the caring roles and everyday responsibilies and experience of the women using them, they are spaces where boundaries between domesc and public arenas are less disnct. These characteriscs, along with the ways in which policy agendas are put into pracce, create a complex dynamic for both praconers and service users from which a variety of processes related to inclusion and resistance can spring. Being government funded but community based, they highlight tensions between policy and resistance.


The project eventually resulted in eighteen semi-­‐structured interviews, twelve with mothers across five Children’s Centres and two primary schools and six with educaon and community praconers. The student parcipants in the research were all ‘ESOL learners’ however they used the centres for a range of learning opportunies and their responses are not limited to their experience of ESOL or Family Learning.


Research Findings Formal and informal learning


Both formal and informal learning were considered within the study. All organised courses taking place in community sengs are considered as formal (though they may be quite informal in style, they nearly always have predetermined outcomes). Any learning that takes place, intenonally or unintenonally, through interacons outside planned sessions is referred to as informal. The sengs and type of provision shape the learning in a way that makes both important as different knowledges can be gained from each. Hillier (2011: 143), referring to Smith and Spurling, characterises informal learning as ‘always occurring, unplanned and though “prevalen” oen unrecognised’. Morrice (2009: 669) states in relaon to refugees that ‘formal planned learning is only a very small part of the totality of significant learning’; similarly Jackson (2010) sees it as only the visible p of the iceberg. Some suggest that the two are in fact not always disnct (McGivney, 2004).


Some parcipants saw lile separaon between formal and informal learning as they described a whole experience of courses, events, acvies and facilies. Informal learning was not always arculated as such and oen expressed through the value aached to inter-­‐cultural exchange, or through interacons and relaonships with a range of staff. However, in some cases there was a sense of hierarchy; knowledge gained more formally was more highly valued because it was recognised more widely.


The knowledge women gain through informal learning is highly gendered; because it is mainly about home, educaon, children, friends, services, it is likely to be less widely valued. It is mainly circulated and recognised within their own circles as mothers and as migrant women. The ‘knowers’ and what is ‘known’ that Jackson talks about (Jackson, 2007) are operang in the same field. In some cases the value of it seems to be unrecognised even by the ‘knowers’.


Collecng and sharing knowledge


Though oen automacally included in the ‘hard to reach’ category priorised by policy makers, the evidence collected shows many of the women parcipants to be acve agents in the search for parcipaon in formal and informal learning opportunies. Their inial movaon is oen because of their responsibilies as the main contact with services and because of a desire to gain skills in order to support their children’s learning.


A striking feature of the parcipants’ descripon of their learning experiences was its being expressed as an acvity of collecng knowledge, taking what they want from the landscape of learning available to them and assembling their own picture. Their knowledge is pieced together from mulple ways of learning, from experiences and from relaonships with professionals and each other. The image of items in a bag, given by one interviewee, encapsulates the process of collecng, using and sharing, that came across so strongly.


‘It’s like having a bag – the more things in it the more I can give out.’


32


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