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This book provides a theoretical and philosophical examination of games, play and playfulness and their relationships to learning and wellbeing in adulthood. It draws on an interdisciplinary literature base (including game-based learning, game studies, education, psychology, and game design) to present a critical manifesto for playful learning in post-compulsory education and lifelong learning. While there is an established body of work in games and learning in adulthood, and a wide literature on the value of play in childhood, the wider potential of play in adulthood and playfulness is under-explored and still emergent. This book offers a comprehensive overview of play in adulthood, exploring the benefits and drawbacks, examining why play in adulthood is different from play in childhood, the role of play in culture, and making an argument for why it is important in our society that we embrace the principles of playfulness.

A 2023 SPE Outstanding Book Honorable Mention Generative Knowing explores the mystery of learning from the unknown in ways that reveal that learning is a dynamic phenomenon, encompassing both personal and societal contexts. Dewey defines learning in terms of experience, reflection, continuity, and interactivity. When learning happens, it eventually solidifies into reliable truths that become a shortcut for taking action or making decisions—thus a habit of learning is formed and becomes rigid. Generative knowing is an emerging theory of adult learning that seeks the not-yet-foreknown potential that waits to be uncovered in the richness of experience. The book delivers vignettes of different lived experiences of being and becoming, signaling multiple ways in which a person shapes and transcends traditional conceptions of self-other binary activating the power to respond to the ongoing complex evolution of self and society. Generative Knowing seeks to accomplish four goals: to offer a unique exploration of learning, positioned as response-ability that illuminates the relatedness of learning and complex, ambiguous, unsolvable challenges that are recognizable in society as social challenges (i.e. forced migration)to present and distinguish an emerging theory of adult learning, generative knowing. Generative knowing emerged as a distinct learning disposition at the intersections of personal meaning making capacity (developmental psychology) encountering the characteristics of rising ambiguity (complexity sciences) and the lived experience of undergoing experienceto make visible and help others make the connections between generative knowing at a personal level and the complex, ambiguous unsolvable challenges in today's society, andto provide illustrations of what generative knowing entails, how it shapes personal and societal transformation and how that may support educators, facilitator activists and change activists to make space for generative knowing when complex challenges call for both personal and societal transformations. Adult education as a field of practice is presently grappling with how adults learn in a world being recomposed by a global pandemic. Generative knowing—defined as ways of being and becoming that creatively activate potential—restores many rhythms of learning, helping readers gain fresh perspectives on how learning emerges from the unknown. The vital and personal stories in this book guide readers to walk in the territory of the unknown and to pay attention to the sensations of entanglements of self with multiple societal forces as a new way of learning. Perfect for courses such as: Adult Learning Theory │ Adult Learning Theory & Praxis │ Adult Development │ Transformative Learning │ Phenomenology │ Narrative Inquiry │ New Materialism │ Creative Research Methodologies

Andragogy may be defined as a scientific discipline for study of the research, theory, processes, technology, practice, and anything else of value and benefit including learning, teaching, instructing, guiding, leading, and modeling/exemplifying a way of life that would help to facilitate and bring adults to their full degree of humaneness. Andragogy is one part of the broader international field of adult education, human resource development, and lifelong learning, thus serving the advancement and connection needs of adult learners, organizational development, and lifelong learning in areas such as higher education, business, military, corporate training, healthcare, executive leadership, courtroom practice, religious life, and human resource development. Facilitating Adult and Organizational Learning Through Andragogy: A History, Philosophy, and Major Themes investigates the history, philosophy, and major themes of andragogy and how they may contribute to helping practitioners to design and facilitate adult and organizational learning. The book presents more than 500 documents that are examined through two different lenses. The first lens is the history and philosophy (or a chronological approach) of andragogy while the second lens takes a look at the major themes as categories of what the documents express. While encompassing the background, uses, and future of andragogy, this book is ideally intended for teachers, administrators, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students.

