Performance improvement frameworks have long been applied in organizational contexts to identify and close performance gaps. In recent years, scholars have called for broader application of these methods to address issues of social injustice, particularly in support of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. This study responds to that call by examining how performance improvement practices can be leveraged within higher education to advance DEI-related outcomes—specifically, to support Black students’ mental health and wellness. Using a qualitative case study grounded in Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR), we assess the gap between the current and desired level of mental health support services at a Midwestern university during the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent racial justice crisis. Benchmarking best practices, surveying departmental offerings, and centering student voices through focus groups, we identified critical structural gaps in culturally responsive care, preventive programming, and identity-aligned services. While the data were collected at a time of heightened DEI engagement, the sociopolitical climate in higher education has since shifted. Across the U.S., DEI initiatives are being scaled back or eliminated entirely due to legislative and political pressures. In this context, our findings offer a timely and pragmatic model for institutions seeking to support marginalized student populations while navigating shifting political terrain. We argue that performance improvement practices—rooted in data, systems thinking, and stakeholder inclusion—can serve as resilient, adaptive tools that complement and reinforce DEI frameworks, sustaining equity-focused work even amid contested political environments.
Active learning is not simply about learning by doing. It incorporates diverse components to effectively cultivate and enhance trainees’ skills. However, existing research remains limited and sometimes contradictory regarding how adult learners prefer and apply these methods in workplace contexts, which calls for deeper investigation. This review explores active learning principles in workplace training and their effects on learning transfer and skill retention. Guided by Merrill’s Principles of Instruction (MPI), we analyzed 191 studies published between 2000 and 2025, as scholarship during this period reflects the field’s most substantive evolution, whereas earlier work is limited in scope and offers minimal insight into emerging trajectories. This body of literature was examined to address two guiding research questions: (a) What principles define active learning in workplace training? (b) How do these principles influence learning transfer and skill retention? Our analysis identified ten interconnected principles. They offering guidance for trainers, educators, and workplace learning designers who are striving to enhance training effectiveness through active learning.
Higher education depends on discretionary employee contributions that sustain coordination, service continuity, and institutional functioning. Yet contemporary governance and accountability pressures can reconfigure higher education work in ways that erode autonomy, line-of-sight, and intrinsic reward, elevating the risk of work alienation, weakening the discretionary behaviors institutions rely on. This study tests whether person–organization fit (POF) predicts organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and whether multidimensional work alienation mediates this relationship through powerlessness, meaninglessness, and self-estrangement. Using survey data from 325 employees across four U.S. higher education institutions, we applied confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling with bias-corrected bootstrapping. Model comparisons were most consistent with a selective mediation pattern in which self-estrangement was retained as the sole mediator, while powerlessness and meaninglessness did not improve model fit. The final model demonstrated strong fit (χ 2 = 127.81, CFI = 0.97, SRMR = 0.04, RMSEA = 0.08) and explained substantial variance in OCB ( R 2 = .52). Bootstrapped estimates indicated that POF was associated with lower self-estrangement, self-estrangement was associated with lower OCB, and the indirect effect of POF on OCB through self-estrangement was significant (−0.17, 95% CI [−0.27, −0.10]), consistent with partial mediation. Findings refine human resource development’s (HRD) fit-to-contribution logic in higher education by distinguishing value alignment from psychological work ownership: even when employees are value-aligned, discretionary contribution is vulnerable when work becomes psychologically distancing and less intrinsically rewarding. Implications emphasize mechanism-specific HRD strategies that monitor and reduce self-estrangement through role and system design, rather than relying solely on values messaging or governance-visible interventions.
Women of Color (WOC) in corporate America continue to face persistent, intersecting barriers to career advancement, barriers that are frequently intensified during periods of societal disruption. Despite HR professionals’ central role in shaping organizational policy and equity practices, the experiences of WOC in HR leadership contexts remain underexplored in the literature. This narrative inquiry study examined how WOC HR professionals describe the impact of intersecting identities, disruptive societal change, and organizational support on their career advancement trajectories. Using a qualitative narrative inquiry design, the study drew on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 16 WOC employed in human resources roles across corporate organizations in the United States. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis, supplemented by sentiment analysis to examine emotional patterns across participant narratives. Findings revealed three overarching thematic areas: (a) structural and cultural barriers, including gendered racism, pay inequity, and limited leadership representation; (b) intersectional challenges shaping self-efficacy, belonging, and work–life integration; and (c) organizational supports, including mentorship, sponsorship, coaching, and inclusive leadership practices, that fostered empowerment and career advancement. This study contributes to HRD and organizational leadership scholarship by advancing an intersectional, narrative-informed understanding of how WOC in HR navigate career advancement during disruption, and by offering actionable, multilevel strategies for organizations committed to equitable and inclusive leadership development.
