This study explores the lived experiences of 10 alternative learning system (ALS) persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) learners in the Medium Security Compound of New Bilibid Prison, Philippines. It examines how learners make meaning of their experiences and how micro and macro factors influence them. Data was gathered through interviews, focus-group discussions, essays, sentence completion tasks, and observations, followed by thematic analysis. Findings reveal that learners’ experiences are shaped by interwoven personal, relational, and social factors within the prison context. Learners demonstrate strong motivation to start anew, reconnect with family, and pursue personal growth, reflecting resilience and transformative power of education. Three core principles of transformation—reformation, redemption, and reintegration—emerged, emphasizing the critical roles of family support, compassionate educators, and relevant curriculum. The study informs a framework tailored to ALS PDL learners and recommends revising the ALS curriculum to enhance inclusivity, equity, and empowerment for learners and teachers in Philippine prisons.
The purpose of this study was to explore how adult learners in higher education make sense of belonging through their involvement in student organizations. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with six adult learners at a large research university, I employed poetic inquiry to capture the relational, emotional, and developmental dimensions of their experiences. The poetic representations reveal a trajectory marked by initial hesitancy, meaningful invitations from peers, recognition of their contributions, and movement from peripheral participation to active contribution and leadership. These patterns show how belonging deepens when adult learners’ expertise is valued and their presence helps shape organizational culture. They draw attention to the often-overlooked experiences of adult learners in co-curricular spaces and make visible how student organizations support identity development and peer connection. This study underscores the need for intentionally designed environments that recognize adult learners as integral members of campus communities.
This study presents the first comprehensive examination of disadvantaged adults’ participation in Nonformal Education and Training (NFE) across 30 European countries. It investigates how disadvantaged participants differ from their nonparticipating peers within the same social groups, the influence of multi-level factors on their participation, and the specific characteristics of their participation in NFE. Drawing on data from the 2022 Adult Education Survey, the study yields three key findings. First, their participation is shaped by a multilayered structure of age, education, labor market, and country-level variables. Second, their likelihood of participation varies significantly between national adult learning systems. Third, patterns of engagement differ with respect to the type of NFE, mode of delivery, learning initiation, and the provision of guidance. These findings underscore the enduring structural inequalities in NFE and point to the urgent need for policy frameworks that address the multilayered nature of factors influencing participation among disadvantaged adults.
This article offers a post-structural perspective on the formation of community-based research (CBR) facilitators, critiquing the dominant humanist tradition that neglects the power dynamics shaping everyday life and the invited spaces where facilitators are produced. Working within/against narrative inquiry, it examines the lived experience of a queer CBR facilitator from Southeast Asia to show how subjectivities are constituted within power/knowledge relations. The analysis highlights tensions between subjection and subversion, as facilitators act simultaneously as targets and vehicles of power within informal pedagogical processes that extend beyond invited spaces. Introducing the concept of the pedagogy of the subject, the study advances a framework for understanding facilitation as an embodied, discursively constituted practice, while challenging the university-centric focus that continues to dominate CBR literature and practice.
Stimulating adults to learn is a significant challenge, particularly for vulnerable groups with limited education, socioeconomic disadvantages, or marginalized backgrounds. While research highlights barriers and motivations for adult learning, less attention has been given to the transitions adults undergo and the factors shaping these processes. Based on 69 interviews with underrepresented learners in the Netherlands and informed by the capability approach, this study identifies three key movements: learning imposed, driven by coercion; learning through agency development, primarily enabled by external factors; and learning through agency, mainly initiated by intrinsic motivation. These movements are shaped by different combinations of agency factors, life events, and social or institutional support. The findings provide a framework to understand these transitions and inform policies for inclusive adult learning.
No universally accepted tool currently exists for assessing self-directed learning (SDL), and few studies have focused on validating new SDL instruments to achieve broad consensus regarding their psychometric rigor and applicability. This study examines the concurrent validity of two SDL tools: the SRSSDL_adult for middle-aged and older adults, and the SDLI for nursing students. These tools were administered to participants in Taiwanese senior learning centers, who were predominantly female (78.8%) and aged 65-74 years (45.6%), with many holding undergraduate degrees (43.8%). The highest scores were observed in "Needs assessment" (SRSSDL_adult) and "Learning motivation" (SDLI). A strong positive correlation (Pearson coefficient = 0.783, p < .001) confirmed the concurrent validity of the SRSSDL_adult against the SDLI. The two SDL assessment tools examined in this study can concurrently provide valuable insights into the identification of SDL abilities. The findings indicate that both scales are directly applicable to middle-aged and older learners.
