Understanding Adult Education Practice ((3 Credits))

Catalog description

The field of adult education is neither finite or static. As a dynamic, continuing and evolving field of practice, it is fraught with tensions, dilemmas, controversies, ethical concerns and connections, not only in the context of one’s own practice of adult education but in other practice areas as well, amidst many debates about ethical issues and professionalization of the field. Students will also explore individual and collaborative ways of learning and how those have impacted adult education practice and literature (and their own practice). Palmer in The Courage to Teach(1998) stated that "Teaching, like any truly human activity emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together...knowing my students and my subject depends and my subject deepens heavily on self-knowledge. When I do not know myself, I cannot know my subject-not at the deepest levels of embodied, personal meaning. I will know it only abstractly, from a distance." This study will also focus on adult education program administration evaluation, theory and evaluation.