Understanding Adult Learning

Developing new understandings of adult learning through empirical studies has now become one of the important trends in adult education academy. This research takes "adult learning" as the point of departure and focused on social workers, the newly developed profession in China. It choose three social workers in shanghai as research collaborators, interpreting their texts through in-depth interpretation. Through in-depth theoretical understanding of these texts, this dissertation reveals the facilitating or blocking factors to adult learning, including objective realistic aspect and subjective agent aspect, illustrates the inner psychological dynamic mechanism of adult learning, summaries the life motif of three social workers, and develops a new understanding of adult learning based on these results, putting forward a "profession-oriented adult learning process theory".Based on its inner logic, the dissertation is divided in three parts including eight chapters: Part I is Introduction (Research Foundation), Part II is Interpretation (Case Analysis), and Part III is Reflection (Research Finding).Part I is the guiding part of the whole research. In Chapter 1, the author illuminates the research topic, academic aspiration, and research background, forming the basic conception of this research. In Chapter 2, the author introduces his theoretical work, that is, the three dimensions of adult learning and the conceptual framework of adult learning. Meanwhile, the author introduces the project design and research process in Chapter 3. These three chapters together form the introductory basis of Part II. Particularly, through relevant literature review of new update on adult learning theory and life history approach, the author puts forward the basic thesis of adult learning: adult learning is the personal development in social practice and sets his two core interpretation frameworks: one is "agency-social practice" problem, and the other is "identity-life motif problem.The Chapter 4, 5, 6 belong to Part II Interpretation (Case Analysis). It originates from the self-narrative texts of three social workers. According to the readable principle, the author makes relevant choice and deletion towards the texts which is up to 100,000 words, finally presenting three independent stories: Fan, Ya, Ai. In the first section of each chapter, the stories are presented in the form of "dialogue", and introduces the background information of each informants based on their self-narratives in a chronological order. And in the second section of each chapter, the author interprets each story according to the two core research goals based on his theoretical contribution, including analysis on "agency-social practice" problem and psychoanalysis on "identity-life motif problem. Worth to mention, applying psychoanalysis as a basic tool in three case analyses thoroughly is a major characteristic of this research relative to other qualitative research.The last two chapter form Part III Reflection (Research Finding) together. Based on the interpretation of each case, the author sums up and upgrades the conclusion, forming the most important research finding of this research: a "profession-oriented adult learning process theory", enriching and developing his theoretical thought in Chapter 2. In Chapter 8, the author presents critical reviews and reflections upon the methodology of this research, promoting it to a disciplinary developmental level and demonstrating the rationality of this research through the discussion of the developmental trend of qualitative research.