AJAL Volume 65, Number 3, Special Edition, November 2025

EDITORIAL

Robert Townsend and Jeffrey Bryant Jones

Celebrating 65 Years

Celebrating 65 years of Adult Learning Australia 1960-2025
Jenny Macaffer

Refereed articles

Therapeutic Theatre as a process for the inclusion of students with mild dementia in Adult Community Education courses
Jeffrey Bryant Jones

Performing pedagogy: Exploring the impact of theatre in trauma-informed teacher education
Anne Southall, Juliana Ryan, Siobhan O’Brian and Melissa Giles

Reimagining learning spaces: A call to action for the Schools of Social Work
Ashwathi Muraleedharan and Lizy P.J.

Utilising photovoice to engage critical reflection of field placement experiences among international university students
Shane McDonald, Mary-Anne Wallwork and Lauren Terzis

Transformative journeys beyond schooling: Storytelling and poetic inquiry as catalysts for adult learning in community spaces
Tracey Ollis and Vicky Duckworth

Effects of a creative pedagogy (peer instruction) in promoting learners’ subjective well-being in a seniors’ university in China
Chunlin Yao, Zonglin Dai and Yan Zhang

Curious-creativity and ageing: An Australian conversation crisscrossing lifelong learning
Carol McDonough and Samantha Bews

Creative polygogies: Facilitating transformation through perinatal singing
Georgina Veevers-Williams

Creating value for creatives: Considerations in the design and evaluation of an online professional learning community
Liesel M. Arden and Catherine H. Arden

Beyond the stethoscope: Dance, creativity and the healing arts in medical education
Lucy Mayes

Book reviews

Arts education and creative ageing: Older adults as learners, makers, and teachers of art
– By Melanie Davenport, Linda Hoeptner Poling, Rebecca Bourgault & Majorie Cohee Manifold
Reviewed by Carol McDounogh

Writing with students: New perspectives on collaborative writing in EAP contexts
– By Lucy Macnaugth
Reviewed by Garry Argent

Call for papers

Special Edition: Australian Journal of Adult Learning:

Policy, practice and pedagogy: Adult education in times of decaying capitalism and failed democracy

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Take a look inside the April edition of the Australian Journal of Adult Learning.

Volume 65, Number 1, April 2025

EDITORIAL

Cheryl Ryan and Piper Rodd

Refereed articles

Challenges and opportunities in empowering adult CALD learners: Insights from Australian adult community educators
Anneleis Humphries and Gosia Klatt

Intergenerational learning for active aging amid the pandemic: Chinese immigrant seniors’ online learning in Canada
Yidan Zhu and Weiguo Zhang

Digital poverty, trauma, and education: Reflections from the crisis pivot to online learning
Janine Arentes

COVID-19 and social equity in higher education: Applying a typology of social equity discourses to a complex situation
Ana Larsen and Susan Emmett

Successful reemployment of middle-aged and older adults in Taiwan: A basis of lifelong learning experiences
Ya-Hui Lee and Yi-Fen Weng

Book reviews

Six Peaks speak. Unsettling legacies in Southern Dja Dja Wurrung Country
– By Barry Golding with Clive Willman
Reviewed by Gill Gammage

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Volume 64, Number 3, Special Edition, November 2024

EDITORIAL

Susan Holloway and Patricia Gouthro

Refereed articles

Literacies practitioners resisting human capital theory through values-based approaches
Lyn Tett

Literacies and learning: An exploration into women’s digital literacy practices and sustainable livelihoods in rural Zambia
John Zimba

Encouraging transformative and creative learning in adult literacy education through artistic literacies Karen Magro

Towards affective literacy for adult migrants: A systematic literature review
Carmen Toscano-Fuentes, Analí Fernández-Corbacho & M. Carmen Fonseca-Mora

Critical food literacy: Learning to challenge power in the food system
Jennifer Sumner

Developing critical literacies in US adult education degree programs: What is advertised on university websites?
Petra Robinson & Maja Stojanovic

Adult (multi)literacies for global equity/social justice in challenging times
Kathy Sanford, Bruno de Oliveira Jayme & Tanya Manning- Lewis

Stories of practice

Beyond language barriers: One educator’s tale of nurturing critical literacy success in refugee-background adult learners
Anneleis Humphries, Catherine Smith & Julie Choi

Citizen literacy: A story of changing practice
John Casey & Diane Gardner

Working with learners with (dis)abilities: How New Literacy Studies challenge the Ontario government’s policy focus on employment for adult literacy
Annie Luk, Judy Perry & Phylicia Davis-Wesseling

Book reviews

Literacy in the lives of working-class adults in Australia, dominant versus local voices
– By Stephen Black
Reviewed by Trace Ollis

