MA in Adult Learning and Global Change

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• Start: August 2022
• Place of study: Distance
• Level: Second cycle

Governments all over the world are urging citizens to train and educate themselves in order to stay competitive in a connected world. Critical discourses on globalization require the ability to learn in situations that span vast cultural and geographic divides. Our program is for those who wish to understand adult learning in the framework of global change within a unique digital learning format that has won international acclaim.

Online learning and master thesis

This master’s program enhances students’ ability to work in a globalizing world and to challenge the traditional perspectives on globalization. Our program is an equal collaboration with universities in Canada and South Africa. All course activities will be done within a digital learning platform, where you will learn together with students from the partner universities in a global class, making the program truly international. The courses contain topics such as locating oneself in global learning, adult learning: contexts and perspectives, global/local learning, and understanding research.

Our graduates are able to learn and teach globally, use global connective technologies, understand knowledge-based societies and their implications for learning, understand globalization discourses, develop cultural sensibilities and sensitivities and develop an equality perspective for learning and reframing their own professional practices. They may also continue their academic careers in further projects.

The program won the 2005 Curriculum Innovation Award, awarded by the Commission of Professors of Adult Education of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education, and also The e-Learning Excellence Award(2015) at the 14th European Conference on E-learning, held at Hertfordshire University, UK.

Selection will be based on academic grades and a Letter of Intent. The applicant should submit a Letter of Intent written in English, explaining why they want to study this program (about 1000 words). The letter should include a summary of the bachelor essay/project and a description of academic studies and work experience relevant to adult learning.

lilartsy / pexels

Syllabus

This program is designed to enhance practitioners' ability to work in the globalizing world and to challenge the traditional perspectives of globalization. It will do this by developing a critical perspective on globalization and reflective and strategic practice. The characteristic feature of the program will be a dialectic between students' personal experience and the conceptual resources of the program. This means that the bodies of perspectives and theories, including many areas including the field of adult education, with which students will be brought into contact.

There is an emergent field of practice that concerns a global phenomenon; the learning dimension of practitioners and the way practitioners act on and construct their different contexts. This diverse group of practitioners faces new challenges, which accompany the accelerating globalization of the economy, society, and culture. The impact of globalization could be described in terms of economic shifts, in terms of new forms for communications and networking, the use of new technologies, working across differences, etc. These challenges also include demands for greater effectiveness and productivity and the complexities of furthering social justice and equity.

The contexts of learning are changing in response to globalization and practitioners in different areas will face the impact of this. The learning dimension will become an important feature for many practitioners. Instability and change will be characteristic and constitute the incentives to look for new perspectives in order to cope with the unknown. The skills and qualities needed will be networking skills, the ability to work with people from other cultures. Another dimension is also to be able to work from a distance, handle new communication forms, and promote virtual communities.

Adults learn in a diverse field of practice, with many specialisms; human resource development, health care education, community-based adult education, vocational education, basic education, etc. Practitioners also perform a variety of roles, they are teachers, administrators, policymakers, facilitators of organizational learning, and so forth. Other practitioners, e.g. managers, lawyers, and engineers, also have a learning dimension to their work. They learn and teach in their daily practice, often informally and incidentally.

Purpose

The aim is to provide a high-quality Master’s degree in Adult Learning, which in both content and process gives students an insight into globalization and cross-cultural collaboration. The program should also enhance the understanding of different contexts and provide the experience of working in a variety of study modes.

Aim

Knowledge and understanding

• to encourage understanding of commonalities and differences across different contexts for adult learning.
• to understand knowledge-based societies and the implications for learning.
• to develop an understanding of the globalization discourses.
• to appreciate the historical context of present developments and link these to one’s own sites of practice.
• to challenge orthodoxies in adult learning theory and practice.

Skills and abilities

• to learn to use teaching and learning technologies globally.
• to learn how to learn and work globally.

Values and attitudes

• to develop cultural sensibilities and sensitivities.
• to adopt a multifaceted equity perspective on all issues of learning.
• to engage in the reframing of one’s own professional practice.
• to create networks of relationships across countries and help establish a global community of adult learning practitioners.