Collaborative, Comparative Inquiry and Transformative Cross-Cultural Adult Learning and Teaching

Abstract

Intentionally designing international perspectives into adult educator preparation programs is a step toward developing instructors’ social and instructional cache of understandings about learning, knowledge, and facilitative methodologies that transcend their own Western cultural influences. In a class offered through an MA in adult learning and teaching program at a large Southwestern university, students examined their personal perceptions about adult education and investigated adult learning and knowing in international settings. Through symbolic convergence and narrative analyses, the research found that the use of a collaborative, comparative inquiry framework indicated an initial Western educational metanarrative. Throughout the course, the framework also provided a cognitive and emotional scaffold to underpin the social nature of transformative learning and to inspire a global educational vision.