AJAL EDITOR – EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

CALL FOR PAPERS

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Editorial

Refereed articles

The experiences of an online academic advising approach supporting adult learners transition into an enabling program preparing them for university Mary McGovern, Russell Crank and Orie Green

Bessie Harrison Lee’s fight for Victorian Women’s Suffrage in the late nineteenth century: educating rural and urban women on the democratic process Jennifer Caligari 

Adult, community education in acting and performance as personal development: “I can look people in the eye now” Rob Townsend and Jeffrey Bryant Jones

Perceptions of adult learners with visual impairment throughout COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for institutional assistance in Eswatini Nomazulu Ngozwana 

From practice

Supporting diverse learner needs: A case study using the 8 Ways of Aboriginal Learning Rachel Leigh Taylor

Book reviews

Making connections: A selection of writings 1983 – 2009 – By Delia Bradshaw Reviewed by Ursula Harrison

Adult language education and migration: Challenging agendas in policy and practice – By James Simpson and Anne Whiteside (Eds.) Reviewed by Kenneth Charles Lambo

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Volume 64, Number 1, April 2024

EDITORIAL

Trace Ollis

Refereed articles

Multimodal adult learning through arts-based organisations
Susan M. Holloway and Patricia A. Gouthro

Recognising the Budj Bim cultural landscape as World Heritage: How a socio-material approach bridged the tangible-intangible heritage gap
Tony Brown 

PD: a professional deterrence? The financial cost and time commitment of professional development for VET practitioners in Western Australia
Christopher Ward and Piper Rodd

Running head: Empowering Saudi women through vocational skills
Sarah M. Alajlan and Obaidalah H. Aljohani

Supporting students who are parents to succeed in Australian higher education
Giovanna Szalkowicz and Lisa Andrewartha

FROM PRACTICE

Advising senior management leaders on the doctoral research journey by applying traditional adult learning practices for industry contexts
Barry Elsey

Book reviews

Online teaching and learning in higher education during COVID-19
– By Roy Chan, Krishna Bista and Ryan Allen
Reviewed by Lei Xia

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Volume 63, Number 3, November 2023

Editorial

Cheryl Ryan and Stephen Billett

Refereed articles

Analysing work and life course learning under capitalism using a mind in political economy approach
Peter Sawchuck

Workplace practices that support learning across working life
Sarojni Choy and Anh Hai Le

Promoting student readiness for work-life through internships: Challenges and support
Natasha Tan, Chue Shien, Cheryl Ong and Stephen Billett

Social participation, altruism and learning opportunism: A phenomenography of adults’ learning through workplace experiences in rural community volunteering
Catherine Arden

Adult learners in police and technology work in Finland: Andragogical features behind learning at work
Soila Lemmetty, Kaisu Hämäläinen and Kaija Collin

Vocational learning of incident commanders in tunnel fire safety work
Gabriela Bjørnsen and Ove Njå

Specialists’ views on feedback at the medical workplace
Helen Jossberger and Miriama Schlachtová

The experiences of doctoral students working in university settings
Emine Karaduman, Rukiye Bektas and Ozlem Unluhisarcikli

Exploring the effects of working practice in cultivating Chinese university teachers’ professional identity
Chunlin Yao and Jie Yang

Book reviews

Map it: The hands-on guide to strategic training design – By Cathy Moore
Reviewed by Lexi Keeton

Call for Papers

Power, policies, and practices in adult literacies
Abstracts due: February 1, 2024 – Papers due:  May 15, 2024

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Context

In recent years, the importance of adult learning education focused on climate justice has gained momentum in Australia and the world. In Australia, we have seen the impact of climate disruption with more frequent catastrophic weather events such as floods and fires contributing to the displacement of people from housing and local communities and the subsequent effects on the environment and non-human species. In 2021, the Australian Journal of Adult Learning (AJAL) engaged prominent researchers in this area, Associate Professor Hilary Whitehouse and Professor Bob Stevenson to edit a special edition focusing on climate justice education and how adult learning education is currently responding to the call for action on climate change. As they noted in their editorial … “In her recent book Humanity’s Moment, Australian scientist Joëlle Gergis (2022), a lead author of the 2022 Sixth IPCC Report, documents the overwhelming scientific evidence of a rapidly worsening ecological crisis” (Whitehouse and Stevenson, 2022). The special edition of AJAL highlights research and scholarship from Australia and a South African-led international collaboration responding to the impact of climate change, from issues related to popular education and social movement activism on climate change to affective dimensions of grappling with the social trauma of the climate crisis and the need for an emergent curriculum on climate justice education for educators and activists. The special edition includes practice-based papers on teaching climate justice in the classroom and working with discomfort and emotions using pedagogies that engage students and teachers in dialogue on climate justice.

