This book identifies the educational problems and issues that could be solved by design and discusses how to overcome these challenges by adopting a design thinking approach. The chapters cover topics such as opportunities and challenges for the futures of education, the emerging models of design thinking for education, learning activity design,…

This article explores the sustained impact of an Access module on mature students from disadvantaged backgrounds as they progress to undergraduate study. Framed in the context of OfS concerns about attrition and conceptualisation of dispositional, situational and institutional barriers, student survey and tutor focus group data were collected in a…

The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of utilizing a program based on post-constructivism to develop adult learners' English language fluency. The study started with the literature review and previous studies handling post-constructivism and English language fluency. The researcher nominated a group of pre-intermediate to…

Nearly one-quarter of American adults have low-level literacy skills. Existing research provides a great deal of quantitative information about skill levels and attainment, but little information exists that highlights the contextualized experiences of adult learners. In this phenomenological study, we explored individual adult learners'…

The topic of language awareness in intercultural music education has received surprisingly little attention in discussions on meaningful and responsive musical practices, despite language being an ubiquitous issue that every music educator encounters when entering a multilingual learning environment. This study explores a language-aware…

The strategies employed by adult online graduate learners to balance multiple role stressors are the focus of this study. A basic qualitative research design was chosen because it allowed the research to explore the experiences of participants; its key characteristics include being rooted in social sciences, defining a process or phenomenon,…

The problem targeted by the study was that while nontraditional students are increasingly attending college in record numbers, they are more than twice as likely as other students to drop out in their first year of study, indicating the delayed promise of degree completion may never be realized. The study focused on the opportunities and fiscal…

Languages differ in the importance of acoustic dimensions for speech categorization. This poses a potential challenge for second language (L2) learners, and the extent to which adult L2 learners can acquire new perceptual strategies for speech categorization remains unclear. This study investigated the effects of extensive English L2 immersion on…

This paper draws on the qualitative findings of a PhD study which focused on the lived experiences of adult learners with dyslexia in Ireland. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 adult learners with dyslexia in 2014 and these findings, with particular relevance to adult learning in the recently restructured Further Education and…

This article explores the allusion possibilities for distance education career pathways and the well-known hierarchy of needs--a theory first introduced by American psychologist Abraham Maslow. A grounding concept learned by all Psychology 101 students in high school or college, Maslow's theory can provide a similar base for understanding,…

'Working with you all and finding my voice as an educator has changed my life', one of the retirees said as we were discussing their experiences as museum volunteers. When I was given a two-year contract as a museum educator to contribute to the renewal of a maritime museum in Norway by designing and developing a broad ranging outreach programme,…

The "alone together" paradox is a phenomenon that occurs when adults make meaning of their learning in the online environment. By way of being "alone together," the online environment manifests a context for incidental and informal learning.

Interactions between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex are fundamental to human emotion. Despite the central role of frontoamygdala communication in adult emotional learning and regulation, little is known about how top-down control emerges during human development. In the present cross-sectional pilot study, we experimentally manipulated…

Education inevitably influences society and our future. As literature and experience tells, educational leaders impact not only their institutions, but ultimately the learning outcomes for a large portion of society's members. Educational leaders are charged with more than creating a viable future for an institution; they are also charged with…

Transformative education exists in a complex, dynamic, and ambiguous state seeking structural definitions and relationships within an interdisciplinary arena often critiqued for its limitations as an individual--rather than social--practice. This type of education encompasses learning processes that may facilitate the development of civic-minded,…