From the acclaimed coauthor of A Manual for Direct Action comes Facilitating Group Learning, an essential resource designed to help educators, trainers, workshop leaders, and anyone who assists groups to learn. George Lakey presents the core principles and proven techniques of direct education, an approach he developed for effectively teaching adults in groups. To illustrate how it works in action, Lakey includes a wealth of compelling stories from his vast experience facilitating groups in a variety of situations. Direct education cuts through the pretense and needless complications that can distance learners from subject matter. It removes false expectations (for example, that kinesthetic learners will strongly benefit from slide presentations) and false assumptions (for example, that a group is simply the sum of the individuals). This approach focuses the encounter between teacher and group; it replaces scattered attention—of a teacher preoccupied with curriculum and participants preoccupied with distractions—with gathered attention. Unlike in other books on group facilitation, the author emphasizes critical issues related to diversity, as well as authenticity and emotions. Step by step, this groundbreaking book describes how to design effective learning experiences and shows what it takes to facilitate them. Ultimately, it brings all the elements of the author's direct education approach together. Facilitating Group Learning also contains material on sustaining the educator, addresses working with social movements, and includes the Training for Change toolkit of group learning techniques.

Eine kritisch-pragmatistische Theorie eröffnet eine neue Sichtweise auf das breit diskutierte Thema Lernen: Wann wird Lernen für die Lernenden selbst wichtig? Welche Bedeutsamkeit weisen die Lernenden einer Thematik für sich selbst und der daraus resultierenden möglichen erweiterten Handlungsfähigkeit zu? Im Unterschied zur vorherrschenden wissenschaftlichen Perspektive, die nach Bedingungen und Ursachen des Lernens sucht, wird in diesem Buch die Fragerichtung umgekehrt und auf Begründungen durch die Lernenden selbst gerichtet. Anhand empirischer Untersuchungen in Lernwerkstätten geraten dadurch auch Handlungsstrategien bei Lernwiderständen, Lernvermeiden bzw. Nicht-Lernen in den Blick.

Using Hélène Cixous'notion of'l'écriture féminine'as an analogy for transformational learning and an investigative tool, Hoult explores why some adult learners are able to survive and thrive in the education system, despite facing significantly more challenges than the average student.

Now that learning is seen as lifelong and lifewide, what specifically makes a learning context? What are the resultant consequences for teaching practices when working in specific contexts? Drawing upon a variety of academic disciplines, Rethinking Contexts for Learning and Teaching explores some of the different means of understanding teaching and learning, both in and across contexts, the issues they raise and their implications for pedagogy and research. It specifically addresses What constitutes a context for learning? How do we engage the full resources of learners for learning? What are the relationships between different learning contexts? What forms of teaching can most effectively mobilise learning across contexts? How do we methodologically and theoretically conceptualise contexts for learning? Drawing upon practical examples and the UK's TLRP, this book brings together a number of leading researchers to examine the assumptions about context embedded within specific teaching and learning practices. It considers how they might be developed to extend opportunity by drawing upon learning from a range of contexts, including schools, colleges, universities and workplaces.

'The book is written in a lively, engaging, conversational style, without compromising on empirical rigour to substantiate its claims....All practitioners of problem based learning will benefit from the multipronged perspectives on pbl facilitation contained here.'British Journal of Educational TechnologyInterest in problem-based learning continues to flourish worldwide. To date there has been relatively little to help staff to examine the complex issues relating to facilitating the implementation of problem-based learning and the ongoing development of staff, students and the curriculum. This book explores a broad range of issues about facilitation, in particular: understandings of facilitation that have emerged from the author's recent research and ways of equipping and supporting staff in terrestrial and virtual contexts. It also questions how students are assessed and suggests ways of preventing plagiarism in problem-based learning. It examines what it might mean to be an effective facilitator and suggests ways of designing problem-based curricula that enhance learning.

In this updated version of her landmark book Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach, celebrated adult educator Jane Vella revisits her twelve principles of dialogue education with a new theoretical perspective gleaned from the discipline of quantum physics. Vella sees the path to learning as a holistic, integrated, spiritual, and energetic process. She uses engaging, personal stories of her work in a variety of adult learning settings, in different countries and with different educational purposes, to show readers how to utilize the twelve principles in their own practice with any type of adult learner, anywhere.