Women’s Development at the Margins: Incarcerated Women’s Search for Self

This study examines how one group of marginalized women, the incarcerated, construct their sense of self. Using the notion of nonunitary subjectivity to analyze life history narratives, I demonstrate how multiple positionings within available discourses serve to disadvantage these women

Critical Transformational Learning in the Post-Postmodern World

We examine the modernist underpinnings of traditional adult learning and development theories and evaluate elements of those theories through more contemporary lenses. Drawing upon recent “public pedagogy” literature, we argue that much learning takes place outside of formal educational institutions. We look beyond modernist narratives to consider the possible implications for critical adult learning occurring in and through contemporary fragmented, digital, media-saturated culture

Narrative Learning in the Adult Classroom

Narrative is a fundamentally human way of making meaning. In this study we explore how narrative can be used to foster learning in higher education and how it provides a way to conceptualize the learning process itself. To do this we examine the use of autobiographical learning portfolios in a nontraditional undergraduate program and the use of learning journals in a graduate course in adult education

Women\u27s experience of academic collaboration.

This study examines the experience of collaboration for women academics in adult education. While the women describe a range of collaborative experiences, they place the greatest value on more complex forms of collaboration in which the self, the partner(s), and the work exist in a highly dynamic and interactive relationship. This study suggests that collaboration provides one way in which women are creating life-giving spaces for themselves within the masculinist culture of the academy

Adult Learner Success Stories: The Impact of Shifting Political Discourses on Adult Literacy Education

This study examines the impact of shifting political discourse on adult literacy success stories. Those shaped by a liberal democratic discourse portray programs as the means students use to achieve their educational goals, while those framed within a neoconservative discourse attribute the students’ success to their own efforts through a type of bootstrapism

Incarcerated Women\u27s Identity Development: Becoming a Self at the Margins

This study explores the developmental experience of women at the margins of society. Our findings suggest that the role of connection is problematic for these women and gives rise to a self that has a restricted degree of agency, but one that is paradoxically resilient and sensitive to her social context

Anxiety in the Doing: Impressionist Tales of Adults Learning to be Educational Researchers

This study investigated the inner experiences of adults learning to become educational researchers. Through narrative analysis of doctoral students’ tales of memorable early encounters in conducting research, insight was gained into the tension, conflict, and drama they experienced

Learning and Education of Marginalized Women in the United States

What do we ‘know’ about marginalized women’s learning and educational experiences and how can this knowledge positively inform educators and researchers? All interested scholars are invited to share their research methodologies, experiences, and findings in this roundtable as we begin to develop a collective understanding

Efficacy of the Getting Ready Intervention and the Role of Parental Depression

This study reports the results of a randomized trial of a parent engagement intervention (the Getting Ready Project) on directly observed learning-related social behaviors of children from families of low-income in the context of parent-child interactions. The study explored the moderating effect of parental depression on intervention outcomes. Participants were 204 children and their parents, and 29 Head Start teachers. Semi-structured parent-child interaction tasks were videotaped two times annually over the course of two academic years. Observational codes of child behaviors included agency, persistence, activity level, positive affect, distractibility, and verbalizations. Controlling for gender and disability concerns, relative to children in the control group, those in the treatment condition experienced a significant decline in activity level. Furthermore, compared to children of non-depressed mothers and to control children, those in the experimental condition whose parent reported elevated levels of depression showed greater gains in positive affect and in verbalizations