The purpose of this article is to explore the role of adult education for critical democracy, in order to address the social suffering that these authors have encountered in their work as critical adult community educators. Brid Connolly and Peter Hussey explored this through dialogue, as a process of education and research. Dialogue is the moment where humans meet to reflect on their reality as they make and remake it (Ira Shor and Paulo Freire, "A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education," 1987). The authors state that the purpose of dialogue is to transform social relations, in the learning environment and in the community of practice, a key way of creating new knowledge. Also, they contend that dialogue is a process of joint autoethnographic research that examines experience, in order to understand cultural practices, (Ellis, et al, 2011). Further, congruent with their pedagogies, autoethnography treats research as a political, socially-just and socially-conscious act (Adams and Holman Jones, 2008). This article developed out of dialogue that they have had for years, but which they formalised only recently. The authors consider dialogue as a pivot, based on Freire's contention that education is a conversation rather than a curriculum (1972). Further, their dialogue is underpinned by reflexivity, particularly using themselves in research and practice (Etherington, 2004).