When adults return to learning – whether in a classroom, a training room, or an online course – they don’t arrive as blank slates. They carry with them decades of personal history, cultural identities, professional experiences, and social roles that constantly shape how they interpret new knowledge. Understanding this complexity is at the heart of interpretative sociology and its impact on adult education. Rather than measuring learning purely through grades or completion rates, interpretative sociology asks a more fundamental question: what does learning mean to the individual experiencing it – and why does that meaning matter?
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What is interpretative sociology?
Interpretative sociology is an approach that focuses on understanding human behavior by examining the subjective meanings individuals attach to their actions and experiences. Unlike positivist sociology, which seeks to identify objective, measurable laws governing society, interpretative sociology explores the nuanced ways people make sense of and interact with their social world. The approach is most closely associated with Max Weber (1864-1920), widely regarded as its founding figure, who argued that sociology should go beyond surface-level observation of behavior and investigate the meanings and motivations that drive human actions.
Central to Weber’s framework is the concept of Verstehen – a German word meaning “understanding.” Weber used this term to describe a deep, empathetic way of interpreting human behavior: rather than simply measuring actions from the outside, Verstehen is about seeing the world through people’s own perspectives – their motives, meanings, and experiences – so we can truly grasp why they act the way they do. In an educational context, this means moving beyond asking “did the learner pass the test?” and instead asking “what did this learning experience actually mean to them, and how did it connect to their life?”
Weber distinguished between two types of Verstehen: observational understanding – interpreting an action as it occurs – and explanatory understanding, which digs deeper into the motivations and social context behind the action. For adult education, the second type is far more important. A learner who enrolls in a literacy program may be observed simply as “a student attending class.” Explanatory understanding asks why – is it to secure employment, to read to their children, to regain a sense of dignity? Those motivations are not peripheral to the learning process; they are central to it.
Learning as a socially constructed process
One of the most important contributions of interpretative sociology to adult education is the idea that learning is not a neutral, objective transfer of knowledge – it is a socially constructed process. This idea was powerfully articulated by sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in their landmark 1966 work, The Social Construction of Reality. They argued that society itself is created by humans and human interaction, and that the “realities” we take for granted are, in fact, products of shared social experience and meaning-making.
According to Berger and Luckmann, social realities are created through a continuous cycle of externalization (creating cultural products), objectivation (treating these products as independent facts), and internalization (learning them as unquestioned truths). Applied to adult education, this means that what counts as “valuable knowledge” or a “good learner” is not self-evident – these categories are shaped by cultural norms, institutional practices, and social histories. A learner from a working-class background, for example, may have internalized beliefs about who “belongs” in higher education. These beliefs, born from social interaction, directly influence their confidence and engagement in the classroom.
This insight shifts the responsibility onto educators. If reality is socially constructed, then learning environments are not neutral spaces – they actively reproduce social meanings that either support or undermine the learner’s sense of belonging and purpose.
The role of subjective meaning in adult learning
Adult learners are fundamentally different from younger students in one critical way: they arrive with richly layered life experiences that inform every aspect of how they engage with new material. Sociologists in the interpretative tradition view educational settings as places where meaning is socially constructed through everyday interactions. This tradition prioritizes micro-level concerns – how does a learner interpret the relevance of what they are being taught? How does a facilitator’s tone or choice of example affirm or alienate the learner?
Subjective meaning-making in adult education works on several levels. First, there is personal relevance: an adult learner filters incoming knowledge through the lens of their existing experiences. A nurse returning to study for a degree will interpret a statistics module very differently from a recent school leaver – not because of intelligence, but because her professional experience gives the material a concrete, lived meaning. Second, there is cultural context: the background, language, and community a learner comes from shapes their entire interpretive framework. Alfred Schütz, whose work heavily influenced Berger and Luckmann, introduced the concept of the “life-world” (Lebenswelt) – the analytical attention given to meaning in the lived world – to capture how individuals draw on accumulated everyday experience to interpret new social situations.
This is why adult learners from different cultural backgrounds may engage with identical course content in markedly different ways. Their interpretations are not errors to be corrected – they are evidence of the depth of experience each individual brings to the learning process.
Symbolic interactionism and the classroom
Closely aligned with interpretative sociology is the perspective of symbolic interactionism, which examines how people create and negotiate meaning through social interaction. Rooted in the work of George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer, symbolic interactionism focuses on how meaning emerges through social interaction rather than existing independently. In a classroom context, this means that concepts like “success,” “intelligence,” or “appropriate participation” do not have fixed meanings – they are continuously shaped through interactions between educators, learners, and institutions.
