Teaching & Learning Connection

Rupert Collister

Rupert Collister has recently completed a PhD with the University of New England (to be conferred on 10th October 2009). His thesis is entitled ‘A journey in search of wholeness and meaning: Investigating a harmonious ontology which could facilitate the conditions for holistic, transformative epistemologies within the structures of a community with a view to creating a sustainable future for all beings’. It explores the themes of Kosmos, Cosmology, Community and Consciousness and their implications for Adult learning, Community, Meaningful work and Sustainability. The completion of this thesis is all the more significant because Rupert left school at sixteen with no qualifications at all and didn’t go to university until he was thirty years old.

The research was grounded in the social, cultural, vocational, educational and spiritual experiences of Rupert’s life. He firmly believes in the transformative power of learning but it is the context within which that learning occurs which determines whether the transformation is positive or not. He believes it is the role of educators and support staff to create learning environments which facilitate this positive transformation through the experience of deeper learning that comes from engagement in the wider contexts of a learner’s existence, combined with reflection and collaboration. Necessarily then the primary catalyst for this deeper learning is ‘community’, including communities of learning, communities of practice and communities of discourse. Such community honours the concept of unity in diversity as well as being rooted in a harmonious and balanced way of being.

His ongoing research interests fall squarely in the areas of adult education (including higher education, community education, vocational education and training, and workplace education, and distance, open and flexible education), holistic and transformative education, community building, meaningful work, sustainability, wholeness, systems thinking, spirituality, and the wisdom, insight and praxis contained within Indigenous cultures and Eastern traditions.

Rupert can be contacted at rc_collister@hotmail.com if anyone would like to explore the issues explored in this thesis in more detail.