Generative Knowing

"Drawing on lived personal experience, Nicolaides (Univ. of Georgia) presents a new paradigm for a transformational learning approach in adult learning theory. While citing many adult learning theories, theorists, and writers, she relies primarily on John Dewey, Jack Mezirow, and Gilles Deleuze. As director of the International Transformative Learning Association, Nicolaides is highly qualified to write on this topic, and her approach is very appropriate for the current adult learning environment. She has produced an important contribution to present-day adult learning theory and practice, appropriate for the fast and ever-changing adult learning environment. Most chapters contain a reference section, and the end of the book has a very useful index. This well-written and very lucid book will benefit scholars working on adult learning, adult education, and the philosophy of adult learning, as it speaks to the future of adult learning theory and practice. Graduate students in these areas will especially benefit from reading this short book's very direct, useful, and helpful insights. Ultimately, this is a valuable study for those involved in adult learning theory analysis and development."

W. C. Hine, emeritus, Eastern Illinois University for CHOICE, May 2023, Vol. 60, No. 9

“With cascading words, images, stories and meanings, and courageous vulnerability, Nicolaides weaves a phenomenological and DeLeuzian portrait of generative knowing that is both generative and phenomenal. The artistic use of language and story to look at how we come to know in the face of unprecedented complexity and ambiguity brings poetry to scholarship. Scholars of adult learning will recognize the power of this contribution to evolving adult learning theory. This book will be a classic among adult learning scholars.”

Karen E. Watkins, Professor Learning, Leadership and Organizational Development, The University of Georgia

“Overwhelmed and frequently shocked by the complexity, turbulence, and velocity of our lived experience today, haven’t we all stopped to wonder, how will we find a constructive way forward? Nicolaides’ stunning contribution to the field is an invitation to feel our way forward by growing new senses and new sensibilities. Generative Knowing is not an easy quick fix, but it is a summons to discover 'the door in every moment' to try something new, in our ways of being, relating, our ways of leading, and organizing ourselves. Reading it, I feel grounded and yet hopeful for what is waiting to emerge through us and our collective action.”

Rev. David C. McCallum, S.J., Ed.D, Executive Director, Program for Discerning Leadership

“Aliki Nicolaides’ masterpiece, Generative Knowing: Principles, Methods and Dispositions of an Emerging Adult Learning Theory, itself emerges from her own, her mother’s and her father’s lifetimes of literal nomadic experiences, yanking them from their Greek-Palestinian roots, to decades in Singapore, and then more decades in the U.S. Through painful revelations, she illustrates a theory and practice of nomadic learning for generative knowing. This practice cuts below the fog of cultural assumptions and traumatic forgetfulness—below learning for doing and learning for knowing—to learning for being and becoming. As our global society roller coasters toward rapidly increasing refugee dislocations, as well as pandemic, climatological, political, and economic disruptions, Nicolaides’ approach to learning will resonate for more and more of us.”

William R. Torbert, Leadership Professor Emeritus, Boston College, Author of "Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science"

“Aliki takes the conversation on adult learning to a much-needed new level. In reading this book one has an opportunity for understanding learning from a different perspective and to reflect on one’s own potential for insights drawn from one’s unawareness of how learning is influenced at the subconscious level. Based on a foundation of philosophies, multiple ontologies, and rich descriptions of Aliki’s personal experiences, this book provides a way into learning from experience existing beneath one’s awareness. I believe Generative Knowing is a necessary read for adult learning professionals and others as we enter an age of increasing ambiguity.”

Dr. Lyle Yorks, Professor Emeritus, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York

“A brilliant illustration through personal biography of articulating the intra-connectedness of reality in experience heretofore communicable largely via presentational knowing. An enactment of Eliot’s poignant, ‘The trilling wire in the blood/Sings below inveterate scars’—embracing ambiguity, pushing beyond the limits of a quest for certainty!”

Victoria J. Marsick, Ph.D., Academic Director, Adult Learning & Leadership, Department of Organization & Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University

“The deceptive simplicity of ordinary words is harnessed by Aliki Nicolaides in this fascinating book in which she weaves a rich tapestry of adult learning theory. Through the variety of the warp and weft, a story emerges that gives full expression to the possibilities of adult learning. From East to West and through rich life experiences each strand is given its moment to shine and dance to become in the book a colourful woven tapestry of lifelong learning – eloquent, insightful, and unique.”

Dr. Ted Fleming, Associate Professor, Maynouth University, National University of Ireland, Maynouth

“This remarkable book is a call to action for the field of adult learning. Dr. Nicolaides models a response to this challenge by developing a robust theory of ‘generative knowing as ways of being and becoming, actualizing potential creatively by poking fissures of light in the territory beneath living experience’. These fissures of light that she sheds on her own personal and family histories beautifully illuminate the entanglement of phenomenology, new materialisms, and embodied learning. Through this journey she beautifully and convincingly constructs a ‘nomadic theory of adult learning’ - a way forward during these chaotic, ambiguous times toward more inclusive and just futures.”

Dr. Trena Paulus, Professor, Qualitative Methodologist & Research Technologist, East Tennessee State, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA

“Generative knowing is an appropriate conceptualization of adult learning for the 21st century, where we face many levels of individual and social complexity as well as the increasing ambiguity the global pandemic introduced and its ongoing impact on society, learning, and work.”

Elizabeth A. Roumell, PhD, Texas A&M University (Review excerpt from Teachers College Record, July 2023)

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Prologue

1. Generative Knowing: A Nomadic Theory of Adult Learning

2. A Brief Review of Adult Learning Theory

3. Following the Phenomenon in Phenomenological Research

4. Luminous Darkness

5. A Single Story is a Dangerous Narrative

6. Mother Nature: Signals from a Different Plane

7. Generative Knowing & the Future of Work
   Ahreum Lim

8. The Dynamics of Generative Learning

About the Authors

Index

NOTE: Information is subject to change up until publication date. 

Aliki Nicolaides

Aliki Nicolaides Ed.D, is Professor of Adult Learning and Leadership at the University of Georgia in the program of Learning, Leadership & Organization Development. Her research centers on exploring the intra-active dynamics of learning that generate personal and societal transformation. She accomplishes this by focusing her research on the role that learning plays in activating the vital potential that connects self and society. Her desire for creating tools and scaffolds that grow individual and collective capacity for both inquiry and action is central to her approach to teaching and mentoring the next generation of scholars and leaders of change Dr. Nicolaides is co-founder of the Generative Learning and Complexity Laboratory (GLCL) that brings together scholars and practitioners of learning and complexity science to reimagine learning and development through the lens of generative knowing and complexity learning. The results of her scholarship are shaping a new philosophical strand of adult learning, what she describes as Generative Knowing: ways of being and becoming that liberate potential creatively in her first solo book. Dr. Nicolaides is a founding steward and current Director of the International Transformative Learning Association.