2019 Annual Conference

Adult Basic Education and Literacy Education

Roundtable (45 minutes)

This presentation will discuss how experiential learning is embedded in the practices of adult literacy educators in the United States. While experiential learning is embedded in professional development activities, there are distinct tensions between policies and realities of literacy education where adult educators are highlighted as agents of experiential learning.

The target audience for this presentation includes:

- adult literacy educators

- adult educators who work in areas other than literacy

- professional development specialists

- researchers and practitioners interested in the concept of experiential learning.

Learners will be able to reframe practices of adult literacy education based on experiential learning theory and gain new perspectives towards experiential learning theory based on practices in the field. This will not only enrich the practices by reflecting upon a theoretical framework, but also shed new light on the experiential learning theory itself.
Although I will begin by discussing my research project in the presentation, my intention is to gain more insights from the participants in the session after the presentation. It will be a collaborative learning process of framing adult literacy education in relation to experiential learning.

This presentation is based on a qualitative research project about the experiential learning of adult literacy educators. Although experiential learning has occupied a significant portion of learning theories in the field of adult education, it has not often been understood in terms of the practices in adult education. This study is an effort to understand and analyze experiential learning theory based on the practices in the field.

As a main strand of adult education in the United States, I focus on adult literacy education and the educators in the field. My research question is “How do adult literacy educators engage in experiential learning?” Based on the practices of experiential learning by adult literacy educators, I analyze how their practices relates to experiential learning theories by Kolb, Jarvis, Michelson and suggest an expanded framework to highlight the agency of people engaging in experiential learning.

I plan to organize the session with a brief presentation of my research findings, followed by Q&A sessions. Based on the given time that I would have, I would like to devote half the time to presentation and the other half to Q&A sessions so that participants can collaboratively express their thoughts.

Thus, I would like to have my session paired with other presenters who have a focus on adult literacy education so that the participants will be more likely to be familiar with the field of literacy education.