This study explores how academic support staff in a multilingual university context developed self-directed learning (SDL) behaviors through participation in the Language Clinic Program, a structured workplace English self-development program. Guided by narrative inquiry, it traces the learning journeys of four participants through SDL readiness questionnaires, learning contracts, reflective assessments, personalized consultations, satisfaction scales, and stimulated recall interviews. The findings reveal that SDL was cultivated not only through these structured, narrative-informed tools but also through emotional trust, self-recognition, and workplace relevance. Participants reported enhanced communication competence and language confidence while redefining their learning identities. The study offers new insights into how SDL develops not only from strategic planning but also through relational trust and narrative engagement, particularly in resource-sensitive workplace settings. It underscores how narrative-based support can strengthen both language development and confident learner autonomy among adult learners in higher education.
Digital literacy education is widely recognized as a crucial means of bridging the digital divide among older adults. Applying communities of practice (CoP) to digital literacy education, as implemented by an older adult school in China, has proven to be an effective model. Three teachers and thirteen older learners were observed and interviewed to uncover the characteristics and impacts of this model. The findings reveal that CoP-based digital literacy education fosters positive outcomes in skills, actions, and cognition by cultivating multidimensional interaction, enabling legitimate peripheral participation, and facilitating role transitions.
Adult education in general, and literacy acquisition in particular, is often viewed as an empowering personal growth process. However, the extent to which basic literacy acquisition in adult life can be disempowering and induce devaluation and self-deprecation has remained under-explored. This study analyzes the reading and writing learning processes of a group of Moroccan migrant women in Spain. Using an ethnographic approach based on the observation of literacy classes and interviews with learners and teachers, the analysis focuses on the interrelation and coexistence of self-deprecation and self-enhancement as expressions of the ambivalences of the learning experience. These ambivalences are discussed considering the intersections of gender, education, and migration and in the context of the analysis of three forms of self-deprecating expressions: disclosure, infantilization, and humor.
This study aims to understand how farmers in a rural agricultural co-operative shape their identity development experiences through social interactions. Based on the community of practice approach, this qualitative study uses a case study methodology and examines the G & ouml;dence Agricultural Development Co-operative in a mountain village in western Turkey. Data were collected through interviews, participant observation and document analysis and analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings show that farmers experienced movement from the periphery to the center during their participation in the co-operative and that this movement, combined with learning experiences, contributed to identity development. The study reveals that co-operatives in rural communities can function not only economically but also in community-based learning and identity construction. In this respect, the study makes theoretical and practical contributions to the fields of adult education, rural development, and community-based learning.
What is transformation if we are constantly becoming? Posthumanist theories offer new perspectives on the discussion of learning and transformation in our complex and interconnected world. This article provides a primer on posthumanism for scholars of transformative learning and wonders what new potentials are produced by bringing together posthumanism and transformative learning. Posthumanism challenges the boundaries of the human and the utility of prioritizing the cognitive over other ways of knowing, but posthumanism does not leave the human behind: It seeks new paths forward. In that spirit, this article shares a few potential paths forward for posthumanist approaches to transformative learning in theory and practice.
Polarization among people in the United States and countries around the world has been intensifying in the twenty-first century. The purpose of this article is to explore how adult educators can address divisive polarities by using adult development theory as a guide for learning initiatives that develop empathic connection between people divided by polarities. We present John Heron's theory of personhood and the distinction he makes between feeling and emotion in shaping the arc of adult development. We discuss how affective and cognitive empathy contribute to wholistic learning under polarizing conditions. Drawing from the literature and our experience as practitioners of cooperative and synergic inquiries, we describe a framework for practices to enable wholistic learning in divisive settings. Our purpose is to describe practices that can support dialogue across polarities, not to create a specific design. We close with an example from a synergic inquiry of how the practices can be applied with agility.
