Looking with Generative Knowing: What Does DEI Reveal in an Aging Society

This paper examines how generative knowing theory reimagines adult education, highlighting a vital interdependence where differences are not erased but valued. First, two vignettes explore the complex challenges of an aging society and underrecognized attempts to marginalize older adults. Calling for adult educators to stop (re)producing systemic inequalities, this paper critiques the dominant neoliberal, solution-oriented frameworks that oversimplify our complex entanglements and explores how generative knowing could reimagine adult education/learning. The last vignette exemplifies how educators can create generative spaces within the components of generative knowing, particularly in intergenerational learning. Recognizing differences as a generative force transforms the role of adult education, motivating educators and learners to move beyond their comfort zones, embrace complexity, and collaborate on meaningful responses to an already entangled reality. Embracing vital interdependence is significant for adult education to support societal progress, especially amid demographic shifts and the polarized discourse prevalent in today’s society.