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The questions that begin Stephen Brookfield's discussion of why he thinks white instructors in multiracial Adult Basic Education (ABE) classes need to explore their own whiteness include the following: (1) If racial identity is largely a cultural, not biological, construct, then why focus on "any" form of racial markers?; and (2) Doesn't this constant harping on race create unnecessary divisions and stop us all from getting along? Brookfield claims that it is not talking about race that disrupts social harmony but rather it's the fact that whiteness as an identity is connected to power in a way that a learned blindness to racial inequality helps maintain a system that exhibits structural exclusion and normalizes brutality. Brookfield maintains that he has been struck over the years by the fact that people of color tell him that the most helpful thing whites can do in terms of fighting racism is to become aware of what it means to be white. They tell him that it is much more important for whites to learn that they have a particular racial identity, and to examine how that identity operates in the world, than it is for them to learn about the cultures of racial minorities. Brookfield shares his observation that in a multiracial classroom; it seems to him that culturally responsive teaching that varies instructional modalities to take account of collective modes of generating knowledge is crucial. He therefore supports the point that if students of color see everything through a racial lens, then it behooves a white teacher to explore what it means to experience the world as profoundly racialized. Brookfield closes the article by saying that the only way he can experience the world as racialized is by doing a deep dive into his own racial identity and that is why he believes white instructors need to explore their own whiteness. [This article is part 1 of 4 in this series.]

In his rejoinder, Stephen Brookfield, responds to Edith Gnanadass and Shantih E. Clemans for their critiques of his article, "Why White Instructors Should Explore Their White Racial Identity"(EJ1246146). Brookfield thanks his two colleagues for engaging so passionately and accurately with his work and for problematizing all the omissions and blindlesses he carries. Brookfield describes their critiques as "spot on," and makes the observation that they add nuance and context to his analysis. He notes that he loves how the two critiques illustrate why questions of identity are best addressed in conversations between those representing as much intersectionality as can be arranged. [For Part 3, "Response to Stephen D. Brookfield's 'Why White Instructors Should Explore Their White Racial Identity.' Forum: Reflections on White Racial Identity in the ABE Classroom," see EJ1246148.]

This article focuses on the use of "narrative disclosure" as a pedagogical strategy whose goal is to respond critically to and challenge the ideology of White supremacy.

Since embarking on his educational journey in 1970, Professor Stephen Brookfield has worked across various international settings, including England, Canada, Australia, and the United States. His experience spans a diverse range of environments, from adult and community education to prestigious higher education institutions like Harvard University and Columbia University. Central to his mission is aiding adults in critically examining prevailing ideologies they have absorbed. To advance this goal, Professor Brookfield has authored, co-authored, or edited 21 books encompassing topics such as adult learning, teaching methodologies, critical thinking, discussion techniques, critical theory, and anti-racist teaching. Expanding upon our previous dialogues with Stephen Brookfield in the Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching (Brookfield et al., 2019, 2022) and complementing the reviews of his recent publications (Rudolph, 2019, 2020, 2022; Waring, 2024), this interview delves deeper into the themes explored in our recent book on Teaching well (Brookfield et al., 2024). This extensive conversation significantly elaborates on Chapter 9 of the book (Brookfield et al., 2024) and investigates the intricate, emotionally charged, and political project of teaching about race. In this expansive discussion, we explore Stephen Brookfield's personal evolution from harbouring racist beliefs in his youth to embracing and contributing to Critical Race Theory (CRT), a journey marked by a decade of introspection and scholarly exploration, culminating in several key publications (Sheared et al., 2010; Brookfield & Associates, 2018; Brookfield & Hess, 2021). The conversation illuminates fundamental concepts such as race, racism, and white supremacy, recontextualising racism as a systemic issue rather than an individual failing. Racism is depersonalised and an endemic system of exclusion. We discuss it in the context of an intersectional analysis that acknowledges the interconnectedness of various forms of oppression, including classism, sexism, and ableism. A significant focus is placed on racism within the higher education sector. Brookfield shares insights from his extensive experience in conducting antiracist workshops for students, faculty, and organisations. He challenges the notion of the 'good white people' and advocates for a continuous, imperfect journey towards antiracism, where 'failing well' can be regarded as a good outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter considers how doctoral education, particularly in applied settings such as education, social work, counseling, and health care, could be reimagined if it was organized around the idea and process of critical reflection: of helping students to better understand how power operates in educational environments and how students' sense of individual and collective agency can be developed.

Instructors can incorporate social media and the immediacy and accessibility to information these offer in ways that support student learning, while simultaneously encouraging students to be critical of these same media systems and platforms.

Anti-racist pedagogy typically focuses on helping learners identify and counter racist ideas and actions they detect in themselves and others. Sympathetically and skillfully, the leader of this activity is charged with helping people detect subtle racism as evident in racial micro-aggressions and aversive racism. This pedagogic process is crucial and valuable, but risks avoiding a powerful dynamic of how educators can use their own personal, autobiographical experience to model how they themselves struggle to detect and immobilize (as much as that is possible) racist instincts in themselves. If racism is understood as a learned ideology, then it is reasonable to expect that even adult educators committed to dismantling racism have internalized aspects of this ideology. Instead of trying to purge themselves of these, conceal, or damp them down, an alternative educational approach is to make these racist inclinations public and to engage learners in a consideration of how to recognize and challenge these.

