After many years of research focused on the individual and psychological aspects of self-directed learning, the field has taken into consideration the context and situation surrounding the education of an adult, placing the development of individual autonomy into a constructivist perspective. But it is only recently, in France at least, that…

The profile of students is changing, with an increase in first-generation and adult students. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in college perceptions between first-generation and continuing-generation adult undergraduates while controlling for demographic variables. The study and hypotheses are grounded in the Model of College…

This article reports the results of an inquiry into the embeddedness of nonformal education (NFE) in the work of knowledge service providers, analyzing the dilemmas they experience in their operations around a public housing precinct. It explores the proposition that the networking of NFE providers is a mechanism by which a fragmented community…

Nelson Mandela's autobiography "The Long Walk to Freedom" describes how an iconic political activist and freedom fighter reflected on, and sometimes modified, four core assumptions at the heart of his struggle to overturn the White supremacist, minority hegemony and create a free South Africa. Critical reflection's focus is on understanding the…

This article explores processes and possibilities for critical learning in the workplace, with a focus on workers laboring in what are often exploitive and dehumanizing conditions. The argument is based on a study of work-life learning of women, mostly new immigrants, employed long-term at an Alberta garment manufacturing plant. It is argued that…

Based on an ongoing qualitative case study in Costa Rica, this article presents the participatory work that the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) is doing with farmers to protect watersheds from erosion and contamination. Specifically, it includes a description of ICE's Watershed Management Agricultural Programme and how farmers…

This article provides a feminist poststructural analysis of the authors' academic labor during a State of the Field Literature Review of Gender and Adult Learning for a government-funded educational body. Drawing on Foucault and feminist theorists, the authors pay particular attention to how power seeps down through the system to our bodies in our…

From the time adult education emerged as a field of study, it has suffered a crisis of identity by which the field is increasingly defined by a lack of consensus regarding its larger aspirations and operational boundaries. The purpose of this article is to begin deconstructing and reconstructing the field of adult education phenomenologically by…

Employing critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper examines the attempt to bridge a Canadian adult second language policy with an employment skills policy. The result is a third policy intended to improve language education and employment skills training for immigrants. The analysis reveals that the knowledge economy and human capital theory…

A rationalist is prevailed upon to enroll in a program on meditation. During a day of silence, he begins to wonder about the concept of the self as implied in some forms of educational practice. Over the next few weeks, he identifies four doubts, which he calls a Marxian doubt, a dialectical doubt, an absurd doubt, and a moral doubt. He argues…

The aging population is a worldwide challenge. Understanding how older adults have been portrayed would provide a foundation on which future scholarship can build. This study assesses and critiques the assumptions underlying the portrayal of older adults and their learning in adult education journals from 1980 to 2006. On reviewing 93 articles in…

The purpose of this article is to describe and analyze how recognition of prior learning acts as a dividing practice and a technique for inclusion/exclusion of immigrants in their vocations in Swedish working life. It is a qualitative study of three pilot programs in Swedish urban centers, and the data consist of interviews and documents…

The concept of governance has become increasingly popular over the past 15 years signifying its growing acceptance in a number of key sectors of society. Is governance a neutral term that is merely a synonym for government, or does it signify a shift to neoliberalism? Working from a political-economy perspective, this article will explore the…

The purposes of this article are to describe the adult learners' emotional experiences as a result of engaging with issues of cultural diversity and discrimination, and to interrogate the ways in which critical emotional reflexivity emerges in the online format. The analysis is done in the context of an online course on diversity, inequality, and…

The authors work in the intersection of theorizing, experience, and research in this article as they explore a critical social model that they created to guide an informal, arts-informed, community education project for sexual-minority youth and young adults. As they consider the influence of arts-informed education and Freirean pedagogy of…