The Applied Hermeneutic Criticality Model: A Multilevel Framework of Ideology, Discourse, and Culture in Adult Education

Abstract

This article examines how adult education can foster critical literacy and global competencies amid the ideological pressures of neoliberalism and the dominance of English as a global lingua franca. Drawing on Habermas’s lifeworld–system framework, Critical Discourse Analysis, and intercultural theory, the article identifies persistent structural forces that shape meaning-making, learner agency, and educational equity. In response, I advance the Applied Hermeneutic Criticality Model (AHCM), a conceptual framework that integrates macro-level ideological critique, meso-level institutional analysis, and micro-level reflexive engagement. The model clarifies how adult learners and educators navigate interconnected cultural, discursive, and systemic influences, and offers a theoretically grounded holistic pathway for cultivating critical being and intercultural competence thus contributing a unified approach for examining ideology, literacy, and power for future research on critical and emancipatory adult education.