Women of Color (WOC) have long faced systemic exclusion and remain underrepresented across organizational contexts, particularly in STEM, higher education, and executive leadership. These inequities often manifest as invisibility, marginalization, and limited access to advancement opportunities. Support interventions, such as mentoring, training, coaching, and leadership development have been proposed to address these challenges, although their effectiveness requires critical examination. This literature review analyzes 23 full-text studies from 2015 to 2024 across six journals (HRDQ, HRDR, HRDI, ADHR, NHA, and EJTD) using Bierema and Callahan’s Critical Human Resource Development (CHRD) framework, which emphasizes “Relating,” “Learning,” “Changing,” and “Organizing.” Our findings reveal growing interest in CHRD-informed practices but also highlight conceptual ambiguity regarding how CHRD differs from traditional HRD approaches. The analysis further shows uneven emphasis across the CHRD dimensions, with relational and learning-based interventions receiving greater attention than structural and transformational approaches. In response, we propose refinements to the CHRD framework that foreground relational support as a foundational condition for development and emphasize the need for stronger accountability mechanisms to ensure equity initiatives translate into practice. We conclude by recommending greater conceptual clarity, longitudinal empirical research, and cross-context collaboration to strengthen the evidence base for CHRD interventions supporting the advancement and well-being of WOC.
This study explores the influence of employee motivations on workplace learning effectiveness and subsequent job performance within the Precision Calibration Operations (PCO) Department in an engineering company. Grounded in human resource development (HRD) literature, the study adopted the self-determination theory (SDT) to understand effects of motivational dynamics on workplace learning effectiveness and subsequent job performance in an engineering workplace. Using a quantitative survey design, self-reported data was collected on influence of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, social and environmental factors, and basic psychological needs on workplace learning effectiveness and subsequent job performance. A total of 90 employees, out of 110, in the PCO Department participated in the study in 2024. Regression analyses reveal that the social and environmental factors, as proxies for organization development (OD) interventions in this study, and participants’ intrinsic motivation are significant influencers for both workplace learning effectiveness and job performance. Findings of the study suggest the need for HRD practices to not only foster employees’ motivation but also create environments that support the personal and professional development of employees. This alignment could enhance intended workplace learning effectiveness and job performance. Future research could benefit from exploring employees’ long-term motivations in relation to effects of OD interventions across different workplace settings.
Community-based organizations (CBOs) play a key role in providing nonformal adult education and training in many contexts, including emerging economies such as Myanmar. Following the 2021 coup and amid the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic disruption, CBO-based learning programs have faced heightened constraints that require leaders to adapt to sustain training opportunities. This exploratory qualitative study examined how leaders of community-based nonformal adult education and training programs in rural Myanmar define their organizational roles, navigate constraints that shape program delivery, and sustain learning opportunities amid disruptions. Using an interpretive qualitative design, we conducted online semi-structured interviews with six CBO leaders and analyzed data using thematic analysis. Findings revealed four themes: leaders framed training as an investment in community futures; leaders described intersecting constraints tied to resource scarcity and access barriers; leaders sustained programming through relationships, networks, and community legitimacy; and leaders drew on perseverance, proactive planning, and service-oriented commitments to continue their work under disruption. The study contributes to adult education and HRD scholarship by illuminating leadership as situated program-sustaining work in a fragile context and by extending understanding of community-based learning provision in an understudied and difficult-to-access setting.
