Authentic family learning: reconceptualising intergenerational education initiatives, in Jamaica and England, through cross-cultural conversation

This paper shares a set of cross-cultural conversations (Kinkead-Clark and Hardacre, 2016) between two family learning practitioner-researchers, one from Jamaica and one from England. Concern that global education policies reflect and reproduce a social investment perspective, positioning family learning as a way to generate productive citizens, drives this paper. Using Hardacre’s (2017) Authentic Family Learning as a conceptual framework we re-examine our ongoing work with families. An analysis of these cross-cultural conversations reveals that along with valuing the existing agency and identity of participants there is also a need to balance the role of power enacted by practitioners; ultimately reconceptualising power as a positive force that does not require inversion, minimisation or removal.