Lights, Camera, Andragogy! Adult Learning and Development in Film

This article will examine specific films that portray events or phenomena of adult learning and development, and how adult learning and development can be explored by studying the lives of the fictional characters in film. It will demonstrate how the use of contemporary film by adult educators and adult learners can enhance insights about people, about life’s dilemmas, and about the growth and development in adulthood. To teach adults successfully, methods and techniques must be adapted to their skills and environments. Despite genre or popularity, film has the opportunity to tell a story and/or be a real-life recording. Film provides another strategy of telling stories to help adult educators and adult learners have further reflection, insights, emotional reactions, and enhance various life experiences and stages of development. Learners can use film to better understand narratives outside of their own and develop alternative interpretations, and film can also be used to observe social phenomena in a noninvasive way. The films discussed in the article were chosen by the author to draw the attention to examples of various aspects of adult learning and development.