Citizen science projects have grown in number, scale and scope in recent years. Such projects engage members of the public in working with professional scientists in a diverse range of practices. Yet there has been little educational exploration of such projects to date. In particular, there has been limited exploration of the educational…

In recent years academic interest in social movement learning (SML) has flourished. "Studies in the Education of Adults" has arguably emerged as the premier international forum for exploring the links between adult learning and movements for progressive change. In parallel to this subfield, yet largely in isolation from it,…

In this paper I reflect autoethnographically on my experiences of writing as part of a professional doctorate. I draw on the research journals that I kept during a particularly challenging time in the dissertation process and in particular on the method of journal writing that I used to help me through this time. This storied account offers an…

This article considers the role played by adult education in a temporary community called Resurrection City in 1968. It draws on primary source documents and oral testimonies from three archives. Social movement theory and the ideas of Freire and Gramsci provide a conceptual framework. In May 1968 around 6,000 poor people from across the United…

This paper connects Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, dispositions and capital with a psychosocial analysis of how Winnicott's psychoanalysis and Honneth's recognition theory can be of importance in understanding how and why non-traditional students remain in higher education. Understanding power relations in an interdisciplinary way…

In this article I will use an example of current adult education practice, the Glory and Dismay Football Literacies Programme (GDFLP) to appraise the value of critical discourse analysis (CDA) for adult learners, both individually and collectively, and for adult education practitioners with an interest in developing critical literacy skills. The…

In this paper I explore the relationships between lifelong learning and emancipation. On the one hand I raise critical questions about the idea of lifelong learning, particularly highlighting the tendency to turn social and political problems into learning problems and thus into issues that need to be resolved by individuals and their learning,…

This article will explore lifelong learning and community participation for older women. In doing so, it will draw on empirical work undertaken with the National Federation of Women's Institutes in England and Wales in the UK; and the Sydney Older Women's Network in Australia. The article will briefly outline something of the policies and…

This article explores the higher education learning experience of Kat, a mature female student. As part of a longitudinal case study spanning two years, data were collected through interviews and journal entries. The data were used to construct an account of Kat's higher education experience, focusing particularly upon her self-theory in relation…

This paper explores learner progression for participants in community-based adult learning (CBAL) provision in Scotland. It focuses on learners' perceptions of progression drawn from analysis of life history interviews carried out with ten adults who had participated in community-based adult learning. The analysis of data was undertaken in three…

In 1947 the Truman Commission on Higher Education accentuated the importance of adult education in its report entitled "Higher Education for American Democracy". In 1970 a new US "Handbook of Adult Education" signifying the move to a more professionalised field of study and practice was published. The intervening years encapsulate a time of…

Universities traditionally construct ethical, as well as educational goals in their mission, which they attempt to promote not only through their graduates, but sometimes directly to the wider community. This study explores how targeting lifelong learners through the medium of educational tourism might be one such way in which universities can…

Our feminist cross-national comparative study explored the informal and nonformal education and learning of women politicians in Canada and India. Using individual interviews, focus groups, surveys and observations of training sessions we compared and contrasted socio-cultural contexts, challenges, education and learning philosophies, and diverse…

The initiative by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and affiliated trade unions in the UK to appoint trade union learning representatives (ULRs), to promote learning among their members, is a significant development in adult learning. Understandably, the initiative has attracted the attention of academic researchers, but primarily from the…

How individuals position themselves as "students" within the university landscape can provide insight into the personal experience of entering this environment. This article will explore how one group of female students narrated their identity work as they moved through the first year of study in an Australian university. These students were all…