ABSTRACT
This study aims to explore the lived experiences of middle-aged adult learners who participated in media education programs at a local media center, drawing on van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenological perspective. In an environment where di...
ABSTRACT
This study aims to explore the lived experiences of middle-aged adult learners who participated in media education programs at a local media center, drawing on van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenological perspective. In an environment where digital transformation is accelerating, the middle-aged generation faces overlapping conditions in which analog life habits intersect with demands for new technologies. Accordingly, the motivations for participating in media education and the structures of learning experiences manifest in complex ways. Interview data were analyzed within van Manen’s methodological framework, focusing on five existentials—lived body (corporeality), lived time (temporality), lived space (spatiality), lived relation (relationality), and lived things (materiality). Based on in-depth interviews with middle-aged adult learners, the analysis proceeded through meaning-unit identification, sub-theme construction, theme integration, and reorganization according to the existential structures. As a result, a total of 12 themes and 20 sub-themes were derived: three themes in corporeality, two in temporality, two in spatiality, two in relationality, and three in materiality.
First, in corporeality, participants experienced how technical skills became embodied through handling media equipment and how they calibrated their sensibilities for filming and editing by responding to immediate feedback. Immersion shaped through bodily attunement to cameras and lighting on site, the technical rhythm accumulated through repeated shooting and revision, and sensory learning formed at the interface of tools and the body emerged as central threads of lived body. Second, in temporality, learning time continued in a cyclical manner within the rhythm of everyday life through moments of entering education in the interstices of daily routines, the development of practices that extended into production, editing, and application, and re-editing experiences of revisiting one’s records. This accumulation of time functioned as an opportunity to expand self-narratives oriented toward the future. Third, in spatiality, the local media center, grounded in participants’ everyday living areas, functioned as a learning environment that provided both access opportunities and emotional stability. Alongside concentrated engagement and perceived barriers in face-to-face practice spaces, participants experienced spatiotemporal expansion through online platforms and encountered a communal space where diverse citizens met and interacted.
Fourth, in relationality, recognition and cooperation in collaborative work and mutual feedback served as key drivers sustaining learning. Participants also developed ethical sensibilities by reflecting on the responsibility of expression—considering others’ perspectives during media production and becoming mindful of copyright and portrait rights. These relational experiences extended into forming new networks of relationships mediated by learning and into practices through which learners rearranged their work and life. Fifth, in materiality, participants demonstrated patterns of developing expressive sensibilities and technical understanding while working with technological “things” such as cameras, editing tools, and platforms. They experienced both possibilities and limitations opened by algorithmic and generative technologies, coming to recognize that tools and media operate as conditions shaping the direction and scope of learning experiences.
Overall, the experiences revealed in the findings were interpreted as an existential process through which middle-aged adult learners reconfigured their lives and learning via media education. Media production and editing constituted a site of learning where bodily sensibilities and technical practices interlocked, providing a foundation for learners to strengthen their agency in their own ways. The processes of revisiting and reconstructing records contributed to re-establishing self-narratives and expanded temporal sensibilities toward future perspectives. The local media center functioned as a relational space supporting emotional stability and social solidarity, while engaging with equipment and platforms formed an educational context in which technical proficiency and ethical reflection grew together.
These findings suggest that locally grounded media education provides middle-aged adult learners with educational meanings including opportunities for practical learning, expanded self-expression, strengthened relational networks, and enhanced ethical sensibilities. This can be understood as a foundation for lifelong education that supports adult learners in integrating life and learning and reconstructing self-narratives. Media education centered on practices of recording, editing, and narrativizing functions as an educational resource that fosters adult learners’ identity formation and social participation. By placing the existential experiences of middle-aged adult learners at the center and interpreting the meanings of media education, this study contributes to expanding the horizon of lifelong education research.