The current and projected influx of older adult learners over 50 years of age implies the need to revisit lenses in which they are perceived and their academic needs. Though there are several support services to assist with physiological, socioeconomical, emotional, and cognitive hindrances, accessibility to these services continues to be the…

Purposefully selecting text is a longstanding challenge for teachers of multinational, adult learners enrolled at language schools. International students come from diverse cultural backgrounds, have been educated in different academic systems, are of different ages, and have separate interests; therefore, it is difficult for teachers to…

The German gymnasium teacher Alexander Kapp (1800-1869) was to all appearances the first one to use the "andragogy concept" as a term for "adult learning." In 1833 he published the book "Platon's Erziehungslehre, als Pädagogik für die Einzelnen und als Staatspädagogik. Oder dessen praktische Philosophie." This book…

Mezirow's theory of perspective transformation has proved to be a great asset to the scholarship of adult education and has provided a solid theoretical base for understanding complex learning phenomena. However, in the discussions surrounding Mezirow's work, a certain "stuckness" appears which we think is unproductive. Critiques of…

This dissertation reports on how one school community engaged in a professional development grant initiative that incorporated teacher leadership. Teacher leaders may have numerous roles and responsibilities that support the professional learning and instructional practices of school communities. This study examined the experiences of three…

Adult learners represent a significant, and growing, portion of enrollment at higher education institutions. Despite their growing enrollment, adult learners are not retained at nearly the rate of their "traditional" peers, leaving colleges and universities with the need to identify programs and services that specifically address the…

In the current adult education environment, self-directed learning (SDL) is becoming a necessary learning characteristic and an academic process of learning to allow adult learners to complete programs and further enhance lifelong learning. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between self-efficacy and SDL in…

This qualitative metasynthesis investigated students' meaningful learning experiences amid andragogical teacher education programmes. The programmes catered to the specific learning needs of adult students in the context of university-based teacher education. This study aimed to provide a wider picture of the frames of students' meaningful…

In this paper, we outline findings from a research project on mentor teachers' conceptualizations and strategies of mentoring novice teachers for reflective practice. The study was conducted with the aim to explore the qualitatively different ways in which mentor teachers conceive of mentoring for reflective practice and also how they translate…

In this chapter, I present an interactional and multimodal analysis of video-recorded mental health consultations with asylum seekers in France. My main focus is on sequences in which the patients talk with the therapist about their learning of French, in some cases through the mediation of a professional interpreter. The particular context of…

Skill acquisition theorists conceptualize second language (L2) learning as the acquisition of a set of perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills. The dominant view in skill acquisition theory is to regard L2 skill acquisition as a three-stage process "from initial representation of knowledge through initial changes in behavior to eventual…

The present research was aimed at identifying the cause for poor performance of adult English as foreign language (EFL) learners in Saudi Arabia, as well as to test the hypothesis that one of the major causes behind learners' failure may be affective filters. The basic question to answer for the research was whether adult EFL learners raise their…

Many students return to graduate programs as experts in their prior fields. "Returners," as they are commonly termed, have undergraduate degrees and have worked five or more years before returning for a graduate degree. While there is a significant body of literature on graduate students in general, there is less research on students…

There has not been ample recent research on teaching older adults. However, as described below, there is mounting research in how and why older adults want to learn. This brief discussion is derived from work undertaken for a workshop in Hong Kong on issues in teaching older adults. It combines recent research on learning and teaching in higher…

Adult learners often experience uncertainty, isolation, and, in graduate school, angst about meeting program requirements. Therefore, graduate students created and facilitated a seminar series and preliminary examination study group. The experience, however, transcended seminars and study meetings to build relevant and meaningful community. The…