Dialogues at Noon: Professor Dianne Ramdeholl Discusses Doctoral Education as a Practice of Adult Education

Master of Arts in Adult Learning Mentor and Assistant Professor Dianne Ramdeholl has co-edited, along with Tom Heaney, a new volume of New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education (Fall 2015, Jossey Bass) titled "Reimaging Doctoral Education as a Practice of Adult Education."

She will discuss the contents of the book as part of the college’s series “Dialogues at Noon,” with Robert Carey, a mentor and professor in Historical Studies and Michael Merrill, dean of the college’s Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies.

The discussion takes place in room 320 at the college’s Manhattan location, 325 Hudson Street, and will be streamed live via the Internet on ESC-TV, from noon to 1 p.m., Friday, Nov. 13.

Ramdeholl has also authored a chapter in this volume. In this collection, Ramdeholl and her co-editor look at graduate education, specifically doctoral programs, through the lens of adult education practice. Building on principles of adult learning, each chapter author provides examples of what doctoral programs could look like through incorporating best practices in adult education.

In one of the chapters, renowned adult educator Stephen Brookfield writes about utilizing critical reflection strategies as a way to better understand power and nurture individual and collective agency among doctoral students. In another chapter, Jaye Jones analyzes the literature on embodied education and its implications for groups that have been historically marginalized by academia. In their chapter, Aziz Choudry, at McGill University, and one of his doctoral students discuss dilemmas and contradictions between the academy and activist learning, offering recommendations for doctoral education that preserve emancipatory spaces. The volume will be of interest to doctoral faculty and students in a range of disciplines, but especially adult education.

This is the third volume in the New Directions series that Ramdeholl has edited. The other two volumes are "The Struggle for Democracy in Adult Education" (Winter 2010) and "Decentering the Ivory Tower of Academia" (Fall 2013).