Adult Education Department

This course provides an introduction to the scope, foundations, and practices of lifelong learning and adult education in Canada. Students will be able to identify and examine the uniquely critically oriented adult education traditions in Canada through conceptual definitions, education settings, historical movements, and social contexts. In addition to developing an understanding of the field, students will have the opportunity to explore their personal and professional relationships to adult education and lifelong learning, with application for their own practice, and gain insight into current and emerging trends in adult education and lifelong learning. Credit will be granted for only one ADED 535, ADED 500 or ADED 505. Three credits.

The intent of the course is to introduce students to key concepts and processes of lifelong continuing professional education (CPE). The history of CPE, emergent critical debates (professional identity and professionalism, issues of collaboration, authenticity, power, ethics and leadership, etc.) and best practices in CPE (critically reflective practices, communities of practice, mentoring etc.) will be examined. Future trends and emergent formats such as virtual technology and networking will be explored. Credit will be granted for only one of ADED 550 or ADED 510. Three credits.

Learners will engage with academic research through a guided, purposeful approach so as to enhance both learner confidence and ability to understand peer-reviewed scholarship in the field of adult education. Learners will develop techniques to analyze and critique published research that applies directly to learners’ professional life. The course will guide the learner through the process of research with a “consumer’s” focus, preparing the learner to discern and utilize research in their own practice. The completion of a critical analysis of research studies is a requirement of this course. Credit will be granted for only one of ADED 565 or ADED 520. Three credits.

This course explores the ways in which adult education and critical pedagogies inform the values, approaches, and methods of critically reflective practices. Through a combination of critical pedagogies and social justice movements from individual and social perspectives, students will gain familiarity with reflective practices across various contexts. Narrative construction, reflection on action, critical incidents, and emerging applications will be investigated in order to generate critical perspectives that shape reflective practice and allow adults to evaluate their lifelong learning. The completion of a professional portfolio is a requirement of this course. Credit will be granted for only one of ADED 570 or ADED 530. Three credits.

Exploring collective learning for social and economic progress, this course identifies historical and contemporary examples of adult education and community development. Learners in this course examine pedagogical theories and development practice; and assets, barriers, and strategies for inclusive and culturally responsive collective learning for development practice and movements. Critical perspectives illuminate historical and contemporary ways that citizens, popular education, digital technologies, and equity function, intersect and evolve in learning for and in community development. Three credits.

Arts-based methodologies/pedagogies provide communicative practices that allow inclusion of diversity for a vibrant pluralistic democracy. They foster critical thinking, offer means for expression, provide opportunities for citizens to listen and reflect on various perspectives, and promote community engagement. The arts provide avenues for exposing problems and outlining possibilities, release the imagination, expand vision, act as bridges between differences, and support resilience. Arts-based methodologies pedagogies are used in teaching and research (data collection and representation of findings). Three credits.