ABSTRACT
In adult education discourse, experience has mainly signified freedom from regulation in the service of personal autonomy and/or social empowerment. The meaning of experience will vary according to different discursive practices, as too will the particular significance given to learning derived from experience. Although experiential learning has become central to the theory and practice of education in the postmodern moment, as a pedagogy it is inherently ambivalent and capable of many significations. Today lifestyle practices have significant implications for a reconfiguring of the theory and practice of adult education. In vocational practices the relationship between experience, knowledge and pedagogy is articulated in such a way that experience functions to provide a personal motivation and a feet-on-the-ground pragmatism. In confessional practices, the relationship between experience, knowledge and pedagogy is articulated in terms of a representation of experience as enabling access to knowledge and the innermost truths of self.
