A key commitment of the Adult Literacy for Life Strategy (2021) is to reduce the number of adults in Ireland with unmet numeracy needs from 25% to 12%. One of the main challenges in achieving this is the varied provision of adult numeracy education. Many numeracy practitioners are either employed parttime or are volunteers with few opportunities…

This paper examines the experiences of one adult educator's engagement with Freire's praxis through teaching horticulture. The principal belief of the paper is that engaging in critical dialogue and reflexive action is an evolving journey of unlearning and hope for both learners and educators. The paper suggests that trusting in Freire's…

Irish Further Education and Training (FET) is presently undergoing a period of transformation after years of experiencing issues related to identity and precarious employment, among others. This paper explores the experiences and motivations of 16 student teachers who, despite the sectoral challenges, have chosen to teach in FET as a second…

Racism is not an anomaly, rather it is an ordinary feature of our world and is a symptom of white supremacy. This article draws from critical race theory and critical pedagogy to make sense of this assertion and to contemplate possible responses. Using an autoethnographic research paradigm, we draw from our own contrasting experiences and…

Adult education is concerned with the redistribution of resources and the recognition of rights held by citizens and to have these rights respected (Honneth, 1995). Mental health is an important domain of rights that are disrespected and unprotected by the state. This article reflects on herbal medicine as a practice in adult education in response…

The HEI FET Forum was established in 2012 for the eight Higher Education Institutions who provide initial teacher education qualifications for those wishing to work as accredited teachers in the Further Education and Training (FET) Sector. Its remit is to advance teaching, learning and research in the FET sector and to widen the Forum's engagement…

This paper harnesses the teachings of Paulo Freire in order to give a voice to Irish adult educators. The ontological aspects of Freire's theory are central to this task. Freire's ontological understanding of the human experience finds its fulfilment in his theory of conscientization. The two pillars of conscientization are personal and collective…

COVID-19 and the looming economic recession threatens adult educators' long-fought battle to create dialogical spaces for transformatory learning. Previous experience of designing and delivering community programmes to marginalised, non-traditional students, has taught us the necessity of building strong tutor-student and student-peer…

In this article we reflect on the challenges we have encountered regarding our teaching and learning practices as adult educators during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through narrative reflections, we grapple with this rapidly changing teaching and learning environment. Our collection of adult and post-secondary programmes were designed to be delivered…

This article seeks to provide a contextual backdrop to this edition's focus on analysing the changes from the perspective of policy and practice since 2010, through presenting the findings of an in-depth analysis of the life histories of six adult educators, working in the field of adult education in the Republic of Ireland in the decades leading…

This paper examines and critiques existentialist interpretations of being within Paulo Freire's educational theory. The principle supposition of the paper is that through engaging in adult education, the adult learner can heighten their understanding of their lives, metaphysically. The paper also posits that adult education can develop the will;…

Professional development is a fundamental, if sometimes, overlooked aspect of nurturing high quality adult education. Creating genuine and engaging spaces for such development presents a number of challenges for organisers in any one of Ireland's sixteen Education and Training Board's community education services who work with a tutor body that…

This paper shares the Irish adult educator's experiences of Quality Assurance (QA). Educators are found to be largely supportive of QA but contradictions emerge. These include philosophical tensions, inconsistent moderation and incongruence between the stated values of QA and a more powerful government-led employability discourse.

In this paper I reflect on epiphany moments in teaching and learning and the ways in which writing such moments can serve both to refresh and revitalise what Palmer calls the inner landscape of the educator, while also offering opportunities to enliven pedagogy. I use the notion of the liminal disposition to position such writing as an agentic act…

Public art galleries and museums have been mandated to become more relevant and useful to the lived experiences of the broad communities they claim to serve. Adult education has long been part of the work of these institutions, although historically the relationship has been uneasy, and they seldom feature in the adult education literature. To…