For adult learners, this has direct practical consequences. Through the teacher expectancy effect, a teacher’s expectations of a student’s performance or achievement can significantly influence the actual performance or achievement of that student. When adult learners return to formal education after years away, they are particularly sensitive to signals about whether they are perceived as capable. A facilitator who consistently validates their prior experience communicates one set of meanings; one who treats them as simply “behind” communicates quite another – and learners respond accordingly.
Symbolic interactionism also draws attention to the hidden curriculum – the implicit norms, values, and expectations embedded in an educational setting beyond its formal content. Interpretive scholarship in education highlights this hidden curriculum: the implicit norms, values, and expectations conveyed in educational settings, which students absorb alongside formal knowledge. For adult learners who may have had negative prior educational experiences, these unspoken messages can be just as impactful as the explicit curriculum.
Cultural and institutional contexts in adult education
Interpretative sociology does not stop at the individual – it also examines how larger cultural and institutional contexts shape the meanings available to learners. Micro-oriented sociologists focusing on interpretative approaches emphasize the subjective meanings of human interaction, resistance, action, and voluntarism as their key variables, but these individual meanings are always shaped by the broader institutional structures through which education is delivered.
Consider the difference between adult learning in a community-run center versus a corporate training program. Even if the content is similar, the institutional context creates entirely different meanings. In the community center, learners may interpret their participation as an act of personal empowerment or community solidarity. In a corporate setting, the same learning activity may be interpreted as a requirement for performance management. The classroom is not a neutral space – it is a social arena where identities are constructed and futures shaped through interaction.
Cultural context operates similarly. Research using Schütz’s phenomenological approach has been applied to understanding adult learners specifically – Scanlon (2009) used a Schützian approach to study the learning experiences of adult learners, demonstrating how the meanings they attributed to learning were deeply embedded in their lived cultural worlds. This kind of research underscores that effective adult education must be culturally responsive – acknowledging that the social worlds learners inhabit outside the classroom are not separate from the learning process; they are inseparable from it.
What interpretative sociology means for adult educators
The practical implications of interpretative sociology for those who design and deliver adult education are significant. If learning is a meaning-making process shaped by personal history, social interaction, and cultural context, then a one-size-fits-all curriculum is inherently limited. Weber’s interpretative sociology provides a framework for connecting individual experiences and motivations to the broader societal structures that shape them – and adult educators can use this framework to design more responsive, effective learning environments.
In practice, this means several things. Contextualized teaching incorporates real-world problems and experiences relevant to learners’ social and cultural lives, rather than treating knowledge as abstract and universal. Dialogic learning – structured dialogue and peer discussion – honors the principle that meaning is socially constructed: learners build understanding together, not just by receiving information from an expert. Reflective practice, where learners are invited to connect new knowledge to their own biographies and experiences, is not merely a pedagogical technique – it is a direct application of Verstehen, encouraging learners to engage with material from the inside rather than from a detached, external position.
Educators who understand the interpretative perspective also become more attuned to the power dynamics embedded in educational settings. Research in the sociology of education increasingly places the perspectives and narratives of learners themselves – rather than those of the researcher or institution – at the center of inquiry. This shift toward learner voice is not incidental – it is a direct consequence of taking seriously the idea that subjective experience is a valid and essential source of knowledge.
Limitations and critiques
Interpretative sociology, for all its richness, is not without its critics. A common critique is that the Verstehen approach can lead to subjectivity and bias in research, as researchers may be influenced by their own values and emotions when interpreting the experiences of others. There is also a concern about generalizability – if every learner’s experience is unique and context-dependent, how do we build principles broad enough to inform policy and practice?
Additionally, a primary limitation of symbolic interactionism is its focus on micro-level interactions at the expense of broader social structures. Critics argue that this narrow focus fails to adequately address how larger social forces, such as economic systems or institutional inequalities, shape individual behavior and educational access. A learner who cannot afford to attend a training program, or who faces discrimination in a hiring market, is constrained by forces that no amount of meaning-making can fully override.
These are fair critiques, and they suggest that interpretative sociology is most powerful not as a standalone framework, but in dialogue with structural perspectives that address inequality, access, and institutional power. Together, they provide a fuller picture of adult education as both a personal and a political act.
What do you think? If the meaning an adult learner brings to their education is shaped by their entire social and cultural history, how should educators redesign their programs to genuinely honor that complexity – and what would have to change in institutional structures to make that possible? And to what extent can an educator ever fully understand the subjective world of a learner whose life experiences are radically different from their own?
References
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