To Transgress or Not?: Critical Theory as a Framework for Change

ABSTRACT In this chapter, we provide a snapshot of critical theories with salience for adult education to illuminate their enduring efficacy within the discipline, including critical feminism, queer theory, and race‐based critical theories. Critical theories seek to make individual change while dismantling the structures that suppress freedom and democracy, like discrimination, devaluation, and marginalization, and can be a catalyst for making substantial contributions to transforming society. Considering this, we believe structural changes should also reshape how critical theories are discussed, expanding the canon to include Black intellectualism. We conclude by providing evidence‐based tools for the adult educator's toolbox to transgress the politicized, raced, gendered, and othered environments in which adult educators work and adult learners learn.