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Ecoliteracy is essential for adult educators/activists en route to creating ecoliterate populations. Working cooperatively with other networks in the spirit of a 'solidarity economy', a group within the PIMA network has run a climate justice education programme through a series of webinars. We describe and analyse a case story of an emergent climate justice curriculum in action. We use an ecofeminist analysis to understand the relational entanglement of ecological breakdown, capitalism, colonialism, racism and patriarchy which in part undergird the breaching of planetary boundaries. We identify five inquiry-based themes which are suggestive as coordinates for orientating curricula for adult educators/activists learning climate justice. One of these is the importance of building ecoliterate alliances through collaborative action as we face the 'socio-ecological hurricane' which is bearing down.

This article focuses on the feminist design, content and pedagogical impact of a multi-media research exhibition I curated entitled "Disobedient women: Defiance, resilience and creativity past and present." Through the conceptual frameworks of feminist adult education and feminist exhibtionary praxis, I discuss the development and design of the exhibition and then share findings from a study that aimed to unearth the learning made possible for visitors by viewing the exhibition's stories and images. Findings show that as "Disobedient Women" instructed intentionally about gender injustice past and present, it made possible new interpretations, meaning making and cross-cultural connections; as the exhibition illustrated a deeply problematic gendered world its playfulness and beauty challenged assumptions about activism and feminism and encouraged hope and aesthetic agency. While important challenges and critiques were raised, I argue that intentional, participatory feminist exhibitions such as "Disobedient Women" are valuable processes of feminist adult education because they open up possibilities of seeing and thus knowing things differently and acting in the interests of gender justice and change.

Although burdened by legacies of elitism, exclusion and paternalism, some public museums are attempting to respond to the socio-environmental problems currently facing our planet by developing critical non-formal educational activities to foster consciousness and change. This article explores one such response; a six-week non-formal course entitled Art and Slow Violence hosted at Tate Modern and Tate Britain galleries in London. The course was centred around a variety of artworks and multimedia representations aimed to stimulate dialogue, reflections and meaning making about the social and ecological impacts of the aftermaths of climate change, war and conflict. As a participant researcher, I gathered data through observations, journaling, and interviews. Findings show tensions between learning and education, expert-teacher and novice-learner, audience wants and knowledge assumptions, instructor and organisations expectations and challenges vis-à-vis self-direction around the artworks. Yet the course was powerful, particularly the informal gatherings following each class and the stories the artworks told and represented. Together, these served as means to question critically, reflect, debate and comprehend differently, the complex, contentious, but often 'invisible' socio-environmental challenges of our time.

This article explores the hidden gendered curriculum concealed in the texts, exhibitions and other structural devices of museums and what they teach visitors to see and think. Grounded in conceptualisations of culture, representation, and language, past feminist studies of museums and applying feminist visual discourse analysis (FVDA) we found hiding in plain sight in public museums in Canada and England a diversity of 'languages' that subversively aggrandised masculine power and privilege and (re)inscribed negative or limited understandings to women which we argue as feminist adult educators have epistemic, identity and agency consequences. We also argue that whilst museums are trying to address often centuries old exclusionary gendered practices progress is slow because these practices are so embedded and unconscious and reflect pervasive social notions of 'common sense'. Our study makes an important contribution to feminist museum studies by rendering visible a web of complex structural and textual gendered biases and to adult education. By adding museums to our curricula we can provide our students with a visual and immersive way to hone the critical visual literacy skills needed to understand more fully how both seen and unseen languages operate not just in the museum, but across society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter explores how museums, as educational and cultural institutions, can become agents of socioecological transformation. The ideas of critical museum studies and environmental adult education are reviewed, and three examples of environmental adult education in museums are discussed.

This chapter explores the potential of feminist leadership to encourage more participatory ways of engaging and learning in this deeply troubled world. Feminist leadership includes but is not limited to collaborative leadership. Adult learning is inherent to feminist leadership insofar as leaders must strategize according to the contexts in which they find themselves.

This chapter explores participatory visual practices in museums.

Arguing gender inequity remains one of the biggest challenges of our time, and framed within the concept of "pedagogic contact zones", our article shares findings from a five-year feminist, cross-national study of women adult educators and community practitioners in public museums and art galleries in Canada and the United Kingdom. Findings show a general lack of feminist consciousness and pedagogical skills amongst these women, problematic essentialist depictions of women educators that contrast portrayals of curators, and an equation of feminism with "bias". Yet there is a growing number of women who identify as feminists and take up women's issues in a variety of ways. Museums have the ability to be sites of feminist adult education and make contributions to gender struggle.

Public libraries have long been considered important spaces of adult education and learning. However, major social changes over the past few decades, and the impact these have had on libraries' work, have received little attention. Our three-year cross-national study of libraries in Canada and Britain explored how librarians navigate the discourse of adult education and learning and understand its place and value in the institution and society. Findings show that technology, both positively and negatively, drives the pedagogical directions, particularly in Britain, and there is a schism between the values and identities of younger and seasoned librarians. However, we also found that despite age and political and technological pressures, librarians still predominantly view themselves as educators and position the library as a critical cultural space for aesthetic, social, and collective learning and engagement.

In this article, we position museums as 'pedagogic contact zones,' sites fraught with both problems and potential. Using five stories drawn from our work and engagement with public museums over the past five years in Canada, England and Scotland, we illustrate how contemporary practices of critical cultural pedagogy work to construct, deconstruct, reconstruct, disrupt, dislocate, interrogate and decolonise. We argue that the critical and creative adult educators in museums today, coupled with new exhibitionary practices, make museums important, complex and engaging sites of adult education that are alive with visual, performative and experiential practices of social and self critique in the interests of justice and change.

Gender mainstreaming emerged in the 1990s to challenge normative social and political structures and practices by integrating gender into all levels of thinking and decision making. Training is central to processes of gender mainstreaming because it aims to provide the knowledge, awareness, resources, and skills needed to transform hegemonic discourses and empower women to participate more fully in leadership and governance roles. In this article I apply discourses of gender mainstreaming and training to a study of the non-formal education and informal learning of women politicians and aspiring politicians in British Columbia. Findings show current nonpartisan, integrative training processes have value for women as good, liberal adult education and training. However, learning and training both frequently consciously and unconsciously essentialize and re-enforce the status quo, which makes them inadequate to reach the transformative aspirations of gender mainstreaming. Required are practices based in the principles of feminist adult education that challenge the limitations of discourses of equality and meritocracy, render visible biases and stereotyping, destabilize normative political insider identities, and tap into the radical activism so many women bring to the political table.

Historically, pubic art galleries and museums have a well-deserved reputation for elitism, colonialism and exclusion and they are, therefore, frequently omitted from the discourse of adult education. However, the escalating social, cultural and ecological problems of this new century have placed pressure on these public institutions to change and respond. Using selective examples, this article attempts to illustrate public arts and cultural institutions as contested, problematic, challenging, yet equally progressive, critical and creative pedagogical spaces that play an important role in the struggle for social and environmental change. Through exhibitions, artworks, objects, workshops and seminars, these institutions trouble identity, decolonize, mock, revisualize, tell alternative stories, reorient authoritative practice, interrogate intolerance and privilege and stimulate critical literacies. We must continue to expose and critique traditions that perpetuate inequalities and maintain the status quo but in a world starved of hope, these sites provide new pedagogical possibilities.