Embracing And Enhancing The Margins Of Adult Education

No rational field of study or practice would choose to occupy organizational or social margins. Or would it? Adult educators increasingly risk and resist being placed at the margins of academic and other organizations. This volume argues that depending on how those margins are defined, margins can be a place of creativity and power from which to examine and challenge domincant ideology and practice. Chapters explore advances and effective practices being made in the margins of adult education from several perspectives including community-based programs, interreligious learning, human resource development, African-American underrrepresentation in the academy, and degree granting adult education programs. Other areas explored include an interdiciplinary Web-based patient education research program and educational focus on citizenship and public responsibility skills. This volume moves beyond the traditional definition of the margin as a power- and resource-poor position in which individuals are relegated to supporting roles and demonstrates how to embrace, expand, and blend the margins of adult education by collaborating with others to influence the mainstream. This is the 104th issue of the Jossey-Bass quarterly series New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education.Â

Drawing on the contributions of 75 leading authors in the field, this 2010 Edition of the respected Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education provides adult education scholars, programme administrators, and teachers with a solid foundation for understanding the current guiding beliefs, practices, and tensions faced in the field, as well as a basis for developing and refining their own approaches to their work and scholarship. Offering expanded discussions in the areas of social justice, technology, and the global dimensions of adult and continuing education, the Handbook continues the tradition of previous volumes with discussions of contemporary theories, current forms and contexts of practice, and core processes and functions. Insightful chapters examine adult and continuing education as it relates to gender and sexuality, race, our aging society, class and place, and disability.

The third edition of Patricia Cranton’s Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning brings a wealth of new insight from the tremendous growth in the field during the decade since the previous edition. As in the previous editions, the book helps adult educators understand what transformative learning is, distinguish it from other forms of learning, and foster it in their practice. The first part of the book is dedicated to clarifying transformative learning theory and relating it to other theoretical frameworks. The author examines transformative learning from the learner’s perspective, and discusses individual differences in how learners go through the process. In the second half of the book, the focus is squarely on strategies for promoting transformative learning in a wide variety of adult and higher education contexts. Practitioners will be able to take ideas from the text and apply them directly in their teaching.Since 1975, transformative learning has become a core theoretical perspective in adult and higher education, and research has proliferated. In the past decade, adult education and especially transformative learning grew into a noticeably larger field. The numbers of undergraduate and graduate programs in adult education have increased and continue to increase as more and more individuals are seeking the expertise, skills, and training necessary to work with adult learners in higher education, business, industry, government, health professions, non-profit organizations, and community development. In addition, the number of programs in higher education (both undergraduate and graduate) that include courses in transformative learning has grown dramatically. These academic audiences use the book to further their understanding of transformative learning theory and practice.Drawing on the latest research as well as the author’s own teaching experience in both online and face-to-face courses, this new edition will be a vital resource for members of the transformative learning community, as well as those encountering the topic for the first time.

The Profession and Practice of Adult Education is a timely book and an excellent introduction to the field. Drawing from an extensive volume of literature, it provides comprehensive coverage and a clear guide. Graduate students will benefit from it and practitioners will be kept abreast of changes that are occurring. --Peter Jarvis, professor of continuing education and senior research professor, University of Surrey, United Kingdom

This book explores the concept and facilitation of critical reflection and its implications for professional practice. It draws on the author’s own extensive experience to demonstrate how reflective processes involving metaphor and imagery, as well as critique, can be used not only to understand and articulate key values underpinning professional practice and to generate new theoretical models, but to explore one's own worldview, including the ultimate question: 'Who am I?’. The author incorporates practical examples of reflection-through-writing and other reflective techniques which illustrate how ideas about critical reflection, transformative learning, authenticity and spirituality are intricately entwined within theories and practices of adult learning and professional development. The book highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between personal worldviews, values and professional practice. It draws on the concepts of vocation and professional psychological wellbeing to consider what it means to act authentically as a professional within an audit culture. The book will be invaluable for practitioners, academics and students interested in critical reflection, educational inquiry, autoethnography and the use of the self in and as research, the nature and use of metaphor, and the development of worldviews.

THE JOSSEY-BASS READER ON Contemporary Issues in Adult Education With contributions from leading experts in the field, The Jossey-Bass Reader on Contemporary Issues in Adult Education collects in one volume the best previously published literature on the issues and trends affecting adult education today. The volume includes influential pieces from foundational authors in the profession such as Eduard C. Lindeman, Alain Locke, and Paulo Freire, as well as current work from authors around the world, including Laura L. Bierema, John M. Dirkx, Cecilia Amaluisa Fiallos, Peter Jarvis, Michael Newman, and Shirley Walters. In five sections, the book's thirty chapters delve into a wide range of compelling topics including: social justice, democracy, and activism diversity and marginalization human resource development lifelong learning ethical issues the meaning and role of emotions globalization and non-Western perspectives the role of mass media, popular culture, and "social learning" technology health, welfare, and environment Each piece is framed within its larger context by the editors, and each section is accompanied by helpful reflection and discussion questions.

While nation engages in debates concerning central issues of religion and religious diversity in education, the historic saliency of religion and spirituality in the Black community and in the education of its children continues to be largely ignored. Historically, religion and spirituality were foundational to the development and understanding of social justice issues, including, but not limited to, issues of protest, community up-lift, notions of care, and anti-oppression. Taking into account the historical significance of religion and spirituality in the Black community, it is essential for education scholars to cultivate these long-standing connections as a means for advancing contemporary struggles for social justice, religiosity in education, and counter-hegemonic praxis. The purpose of this book is to expand our understanding of spirituality and religion as related to the p-20 schooling of Blacks students. Educational scholarship continues to explore the workings of social justice to ameliorate inequities for those who have not been well served in schools. Although the concept of social justice remains a somewhat inchoate term in educational literature, this book seeks to explore the historicity of religion and spirituality while offering a scaffold that links ordinary everyday acts of justice, religion, and spirituality in education to a culture that systematically and institutionally assaults the worth of Black students. It is important to note that this book is grounded in a broad concept of religion and spirituality and the editors seek to be inclusive of all types, styles, and traditions of religiosity and spirituality.