Like many adult ESL instructors, the author has felt firsthand the challenges of creating community in short-term courses. Through his experience, he has noticed that in order to successfully build community in short-term ESL courses, teachers need to lay a foundation for social contracts and social covenants from the first day of the course and…

This chapter provides guidelines for understanding the online environment and the use of online teaching strategies.

The possible selves construct is presented as a useful and largely untapped perspective on adult learning. Special attention is given to the role of educational helping relationships in fostering positive possible selves among adult learners.

Authentic relationships between teacher and student form a central process in transformative learning in the classroom. Based on research and theory, this chapter provides practical strategies for educators looking to foster authentic relationships.

This chapter uses the classroom experiences of two black women professors as a lens to examine how transformational theory affects learning and teaching. It also explores the ways in which dimensions of power have an impact on student-teacher interactions.

Social cognitive neuroscience can offer a scientific framework for developmental learning in the mentor-learner relationship.

Teaching behaviors prized by students as evidence of responsiveness--particularly making full disclosure of our agendas and having our words and actions be consistent--often bring us up against the contradictions and realities of power.

Central to development of authenticity in teaching is self-understanding and self-awareness. Using a Jungian perspective, the author suggests that the imaginative dimensions of the self play a critical role in our journey and experience as teachers, and in developing self-awareness and authenticity in our teaching.

Although authenticity makes one vulnerable, the author believes that its impact on learning and on enjoyment of the teaching and learning process justifies the risk. This chapter describes how to offer a relationship to each student, focusing on appropriate caring for individuals and for learning. (Contains 1 figure.)

This chapter deals with the constraints that may inhibit authenticity, whether explicit and known to all or more insidiously embedded in our educational culture.

With an increasingly international student body in universities all over the world, there is growing contact between teachers and students from different cultures. This chapter brings cultural issues to a more conscious and explicit level so they may be examined in the light of teacher authenticity.

According to exemplars in adult education, those inner qualities that facilitate the presence of themselves, their learners, and the subject content are the aspects of the genuine self that teachers need to express in the classroom to help bring about learning. This chapter examines what it means to be present, and how teachers develop or come to…

Two women of color professors use the themes of authority, mastery, voice, and positionality to examine the theoretical and practical underpinnings of feminist pedagogy.

While technology has for many years been a critical component in programs for adults and calls to mind sophisticated gadgetry with expensive price tags, it is often the nexus where technology and humans intersect that proves most critical to the success and quality of adult degree programs.

Teaching in an online environment can present new challenges and opportunities for instructors. Instructors must shift from the role of content provider to content facilitator, gain comfort and proficiency in using the Web as the primary teacher-student link, and learn to teach effectively without the visual control provided by direct eye contact.…