Herbert Marcuse's concept of repressive tolerance argues that behind the justification of tolerance lies the possibility of ideological domination. Tolerance allows intolerable practices to go unchallenged and flattens discussion to assume all viewpoints have equal validity. When alternative, dissenting views are inserted into the curriculum dominant ideology means they are always positioned as the "other" in relation to the mainstream. This article takes Marcuse's concept and applies it to a number of familiar adult educational practices and concerns. It considers how Marcuse's contrasting notion of liberating tolerance might be manifest in adult education.

Adult education scholarship has been racialized through the lens of Eurocentric theory and research. Theoretical paradigms such as Africentrism struggle to gain academic legitimacy as discourses of transformative learning, critical thinking and self-direction--all grounded in the European Enlightenment tradition of the individual pursuit of rational self-knowledge--hold sway. This article reviews the way that repressive tolerance serves to broaden the field of adult education by including racially based perspectives on adult learning, yet simultaneously ensures that they are always seen as an exotic alternative to what is clearly the mainstream Eurocentric perspective. It reviews the way that discourses of criticality can be reinterpreted from the perspective of the African American lifeworld and explores in detail the work of Lucius T. Outlaw Jr. and Cornel West. Both scholars draw partly from the tradition of European critical theory in their attempts to use its central analytical categories (such as alienation, lifeworld, objectification and hegemony) to understand the African American experience. The piece ends with a consideration of how the dominant Eurocentric perspective in adult education can be critiques and challenged.

Empowering learners and using powerful techniques are prominent elements in the discourse of adult and vocational education. But what constitutes the elements of what might be considered as powerful teaching? This paper begins by examining the way educators talk about power and then proposes four elements that lie at the heart of powerful teaching; understanding how power dynamics intersect with adult educational approaches, supporting empowerment, helping learners understand how power works, and rendering teacher power transparent. The paper uses the work of Baptiste, Marcuse and Hooks to explore some of the problems involved in adult teachers attempting to work in the democratic manner endorsed by the adult education tradition. It concludes by acknowledging the practical and ontological contradictions of teachers trying to balance their prescriptive agendas with a learner-centered approach.

This article reviews the core process of critical thinking--hunting assumptions--and explains how this process differs according to the context of what is being taught and the different intellectual traditions that inform teachers' own backgrounds. It outlines a basic protocol of critical thinking as a learning process that focuses on uncovering and checking assumptions, exploring alternative perspectives, and taking informed actions as a result. Three different categories of assumptions--paradigmatic, prescriptive, and causal--are defined, and the teaching methods and approaches that most help students to think critically are explored. The article examines in detail the fact that critical thinking is best experienced as a social learning process, and how important it is for teachers to model the process for students.

In this paper the authors wish to examine kinesthetic forms of learning involving the body and the physical realm. The authors look at two particular techniques; using Legos to build metaphorical models and living the physical experience of metaphors in the shape of labyrinth-walking and its attendant activities. The authors begin by discussing their experiences using LEGO building bricks as a reflective tool. While LEGO lends itself particularly effectively to metaphorical modeling (not least through its status as a globally known iconic toy and connection to childhood) the process can take place using any set of objects that are used to represent something other than their real nature. This will be apparent to anyone who has sat at in a restaurant and used the salt and pepper cellars to describe a relationship, car maneuver, choice between two options, altercation or offside rule in Soccer. Buttons, sticks, candles, pots, peas, matches, or any other assortment of items which the user finds sufficiently rich to embody their ideas and convey their intentions work just as well. The point is that the user assigns specific meanings to the materials to illustrate some sort of process or relationship.

Critical theory is one of the most influential theoretical frameworks influencing scholarship within the field of adult and community education. This chapter outlines what constitute the chief elements of critical theory using Horkheimer's (1937/1995) classic essay as a touchstone for this analysis. It argues for a set of adult learning tasks that are embedded in this analysis and that apply both to formal adult education settings and informal learning projects carried out in communities. Future likely trends are the extension of critical theory's unit of analysis to include race, class, gender, disability, and sexual identity, and critical analysis of digital technologies.

The U.S. government's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that in any given year, 14.8 million American adults (about 6.7 percent of the adult population) suffer from clinical depression or major depressive disorder, as it is sometimes called (NIMH, n.d.). In Canada, a recent study projected the estimate of sufferers much higher than had previously been imagined, calculating that 19.7 percent of adults suffer from clinical depression sometime during their lifetime (Boughton, 2009). The NIMH also classifies clinical depression as the leading form of disability for Americans ages 15 to 44. Depression is not feeling sad at the loss of a loved one; it is not being devastated by a marriage breakup or feeling a loss of identity after being fired. Neither is it feeling trapped by winter in northern climes with the resultant lack of natural light or sun. All these things are traumatic and distressing, but all are traceable to a specific root cause. In this article, the author defines depression as the persistent feeling of complete worthlessness and hopelessness, often accompanied by the overwhelming anxiety that this hour, this day, or this week will be one's last on earth. This kind of depression has no clearly identifiable social cause, such as death, divorce, or economic crisis; instead, it settles on a person uninvited, and often completely unexpected, and permeates the soul, flesh, and bone. The author uses his own experience of learning to understand and cope with depression as the starting point for an analysis of what might comprise a research agenda for anyone interested in exploring the adult learning dimensions of depression. The numbers quoted at the start of this article indicate that learning how to live with, and treat, depression must be considered a massive societal adult learning task. Such a task comprises two dimensions: requiring (1) adults to learn how to recognize, monitor, and cope with such depression; and (2) adult educators to provide education about this condition. The author explores the first of these dimensions: how adults learn to deal with the onset of depression. In doing so, he marries some prevailing paradigms in adult education to an autoethnography of clinical depression.