Spiritual guides: supporting adults who nurture the spirituality of children

This research considers the role of those who support voluntary youth leaders in their responsibility to nurture spiritual development in children and young people. It discusses particularly those who work in organisations with an ethos of supporting such spiritual development and at the same time of welcoming members of many faiths and encouraging their full participation in their various faith traditions. The specific context of the research is the work of the Guide Movement and, in particular, of Girlguiding in the United Kingdom. The research addresses the current challenges but also the enormous value of providing for young people a multi-faith space in which it is genuinely ‘OK to do God’. It discusses the issues which leaders are raising and some suggestions which trainers have made for addressing these.

Learning to construct our identities over the life course: a study with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults in Scotland

To date, adult educational research has had a limited focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) adults and the learning processes in which they engage across the life course. Adopting a biographical and life history methodology, this study aimed to critically explore the potentially distinctive nature and impact of how, when and where LGBT adults learn to construct their identities over their lives. In-depth, semi-structured interviews, dialogue and discussion with LGBT individuals and groups provided rich narratives that reflect shifting, diverse and multiple ways of identifying and living as LGBT. Participants engage in learning in unique ways that play a significant role in the construction and expression of such identities, that in turn influence how, when and where learning happens. Framed largely by complex heteronormative forces, learning can have a negative, distortive impact that deeply troubles any balanced, positive sense of being LGBT, leading to self- censoring, alienation and in some cases, hopelessness. However, learning is also more positively experiential, critically reflective, inventive and queer in nature. This can transform how participants understand their sexual identities and the lifewide spaces in which they learn, engendering agency and resilience. Intersectional perspectives reveal learning that participants struggle with, but can reconcile the disjuncture between evolving LGBT and other myriad identities as parents, Christians, teachers, nurses, academics, activists and retirees. The study’s main contributions lie in three areas. A focus on LGBT experience can contribute to the creation of new opportunities to develop intergenerational learning processes. The study also extends the possibilities for greater criticality in older adult education theory, research and practice, based on the continued, rich learning in which participants engage post-work and in later life. Combined with this, there is scope to further explore the nature of ‘life-deep learning’ for other societal groups, brought by combined religious, moral, ideological and social learning that guides action, beliefs, values, and expression of identity. The LGBT adults in this study demonstrate engagement in distinct forms of life-deep learning to navigate social and moral opprobrium. From this they gain hope, self-respect, empathy with others, and deeper self-knowledge.