Purpose

The seminar aims to bring adult educators together to engage on matters of climate justice education and to hear about current scholarship and practices from the authors of the special edition.

Facilitators
Hilary Whitehouse, Associate Professor, James Cook University

Robert B. Stevenson, Adjunct Professor, James Cook University

Keynote

Shirley Walters is Professor Emerita of adult and continuing education at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

She is an African ecofeminist popular educator, activist and scholar. She was founding director of the Centre for Adult and Continuing Education (CACE) and Division for Lifelong Learning (DLL) at UWC over 35 years. She has been active within justice oriented civil society organisations and movements for over 40 years both locally and globally. She is President of the international network, PIMA, which has climate justice education as a critical focus area.

Panelists

Annette Gough OAM is professor emerita of science and environmental education in the School of Education at RMIT University. She has been writing, researching and teaching environmental education since conducting Australia’s first needs for environmental education survey for the national Curriculum Development Centre in 1974. She was the first female president of the Australian Association for Environmental Education (1984-1986) and was made life fellow in 1992. Her publications include Environmental Education Teachers’ Handbook (Longman Cheshire, 1978), Education and the Environment: Policy, Trends and the Problems of Marginalisation (ACER, 1997), Green Schools Globally (Springer, 2020), and numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Dr Larraine J. Larri is a Cairns Institute Research Fellow at James Cook University and an activist, researcher, and program evaluation expert specialising in environmental adult education and citizenship. Dr Larri publishes work from her doctoral studies on adult social movement learning (ASML) within the Australian Knitting Nannas environmental activist movement. This transdisciplinary research drew on gender, critical feminist educational gerontology, environmental climate activism, new and traditional media, and craftivism. In her post-doctoral work, Dr Larri supports and investigates community resilience, recovery, and adaptation in the face of climate change challenges.

Dr Tania Leimbach is Research Associate in the Climate-Society Environment Research Centre, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney. She is a transdisciplinary academic with research interests spanning climate change education, environmental communication, climate psychology, science and technology studies (STS) and social movement theory.

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Volume 63, Number 2, July 2023

Editorial

Trace Ollis

Refereed articles

Why some homogeneous adult learning groups may be necessary for encouraging diversity: A theory of conditional social equality
Helene Ahl, Joel Hedegaard and Barry Golding

Post-school dilemmas in diminished society: Workingclass mothers’ perspectives of choices and realities in their communities
Piper Rodd and Kerrie Sanders

Doing and supervising China Studies PhD projects in Australia: Experinces of Chinese PhD students and Australian supervisors
Jian Xu and Wai-wan Vivien Chan

Self-authored motivations of US adult basic education English learners
Jennifer Ouellette-Schramm

Cultural participation patterns of prospective teachers in the context of informal learning
Peri Tutar

Book reviews

Transformative teaching and learning in further education: Pedagogies of hope and social justice – By Rob Smith and Vicky Duckworth
Reviewed by Margaret Malloch

Online teaching and learning in higher education during COVID-19 – By Roy Chan, Krishna Bista and Ryan Allen
Reviewed by Lei Xia

Online Forum

Adult learning education on climate justice
Wednesday, 20 September 2023

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Volume 63, Number 1, April 2023

Editorial
Trace Ollis

Refereed articles

Whack-a-Mole?: Ecologies of young adults with intellectual disabilities as they transition from school to open employment
Donna Rooney and Kirsty Young

Travelling in time via narration: Three types of biographical learning
Katarína Rozvadská

Learning in multicultural workspaces
Robert Godby

Adult immigration learners’ perspectives of their language experience
Merih Ugurel Kamisli

Book review

Shoulder to shoulder: Broadening the Men’s Shed movement – By Barry Golding
Reviewed by Ursula Harrison

Online Forum

Adult learning education on climate justice
Wednesday, 20 September 2023

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Volume 62, Number 2, July 2022

• Editorial
  Trace Ollis

Refereed articles

• Common sense and police practice: It goes without saying
  Cheryl Ryan
• First-year university retention and academic performance of nontraditional students entering via an Australian pre-university enabling program
  Joanne G. Lisciandro
• Survival narratives from single mothers in an enabling program: ‘Just hope you don’t get sick and live off caffeine’
  Anne Braund, Trixie James, Katrina Johnston and Louise Mullaney
• COVID–19 the Catalyst for a new paradigm in vocational education and training
  Susan Bandias, Rajeev Sharma and Alana Anderson
• The role of Learning Neighborhood Programme in achieving the necessary life skills for adult learners in Saudi Arabia to confront the COVID-19 crisis
  Obaidalah Aljohani and Sarah M. Alajlan

Book review

• Out of the ruins: The emergence of radical informal learning spaces –   by Robert H Haworth & John M Elmore (editors).
  Reviewed by Meaghan O’Brien

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