Lights, Camera, Andragogy! Adult Learning and Development in Film

This article will examine specific films that portray events or phenomena of adult learning and development, and how adult learning and development can be explored by studying the lives of the fictional characters in film. It will demonstrate how the use of contemporary film by adult educators and adult learners can enhance insights about people, about life’s dilemmas, and about the growth and development in adulthood. To teach adults successfully, methods and techniques must be adapted to their skills and environments. Despite genre or popularity, film has the opportunity to tell a story and/or be a real-life recording. Film provides another strategy of telling stories to help adult educators and adult learners have further reflection, insights, emotional reactions, and enhance various life experiences and stages of development. Learners can use film to better understand narratives outside of their own and develop alternative interpretations, and film can also be used to observe social phenomena in a noninvasive way. The films discussed in the article were chosen by the author to draw the attention to examples of various aspects of adult learning and development.

Identifying the Underlying Assumptions of an Interdisciplinary Collaboration on Curriculum Development

This reflective analysis focuses on a successful interdisciplinary collaboration between two academics from two different areas of expertise, chemistry and education, who worked together on a curriculum development project. The authors identify three underlying assumptions integral to their successful partnership (being ready for learning, having a commitment to collaborative learning, and seeing each other as peers) and state that their partnership led to new ways of knowing and learning. This article is framed within the field of adult learning and development, and views the authors as learners, thus offering insights into understanding the value of interdisciplinary research partnerships in higher education.

SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ADULT LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

The authors consider the problem of the adult social and psychological development and education. It analyzes various directions of social and psychological development, the peculiarities of the institutional type of training, as well as the basis of forms oftraining of adult education.

In One Voice

This article examines the views of graduate students who are aspiring or practicing school leaders and faculty from two university degree granting leadership preparation programs. Drawn from a larger mixed methods study, the authors focus here on survey results that show how these groups rated the effectiveness of 14 potential curricular dimensions drawn from traditional leadership content (e.g., budget/finance, legal compliance) and more recent (contemporary) additions to leadership curricula (e.g., reflective practice, adult learning and development, social-emotional capacity). Both traditional and contemporary areas received high ratings for effectiveness and importance to professional growth and development. Implications of this research point to the joint importance and feasibility of a more integrated approach to leadership education that includes contemporary and traditional dimensions. These finding may have important implications for other settings as well.

New Mindsets

The authors situate this chapter within the context of contemporary educational leadership where leaders face technical and adaptive challenges that are increasing in complexity and quantity. In many cases, these are challenges for which they could not have been prepared (e.g., new accountability measures). While adult learning and adult developmental theories have been employed widely to support adults' learning and development in other sectors, they are only recently being employed to inform the practice and preparation of school leaders. Therefore, the authors describe seminal theories of adult learning and development as a promising foundation to improve curriculum and learning spaces for aspiring and practicing leaders. These theoretical lenses are helpful for curriculum design and content in Pre-K-20 learning centers and also higher education. Put simply, research establishes that employing these will more fully equip leaders to support other adults' learning and development in their communities in order to meet complex educational challenges.

In One Voice

This article examines the views of graduate students who are aspiring or practicing school leaders and faculty from two university degree granting leadership preparation programs. Drawn from a larger mixed methods study, the authors focus here on survey results that show how these groups rated the effectiveness of 14 potential curricular dimensions drawn from traditional leadership content (e.g., budget/finance, legal compliance) and more recent (contemporary) additions to leadership curricula (e.g., reflective practice, adult learning and development, social-emotional capacity). Both traditional and contemporary areas received high ratings for effectiveness and importance to professional growth and development. Implications of this research point to the joint importance and feasibility of a more integrated approach to leadership education that includes contemporary and traditional dimensions. These finding may have important implications for other settings as well.