This research explores the role of ChatGPT in adult English language learning and teaching through a scoping literature review. The purpose of this study is to map the findings of the existing studies, synthesize the findings, provide an overview of the key themes, and find the gaps which need further attention in future research. Accordingly, this literature review aims to answer two main questions: (1) What are the characteristics of the existing literature regarding the use of ChatGPT in adult English language learning and teaching contexts? (2) What are the main themes discussed in such contexts as well as the identified gaps? The reviewed studies mainly used mixed-methods and quantitative designs, focused on writing and speaking skills, and were largely conducted in Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Also, six major themes emerged from the reviewed articles, which are (1) benefits of ChatGPT in ESL/EFL learning, (2) learners’ perceptions and attitudes, (3) teacher experiences, training, and professional readiness, (4) challenges, limitations, and risks, (5) ethical, pedagogical, and academic integrity issues, and (6) research gaps and future directions. According to the findings, ChatGPT has offered pedagogical, linguistic, and affective benefits for adult English learners, especially in writing skills development. At the same time, the literature highlights persistent concerns related to ethical use, academic integrity, and overreliance. There is a need for more longitudinal and context-sensitive research to better understand the integration of ChatGPT in adult English language education.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with and journal writing from 16 international academic workers working at universities in Ontario, Canada, the purpose of this article is to sound out these workers to explore how they sound out the particularities of sounding professional in the context of higher education. Paying special attention to their telling of small stories, which encompass less-structured narrations of everyday perspectives, activities, and so forth, the article explores how the workers defined professionalism in three vocal domains. These included pronunciation, which could seemingly affect intelligibility and perceptions of competence, tone, which pertained to displaying approachability and authority, and ordered speech for the purposes of transactional communication and representing advertised services. Rather than objective conceptualizations, these domains were products of ideologies pertaining to such constructs as (non)nativeness in English, patriarchy, and race. The article concludes with recommendations for undoing the oppressive functions of vocal professionalism. Such recommendations mostly relate to individual and collective workplace learning that involves the interrogation of listening practices, developing ethical communication practices, and revising/dismantling structures of oppressive listening within (higher education) organizations.
Infertility remains a deeply personal yet socially constructed experience that is often shaped by cultural expectations surrounding gender, race, and reproduction. Despite growing research on infertility, the experiences of African American women remain underrepresented in both infertility and work-life balance scholarship. This qualitative phenomenological study examines how African American women navigate infertility while managing professional identities and societal expectations. Guided by the frameworks of intersectionality and emotional literacy, in-depth interviews were conducted with 11 African American women who experienced infertility while employed. The findings reveal three central themes: negative self-image and diminished self-worth, the motherhood mandate, and emotional distress in loved ones. Participants described navigating infertility within cultural narratives that simultaneously presume hyperfertility and mandate motherhood, resulting in complex emotional labor and identity negotiation. The findings further demonstrate how emotional literacy functions as a mechanism through which participants interpret and respond to these experiences while maintaining personal and professional roles. By centering the voices of African American women, this study expands infertility scholarship and offers implications for Human Resource Development by highlighting the need for more inclusive workplace policies, leadership awareness, and support systems for employees navigating infertility. The study contributes to Human Resource Development scholarship by illustrating how emotional literacy operates as a mechanism through which African American women interpret and navigate infertility within intersecting racial, cultural, and professional contexts.
Online communities, such as professional forums and interest-based social media groups, provide an informal setting where individuals can engage in professional learning through seeking advice, accessing resources, and receiving emotional support. Guidance and discussion on conducting HRD research within online communities remain limited. Research with online communities presents unique practical and ethical challenges related to consent, confidentiality, and participants' vulnerability, even though such studies are often classified as "non-human subject" research. The purpose of this Perspectives on Research is to expand the methodological and ethical conversations within HRD research by rethinking how we can engage with digital spaces not only as sources of data but as relational environments. Drawing on our own experiences conducting qualitative research in a Chinese online community (Douban), we identified three areas of methodological and ethical considerations: access and participants' informed consent; online user anonymity and vulnerability; and interpret professional learning in online communities.
This study investigates the impact of structured small talk instruction on oral English fluency among adult Thai learners with no prior formal English education. Grounded in the theory of phatic communion and informed by andragogical and sociocultural learning principles, the study employed a quasi-experimental design with two groups: one receiving small talk-based instruction and another following a traditional textbook-based curriculum. Thirty-four adult female learners (aged 40-50) participated in 24 weeks of online instruction. Pre- and post-tests measured oral fluency across CEFR descriptors, complemented by learner satisfaction questionnaires. Results revealed significantly greater fluency gains and higher satisfaction levels in the small talk group (U = 0.000, p < .001, r = .85). The findings indicate that small talk promotes oral fluency, confidence, and motivation through socially meaningful communication. The study emphasizes the potential of small talk as a practical and transformative strategy for adult EFL learners in non-formal education contexts.
