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ERIC Number: ED460283
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2001-Feb
Pages: 21
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Learning To Walk between Worlds--Informal Learning in Psychiatric Survivor-Run Businesses: A Retrospective Re-Reading of Research Process and Results from 1993-1999. NALL Working Paper.
Church, Kathryn
This working paper is intended to enrich an initial description of alternative businesses and A-Way Express Couriers, in particular. (A-Way, a 12-year-old community organization, is a psychiatric survivor-run alternative business.) The paper begins with a brief commentary on the psychiatric survivor movement and research on it. The paper traces the emergence and entrenchment of learning as a key feature of psychiatric survivor-run or alternative businesses. The methodology used is to re-read previous research projects and results through the lens of informal learning. Early research on psychiatric survivor-run businesses is reviewed in view of a definition of social learning with these three dimensions: solidarity learning, reshaping the definition of self, and organizational learning. A more detailed examination of informal learning processes at A-Way builds on a previously generated profile and is organized according to the three dimensions of social learning. Comments are based on face-to-face interviews with five employees from each of these three groupings within A-Way: couriers on commission, part-time office staff on salaries, and full-time management on salaries. The final section constructs a narrative account of one woman's learning at A-Way--how over nine years she moved from courier to executive director of the business on a journey that evokes the richness and complexity of informal learning in this context. (YLB)
For full text: http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/depts/sese/csew/nall/res/20learningto walk.htm.
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ottawa (Ontario).
Authoring Institution: Ontario Inst. for Studies in Education, Toronto. New Approaches to Lifelong Learning.
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A