Priority one of the Marrakech Framework for Action (MFA) involves promoting adult learning and education (ALE) within a lifelong learning perspective. This article intends to describe how the MFA places lifelong learning into a new era of ascension that will be transformational towards ALE, sustainable development goals, the world promise of…

This article considers the potential benefits of integrating the knowledge base on adult learning with teacher inquiry. The first part of the article provides an overview of key concepts discussed in the literature on adult learning, including the characteristics of adult learners, self-directed learning, experiential learning, transformative…

The purpose of this study is to understand the ways in which meditation practice can be used as an online pedagogical method based on adult learners' experiences with various forms of meditation practices. To arrive at this purpose, the researcher found it necessary to gather data about frequency of use, preferences, and related transformative…

Educators can help adult learners experience identity transformation and initiate lifelong learning by designing curriculum centered upon transformative learning objectives (TLOs) and experiential learning competencies (ELCs). TLOs point learners to the specific ways of thinking, feeling, and being in the world to which a course or other learning…

This paper explores transnational circulation during the early 1970s of lifelong education and recurrent education as 'policy repertoires' addressing redistribution of participation in organised (adult) learning throughout life. Focused on a re-reading of UNESCO's 1972 report on lifelong education, the paper offers a critical analysis of the Faure…

Andragogy was the first adult learning model to identify adult learners' characteristics and provide a pragmatic framework for responding to them. It is still considered a foundational and significant contribution to understanding adult learners despite substantial critique over the last 50 years. Current research supports the notion that…

Critical events in Leonard Matlovich's life depict a reluctant activist for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/gender diverse, and queer+ (LGBTQ+) equality. He served in the US military and subsequently came to personify the broad social challenges to the military's homophobic culture and recruitment practices. Matlovich's experience of a series…

This essay introduces a juxtaposition of adult education, futures perspectives, transformative learning theory, and democratic engagement. Within adult education, the promise of education, and the possibilities of transformative learning (TL) are often linked to democracy and human freedoms, yet that democratic promise is often left unfulfilled or…

Artistic Literacies (AL) can be a catalyst to creative, imaginative, and potentially, transformative learning (Blackburn Miller, 2020). Artistic literacy texts include storytelling, creative writing, popular theatre, music, dance, poetry, fiction, or memoir, and visual art. Creative possibilities for diverse adult literacy learners can open when…

John Heron's whole person theory can expand transformative learning theory by elaborating a more nuanced understanding of affect. In contrast to the vague conceptualization of affect's role and the interchangeable treatment of emotion and feeling in most adult learning scholarship, Heron's holistic theory grounds all experience in affective…

In this article, I argue that critical discourse in Mezirow's theory of transformative learning is a constructionist, ontological act that serves to support an individual's critical reflection, which, in turn, is a constructivist, epistemological act. The notion of onto-epistemology is helpful in bringing to the fore the entanglement of these two…

Research in disparate fields of education, psychology and neuroscience suggests that emotions play a central role in learning. We critically examine research at the intersection of emotions, adult learning and neuroscience. First, we review studies in the "IJLE" related to emotions and adult learning. In particular, we focus on the…

The University Without Walls experiment on the University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus, began in 1971. The central animating concepts of the original experiment include the value of knowledge that is learned both within and without 'the walls' of the university. These various knowledge sources are integrated into the student's individualized…

COVID-19 has done significant damage to individuals, families, workers and the economy. What is not known about the virus is part of the problem, and the knowledge gap drives an unprecedented and urgent search for knowledge. This article explores the challenges for lifelong learning and the relevance of transformative learning. Disorientation,…

This article examines the experience of six participants in the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network (BTS) delegation program. Human rights education is central to this program that operates between Canada and Guatemala. Key findings from this research include participants' rethinking of their own power and privilege upon returning to…