Background: Master teachers in Singapore have been recognised on the basis of their invaluable contribution in their field of teaching, and are deemed to be at the pinnacle of their career. A national programme for incumbent and potential master teachers, Advanced Senior Teachers Programme (ASTP), was inaugurated in 2005. Conducted by the National…

Background: Social circus has long been the folklore in the Chinese culture. Recently, initiatives have been undergoing to introduce it in the school physical education curriculum in Hong Kong. Aims: This article reports a study on 38 PE teachers' professional learning experiences while attending two 2-day workshops respectively concerning…

Background: In the early 1980s, the author of this article researched, in her M.Ed thesis, the state of adult education in Hong Kong with regard to its general support and delivery through university channels. At that time, adult education had a separate identity and, since, has generally become vocationalized, creditized or subsumed into…

Background: In 2005, the North Zone Clusters of Schools made action research their niche development project with the aim of equipping the teachers with conceptual understanding and skills in conducting action research. Training workshops were mounted in seven centres. This is the first time action research is promoted en mass among Singapore as a…

Despite sexuality being a powerful source of emotional and physical experiences and learning, it remains underexplored as an area of interest and investigation in adult education and human resource development (HRD). Most work on sexuality in adult education and HRD has focused on learning, work experiences, discrimination, acceptance, and health…

Other than the fairly consistent and inspiring depiction of the origin of the word Mentor from Greek mythology, literature on mentoring surfaces a myriad of mentoring concepts, as variable as the individuals, pairs, groups or organizations involved. Despite the diversity, there exists an emphasis on learning and its associated dynamism. Beyond the…

Human resource development (HRD) as a scholarly endeavor and as a practice is often criticized in the adult education (AE) literature and by AE scholars as manipulative and oppressive and, through training and other interventions, controlling workers for strictly economic ends (Baptiste, 2001; Cunningham, 2004; Schied, 2001; Welton, 1995). The…

This article presents a perspective on the relationship between adult education and human resource development of the past two decades and the subsequent emergence of workforce development. The lesson taken from the article should be more than simply a recounting of events related to these fields of study. Instead, the more general lesson may be…

In a movement toward workforce development as an academic entity, the identity of adult education as projects for inquiry is troubled. In some academic programs, adult education has been termed adult learning in the service of promoting teaching and learning for the workplace. However, adult education's inquiry, its projects, might be more…

Adult education and human resource development as fields of practice and study share some roots in common but have grown in different directions in their histories. Adult education's roots focused initially on citizenship for a democratic society, whereas human resource development's roots are in performance at work. While they have…

People are living and traveling to places all over the world. An exploration of how this movement influences learners' worldviews has implications for adult development, identity, and learning. The purpose of this paper is to present a phenomenological study conducted in the U.S. that examined how individuals' living or traveling…

After 20 years I was back in school faced with an assignment to research an adult education scholar, leader, or practitioner. After a quick review of the list we were provided I was drawn to Dr. Johnson-Bailey as the focus of my paper primarily because our lives paralleled in so many ways. She was on staff at my Alma Mater, The University of…

Established Human Resource Development (HRD) practices may elevate corporate interests and subordinate individual interests. Critical HRD professionals can instead transform workplaces into a more level playing field that genuinely values diversity. Drawing on the existing theory, specifically Brookfield's (2005) marriage of Foucauldian…

The implementation of e-learning as a strategy has risen exponentially over the last 20 years as more adults use this medium to enhance their skills and acquire knowledge. The utilization of technology offers significant advantages to both learners and organizations in terms of cost, time and rich learning content. E-learning has been widely…

Learning is indeed an integral component of adapting successfully to an ever-changing world, one full of intriguing possibilities and insidious barriers. Democratic societies establish educative systems where learning and development is promoted to advance a citizenry of skillful problem solvers, knowledgeable decision makers, incisive risk…