This interview with Dr. Tony Adams examines autoethnography as a vital, evolving method in adult education and human resource development. Positioned within the special issue Exploring the Depths of Self, the conversation moves beyond introductory discussions of the method to explore its ethical tensions, narrative craft, institutional politics, and commitments to justice and relational accountability. Adams reflects on his intellectual formation, mentorship under leading autoethnographers, and the formative life experiences that shaped his scholarly trajectory. Across the interview, Adams addresses persistent critiques of autoethnography, clarifies distinctions between evocative and analytic traditions, and emphasizes the importance of methodological integrity. He offers practical guidance on vulnerability, fictionalization, collaborative writing, and navigating publication in traditional academic venues. Drawing on examples from his own scholarship and editorial leadership, he highlights the risks and transformative potential of writing personal experience into public scholarship. Central to Adams's perspective is the belief that autoethnography must be both ethically responsible and narratively compelling. He underscores storytelling as a methodological imperative, arguing that accessibility, thick description, and reflexivity are essential for autoethnography to generate social impact. The interview ultimately invites emerging and established scholars alike to approach autoethnography with courage, care, and craft.
This paper examines autoethnography as a research methodology, pedagogical practice, and tool for professional reflection within adult education and human resource development. Autoethnography allows practitioners to critically examine work and life experiences by integrating autobiographical narrative with ethnographic inquiry, situating personal experience within broader cultural, historical, and institutional contexts. Drawing on scholarship from both fields, the paper traces the emergence of autoethnography alongside shifts in qualitative research that challenged positivist assumptions and emphasized reflexivity, subjectivity, and ethical responsibility. Within adult education, autoethnography aligns with long standing traditions of experiential learning, critical pedagogy, and life history approaches that treat learners' stories as sites of knowledge production. Within human resource development, it offers a means of examining workplace learning, professional identity, organizational culture, and power relations that are often overlooked by rational technical approaches. The paper explores how autoethnography is used to support critical learning, surface barriers and inequities, deepen understanding of learners and practitioners, inform curriculum and organizational practice, and contribute to advocacy and institutional change. Ethical considerations are examined, including vulnerability, consent, relational responsibility, and power dynamics in research and instructional contexts. Together, these perspectives position autoethnography as a method that connects lived experience to broader educational and organizational concerns while foregrounding the responsibilities that accompany writing from the self.
Professional development in academic advising is often constrained by limited institutional resources, geographic isolation, and uneven access to training. This case study explores how the Adventures in Advising podcast functions as a tool for professional learning and public-facing scholarship within this context. Drawing on concepts of communities of practice, agency, professional identity, and public scholarship, we analyzed 100 podcast episodes, conducted interviews with avid listeners, and reviewed reflections from the podcast co-creator. Findings reveal a developmental arc in which the podcast expanded access to timely and equitable professional development, fostered community and reduced isolation, supported the transformation of practice and professional identity, and broadened global perspectives on advising. These results demonstrate how podcasting can operate as a participatory and relational form of informal learning, advancing reflection, belonging, and meaning-making in an emerging professional field. Implications highlight the potential of podcasts to democratize professional learning and mobilize knowledge across institutional and international contexts.
In a recent editorial in this journal, Shuck reflected on the decline of faculty community at universities, framing the retreat from shared institutional spaces as an occasion for personal reclamation. He described faculty redirecting their energy toward families, hobbies, and communities outside the academy, characterizing the shift as a "quiet revolution" toward presence and intentionality. This perspective offers a structural counterpoint. Drawing on national workforce data, institutional climate research, and learning organization theory, I argue that the transactional quality of contemporary academic work, the unequal capacity for boundary-setting across faculty ranks, and the relocation of community to private life are not signs of healthy adaptation. They are predictable consequences of institutional disinvestment. When universities cycle through leadership, freeze hiring, compress salaries, and expand the contingent workforce, faculty respond rationally by withdrawing from institutional spaces that no longer reward their presence. The resulting loss of collegial exchange, mentorship, and intellectual community falls hardest on those least able to compensate: early-career scholars, contingent faculty, and members of equity-seeking groups. Reframing this loss through Watkins and Marsick's concept of learning culture, I propose that what has occurred is not community relocated but learning culture unmaintained. The field of human resource development, with its established frameworks for understanding engagement as organizationally produced, is uniquely positioned to name what institutions failed to maintain and to specify the deliberate organizational designs needed to rebuild scholarly community. The appropriate response to institutional failure is institutional accountability, not individual reorientation.
