Consent in the definition of adult education is only apparent and circumscribed. Substantial differences survive, fueled by various national ideologies, cultures and policies. The plurality of angles determines a multiplicity of research approaches. Transformative research is the typical model of adult education research and is analysed in its…

There is a growing international interest in ethical issues in research and the process by which it can be enhanced. Unlike in the past when research studies were conducted abruptly, almost all organisations and research institutes now have various mechanisms to ensure compliance with ethical standards and procedures. Adult and community education…

The education doctorate program fills an essential niche that allows practitioners to earn a doctorate and make a difference in educational practice and policy. However, critics claim EdD programs are failing to effectively prepare students. There has been a push for the reinvention of the EdD which includes improving EdD student confidence in…

Participatory action research (PAR), as a research methodology, challenges conventional, positivist, and scientific approaches. Recent adult education studies on PAR have explored how to develop PAR to enhance research practice and further the "democratizing aims of adult education" (Joyappa & Martin, 1996). Historically, as a part…

This paper discusses retirement as a learning process, where learning, be it formal or informal, enables retirees to adjust to the transition from work to retirement. Such discussion is important given the fact that the world population is aging and that more people are retiring in the next few decades. Moreover, people are experiencing an…

Video participatory research (VPR) is an emergent methodology that bridges visual methods with the epistemology of participatory research. This approach is motivated by the "crisis of representation" or "reflective turn" (Gubrium & Harper, 2013) that promotes research conducted with or by participants, conceptualizing…

Within this "Adult Education Quarterly" ("AEQ") forum, the authors call for a dialogue and examination of research methods in the field of adult and continuing education. Using the article by Boeren as a starting point, the authors analyze both qualitative and quantitative research trends and advocate for more methodological…

Autoethnography is a form of qualitative inquiry intended to connect the lived experience of a researcher to the larger social and cultural world (Ellis, 2004) and it can be a valuable methodological tool for adult educators and learners. This paper explores the use and value of autoethnography as a qualitative methodology and explores the…

Narrative inquiry has been a popular methodology in different disciplines for the last few decades. Using stories, narrative inquiry illuminates lived experience, serving as a valuable complement to research methodologies that are rooted in positivist epistemologies. In this article, we present a brief introduction to narrative inquiry including…

In this manuscript, the authors explore self-study as an emerging research methodology with the potential to open up spaces of inquiry for researchers, graduate students, and teachers in a broad array of fields. They argue that the fields of career and technical education (CTE), adult education and technology can leverage self-study methodology in…

Comparing places represents one of the most traditional threads of comparative inquiry. However, international and comparative (adult) education research has to date focused on comparing places more in the sense of territorial entities. In contrast, this paper moves away from understandings of national or regional territories as given,…

For over 25 years, my lecture driven teaching strategies that included passive learning outcomes has prevailed in my K12 and higher education teaching. The requirement to help doctoral students identify and understand their epistemology, ontology and worldview within a research methods class created a dilemma regarding the appropriateness of…

This paper introduces institutional ethnography (IE) as a useful and systematic process for examining organizations and work data through the lens of stakeholders, at different levels, and considering the different forces at play. Drawing from ethnomethodology, IE focuses on how everyday experience is socially organized. Ideological shifts have…

This articles introduces some of the differing approaches to historical research that are utilized within adult education and lifelong learning. It discusses archives, types of sources, and approaches to interpretation. Whenever the author talks about history or historical research one of two things happen: People get excited and start telling her…

In this paper we share the outcomes of a project that sought to take up Nutbrown's challenge to "push out from the safe(er) boundaries of established methodologies" in early years research. We explore the value of auto-ethnographic storytelling, Lyotard's "petit récit", to the processes of doing and learning about research in…