ABSTRACT
The authors of this book, through research in several different countries, have provided critiques of dominant research and policy discourses on ‘illiterate’ women. These critiques suggest a complex variety of agendas more pertinent to the lives of adult education learners. They offer policy makers and practitioners alternative perspectives on meaning making through researching learners’ lives and adult education practices. Travelling across their experiences and voices, I hear echoes of similar ‘ethnographic realities’ located in the particular context of my research. My writing also explores the practice of ethnography as a means of ‘listening’ to learners’ experiences and realities in order to ‘speak back’ to the policy and practice of adult education programmes.
