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Inspiration From Home: Understanding Family as Key to Adult Women's Self-Investment

Vaccaro, A., Lovell, C. D. — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:39:24 PST

As the number of nontraditional-age students grows on college campuses, it is essential for higher education practitioners to understand if and how older students, especially women, become and remain engaged in their education. A review of the educational engagement literature reveals images of disengaged adult learners whose work and family responsibilities inhibit them from fully focusing on school. Yet other literature shows adult women excelling beyond their traditional-age peers. This qualitative study seeks to better understand educational engagement for older women students. Overall, study findings reveal that although family can be a greedy institution, kin also serve as a source of educational inspiration for women. A concept called self-investment is introduced as an alternative to educational engagement.

Adult Learners in a Research University: Negotiating an Undergraduate Student Identity

Kasworm, C. E. — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:39:23 PST

Adult undergraduate student identities at research extensive universities were uniquely coconstructed, shaped by this selective and competitive youth-oriented cultural context. Drawing upon social constructivist theory, this study explored this coconstruction through positional and relational adult student identities. Positional identities were coconstructed through negotiating academic acceptance in meeting demanding academic challenges and through facing otherness as a mature adult. These adults also viewed their positional identity based in an evolving sense of agency to academically succeed through goal oriented efforts, as well as through their adult maturity and life experiences. These adults articulated relational identities predominantly based in faculty’s tacit or explicit academic acceptance of them in one of four types of relationships. This study suggests that the adult undergraduate student identity is multi-layered, multi-sourced, evolving, and at times, paradoxical in beliefs of self, position, relationships, and learning contexts within the research extensive university setting.

Measuring the Importance of Precursor Steps to Transformative Learning

Brock, S. E. — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:10:45 PDT

Transformative learning has been important in the development of adult education since Jack Mezirow proposed it more than 35 years ago as a theoretical description of the steps learners undergo in changing their worldviews. However, despite much qualitative research, little quantitative study has been made of the incidence of transformative learning or the 10 steps predicted by Mezirow to precede it. This study of 256 undergraduate business school students reports the incidence of transformative learning and each of the 10 precursor steps. The more steps respondents remembered experiencing, the more they also reported transformative learning. The highest incidence of reporting transformative learning was associated with the precursor step of critical reflection, followed by the steps of disorienting dilemmas and trying on new roles. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.