Giving voice to the learning experiences of adults participating in a multicultural immersion programme doctoral dissertation, New York, NY, Teachers College, Columbia University

Abstract

This paper presents two elements of a broader set of findings resulting from a qualitative doctoral dissertation. This research gives voice to the learning experiences of 21 diverse adult learners who participated in a community-based multicultural immersion programme in a Midwestern city in the United States (US). Key perspectives of their learning experiences were drawn from two main themes: 1. learning from multicultural immersion programming; 2. the uses of multicultural immersion learning as they are situated in the following contexts: personal usage, workplace usage, and community usage. Major conclusions of the study indicated that allowing adult learners to interact with cultural diversity in the learning environment introduced them to real world multicultural ways of knowing and being. Moreover, the study revealed that multicultural immersion learning could be used in a variety of way in the urban Midwestern community. The results presented in this paper can be used to enhance the practice of multicultural immersion programming and diversity training in the field of HRD and learning for adults who participate in these kinds of programmes.