PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1637708
This article is part of the Research TopicRacial Equity and the Organization: An Educational Change Call to ActionView all articles
The Black Male Adult Learner Success Theory: Unpacking Institutional Structures that Support Academic Success
Provisionally accepted
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, United States
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Adult learners are one of the largest growing populations on college campuses. However, many universities do not consider this population generally and Black male adult learners specifically in policy decisions. To address this oversight there has been a growing body of work exploring the experiences of Black male adult learners in higher education, but most theories used to study this population were developed for traditional aged college students. Given the differences in the experiences of Black male adult learners, I developed the Black Male Adult Learner Success Theory (BMALST) to present an asset-based lens in which to study and make institutional decisions that cultivate the academic success of Black male adult learners. In this article I present the journey to developing the BMALST, describe the theory, and discuss how it could be used by institutions to improve the experience for Black male adult learners in higher education.
Keywords: Black male achievement, Black male adult learner success theory, adult learning, Higher eduacation, Black student success
Received: 29 May 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Goings. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ramon Bailey Goings, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, United States
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