This article analyzes the crystallized learning disposition formed in secondary schools and its persistent influence on the transition between educational sectors and the workplace. Using interview data from eight adults who graduated from a prestigious university in Korea, this study reveals that exam-inclined self-direction, a manner of selfdirection without self, is strongly associated with types of knowledge and the method of constructing the self under extreme ranking competition. Exam-inclined selfdirection, firmly ingrained in the students, has momentum beyond secondary schools, in which it was cultivated, and has constrained some of their life choices. This article problematizes some ideas of self-direction and discusses exam-inclined self-direction as socially and institutionally conditioned, as well as the reason it has survived in the Korean social context. Finally, this article calls for the in-depth investigation of a new category of learner, exam-friendly adult learners.

This article, through the sketched history from the mid‐1940s to current, presents the dynamics of adult education in East Asia traditionally called social education, that has survived after lifelong learning has been adopted, assimilated, and dominates the whole pattern of practice. This article argues that the soul of adult education has been unfading in the changing landscape of lifelong learning in East Asia.

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This study aimed to understand how people learn and teach informally in an anonymous online bulletin board, the primary purpose of which is not learning and teaching. We conducted a qualitative analysis of comments and replies tagged to the most popular postings of an anonymous online bulletin board, during the global economic crisis in 2008-2009. The bulletin board, Agora Economy Room, is housed in the Korean portal site, Daum. We found four interrelated collective activities--recognizing teaching presence, collaborating, labeling, and guarding--among the participants that made active informal learning and teaching possible. These activities had an effect on the characteristics of the emerging informal educative space in different ways. A conceptual map of the findings of this study is discussed as a conclusion.

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