this study draws upon Jo-Ann Archibald's (Q'um Q'um Xiiem) (2008) Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit. As an Indigenous approach to life and learning, Archibald's work offers an insightful perspective on communitybased education that is of value to educators with an interest in community development and its potential for schools. In closing, the prospect of educational action research as part of a community-based teaching practice is considered.

Michael Welton's Unearthing Canada's Hidden Past offers a brief history of adult education that can be taken in comfortably within a few sittings. This is perhaps one of the book's most appealing features if readers are looking for a short, yet reasonably comprehensive account of adult education in Canada from the time of the first contact of European settlers with Canada's Indigenous peoples up to present day. Welton is well known for his histories of Canadian adult education, including the award-winning Little Mosie from the Margaree: A Biography of Michael Coady (2001). True to the social justice roots of adult education in Canada, Unearthing Canada's Hidden Past includes perspectives on Canadian history that outline the exclusion of women, First Nations, and Black Canadians-in effect, "unearthing" the stories that have not yet been told. Welton begins his story of adult education in Canada with the "pedagogical encounters" of Canada's First Nations with European settlers, particularly the French Jesuits of the fifteenth century. His description of these encounters sets the stage in further chapters for a history of adult education, characterized as a tension that manifests itself, for example, through the education of "the working man" witnessed during the great industrial transformation at the turn of the twentieth century. In contrast, however, a different story is told of the "stirring of the grassroots" of adult education. Canadians, through social agencies such as the Women's Institute, were enlightened about the causes of their suffering, empowering larger-than-life individuals such as Violet McNaughton and Nellie McClung, who offered a moral critique of the industrialized society that had taken shape at that time. Later chapters are devoted to the telling of the story of adult education in Canada in the early twentieth century and the birth of the Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE) in the 1930s. This is followed by an account of the creation of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) almost a half-century later, which serves presently as the principal association for adult educators in Canada. Welton characterizes contemporary adult education in Canada by "two masters": instrumentalized learning, typically directed by the performancedriven ethos of the workplace, and learning with a broader perspective on the needs of the marginalized and disenfranchised in society. Through this latter point of view, he brings forward the concept of the "just learning society" as a socially just alternative to the well-known notion of Reviews / Comptes rendus