This article provides some insight into the constraints on the potential of recognition of prior learning (RPL) to widen access to educational qualifications. Its focus is on a conceptual framework that emerged from a South African study of RPL practices across four different learning contexts. Working from a social realist perspective, it argues…

Beulah Heights University, a predominately African-American institution, specializes in reaching the adult student of average age 38. Most of these students have 9-to-5 jobs as well as family and church responsibilities. Seated in the classroom, there are pastors, teachers, church administrators, health care workers, salespersons, bank tellers,…

Students studying in government-run schools in rural India possess much experiential knowledge of the world around them. This paper presents a narrative account of an ethnographic exploration of such students as they attempted to learn about electricity in an eighth-grade classroom in a government-run school in a village in India. The paper shows…

The powerful role of prior experiences and cultural schemata in guiding novice teachers' conceptions of how to teach is hardly contested. We report on a "reflective practicum" at the very beginning of a pre-service teacher education course that interconnects prior beliefs, reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action and that, in principle,…