The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the components of a profound moment. We provisionally defined a profound moment as an experience that intentionally or unintentionally continues to surface in consciousness, has transformed an individual's fundamental perspectives, and been integrated into an individual's life. Participants who…

This article, a conceptual and theoretical piece, opens a window on "playful learning" as a philosophy of education and a suite of diverse pedagogical approaches, methods, and techniques. The paper criticizes the serious ambience of adult education with its high levels of instrumentalism and performativity. It argues for playful learning…

In this paper, the researchers report an experimental study on conceptual knowledge learning and application through embodied interactions, expecting that bodily movements would facilitate learning in a positive manner. The intervention was enabled by Unity3D and Kinect V2, and taught novice adult learners the concepts of and conversions between…

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…

Adults learn simply through life experience and possibly by pursuing an education. Pursuing an education would depend on the setting of the experience. This project aimed to explore the theories and frameworks that inform the field of adult learning today. A course project was constructed of seven individual projects, each exploring different…

Most research on virtual reality (VR) for learning has focused on young populations in formal learning contexts. Little research has been conducted on how adults engage in informal learning using VR. This study examined adults' informal learning experiences in high-immersion VR, focusing on the aspects of VR they enjoyed and the challenges they…

This is a study of the process of biographical learning and how it can be observed in narration. There have not yet been empirical studies focused explicitly on the learning aspects of biographical learning, as scholars have focused more on the biographical part of the concept -- more on the question of what is learned than of how it is learned.…

This book traces the motivational dynamics embedded within lifelong foreign language learning trajectories, examining the factors which generate and sustain motivation throughout a learner's life. Embracing a complexity approach, it views motivation as a long-term individual process that evolves along a narrative continuum, developing over the…

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore adult immigrant learners' perspectives and motivations for participating in an ESL program through the lens of McClusky's Theory of Margin. Nine adult immigrant ESL students were interviewed about their learning experiences. Creswell's (1994) systematic process informed the…

Educational opportunities occur through naturalistic everyday life experiences (e.g., reading a newspaper, listening to a podcast, or visiting a museum). Research primarily examines learning under controlled conditions, such as in a classroom or laboratory. There is relatively little known about the extent to which adults extract semantic content,…

History museum professionals make many assumptions about how visitors learn at their sites but, for various reasons, they rarely do research to test those assumptions. The primary purpose of this study was to explore how adults learn in history museums to fill that gap in understanding. This research utilized a conceptual framework that combined…

Using the Compassionate Music Teaching (CMT) framework as a lens, in this study I explored the ways that teachers of adults learning recreationally in music lessons may align their teaching approaches to learners' adult-specific needs. Adult education scholars have accentuated the need for facilitators of adult learning to consider adult learners'…

This study explores the learning of volunteer end of life caregivers (EOLCG). Using the profound learning framework, the researchers will use a grounded theory approach to generate transferable characterizations of how learning occurs for EOLCGs and what the content of that learning is. As a unique population of adult learners who perform an…

This is an exploratory Delphi study investigating profound learning, the profound learner, and profound living. The strength of the Delphi technique is leveraging expertise to understand an amorphous problem,such as the concept of profundity explored in this study. The authors could find no evidence of a comprehensive research agenda being…

In many contexts of multilingualism, language learners can initiate communication in the target language (TL), or a contact language (such as English). Patterns of use emerging from these choices affect TL development. They also vary between individuals. Willingness to communicate (WTC) needs to be investigated in ways that capture these…