This update to Mezirow's Transformative Learning theory seeks to advance Mälkki's enhancement to the emotional dimension in phase one--the disorienting dilemma--by proposing the need for a complete grief process (as theorized by Kübler-Ross), to support movement from Mälkki's conceptualization of "edge-emotions" to a "comfort…

This chapter describes transformative learning as a catch-all term to describe many disparate phenomena related to learning processes involved in human transformation. It argues for the distinction between individual theories used to understand these phenomena and the metatheoretical work of analyzing across theories. This article then reviews…

This article provides an overview of adult learning theory, focusing on the theories covered in this issue of New Directions in Adult and Continuing Education. In offering a brief synopsis of each article and reflecting on the ways adult learning theories have evolved since the first update was published in 1993, this article explains several…

This article discusses teaching and learning approaches that illustrate "groundtruthing," a practice that brings us close to where people are living, working and being, as a way to promote transformational change.

As the population ages, more older adults seek learning opportunities in various educational settings. This article highlights the understanding of older adult learners and the greater heterogeneity within this demographic. I explore why and how older adults learn, including their learning needs, the challenges of aging that may affect their…

The "alone together" paradox is a phenomenon that occurs when adults make meaning of their learning in the online environment. By way of being "alone together," the online environment manifests a context for incidental and informal learning.

Examples of informal and incidental learning, including an extended discussion of informal learning in flight instruction, are used to illustrate the model of informal and incidental learning in practice, as well as the nonlinear nature of this learning.

This chapter describes a meditative embodied yoga approach to teaching and learning anatomy and physiology in both higher education and in yoga teacher training and how teaching in one setting has influenced teaching in the other.

This chapter is an update and expansion of previous work and explores how professionals construct knowledge in the context of their practice by connecting concepts from their experiences and continuing professional education activities.

This article introduces Taiwan's innovative lifelong learning programs for middle-aged and older adults, and discusses their social influence. The innovative active aging learning programs launched in 2008. The purpose of implementing active aging learning is to work at the grassroots level with the hope of providing increasingly comprehensive and…

This chapter examines the role of mentoring in continuing professional education from a critical perspective, addressing informal and formal mentoring relationships while highlighting their potential to encourage critical reflection, learning, and coconstruction of knowledge.

Interconnections between workplace and organizational learning can highlight the ongoing changes taking place that prestage the need for learning cities and regions. The diverse institutions that comprise cities and regions can function as organizational learning mechanisms in the 21st century. Learning cities themselves can also be conceptualized…

This chapter focuses on the importance of approaching economic education pedagogy as a whole-family learning process, especially in high immigrant and culturally diverse neighborhoods.

Most people can recall a time when they learned a skill or came to understand an idea while participating in an experience: learning in such a way that the action being taken and the resulting learning outcomes were synonymous. Time spent in hands-on efforts tend to engage learners physically and emotionally in both the process of learning and the…

This article highlights four concepts related to embodied knowledge for community awareness: (1) possibilities; (2) risk; (3) collective engagement; and (4) performance. It examines the author's narrative study investigation manifested in a performance text as a case study on how women embodied repressed knowledge and released it through…