Adult Learning

Teaching graduate students to conduct evaluations is typically relegated to evaluation methods courses. This approach misses an opportunity for students to collaboratively use evaluation skills to explore content. This article examines a graduate course, Issues in Adult Basic Education, in which students learned evaluation methods concurrently with the course’s core content. Students and the professor collaboratively conducted an evaluation of professional development among adult basic education (ABE) providers exploring the following question: How is professional development conducted for ABE faculty, and how might it differ between community-based organizations and community and technical colleges? Based on the findings, students generated a report, which they shared with evaluation participants at local community and technical colleges and community-based organizations. The experiences described in this article suggest the applicability of this approach—infusing evaluation work into a content course—to graduate courses in other disciplines.

This article presents findings from a research study wherein participants demonstrated the use of similes, metaphors, and analogies, termed conceptual metaphors, in response to disorienting dilemmas instigated by breast cancer. In this qualitative case study of 18 breast cancer survivors, conceptual metaphors were used in three distinct ways: (a) to uncover tacit ways of making meaning, (b) to name experiences, and (c) to imagine new possibilities. The experiences were considered transformative because the participants claimed new ways of thinking and being, leading to a fuller and richer lived experience. Educators aspiring to promote transformative learning may want to add techniques that incorporate conceptual metaphors to their (metaphorical) toolbox of pedagogical resources.

In this article, we discuss how our analysis of several popular culture artifacts featuring super women characters (superheroes and supernatural) provided the foundation for a media discussion group for female college students with learning exceptionalities. We explore the use of popular culture in discussion groups as well as discuss the research context and discourse analysis method related to selected popular culture artifacts. We then relate the participants’ responses to the artifacts, emphasizing tensions and resistances associated with each. We review how our initial focus began with an emphasis on gender and gradually evolved to address ability. We reflect on possibilities, limitations, and challenges related to the facilitation of this and other media groups, offering practical recommendations for adult educators.

This article describes an initiative to train lay people, predominantly parents of children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN), to teach Bridge to Independence—a care coordination curriculum—to other family caregivers of CYSHCN. Using a model based on Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation, the goal was to discover how well lay people liked the process of learning how to teach, the extent to which these Lay Trainers gained knowledge and skills from the training sessions, and what changes in Lay Trainer caregiving application resulted from the learning process. The Bridge to Independence curriculum design is based on self-directed learning principles and served as the framework for Lay Trainer learning. This article presents the study’s methodology, findings, and discussion, and adult education practice implications. Two themes emerged from this evaluation study: Lay Trainer perceptions of learning the curriculum and the relationship between life experience and learning. The study provides implications for two aspects of adult education practice: training the trainer and adult learning.