2026 Theses Doctoral

Learning Through Loss: An Autoethnographic Study to Consider How Adults Navigate Grief Through Self-Directed Learning

Boneta, Denise

This study examines how adults navigate grief through self-directed learning (SDL) in the absence of adequate cultural frameworks for mourning. Drawing on my personal experience following the death of my father in 2017, this qualitative autoethnographic study explores how SDL strategies facilitated meaning-making and adaptation to loss.

Using multimodal methods including epistolary writing, collaging, and archival inquiry alongside personal, digital, and cultural data sources, the study is grounded in Tough's (1971) theory of self-directed learning projects, Siemens's (2004) connectivism, and Stroebe and Schut's (1999, 2010) Dual Process Model. Influenced and inspired by Rager's (2000, 2003, 2007a, 2007b, 2009) body of work examining the role of emotion in driving SDL, this dissertation extends that lineage into grief and bereavement.

Findings reveal three thematic strands: shame and affective constraint as catalysts for SDL; relational learning through alternative peer networks; and books as pedagogical infrastructure in secular mourning. This study contributes the construct of grief literacy to adult education and grief studies, positioning SDL as an adaptive coping mechanism and calling attention to a significant gap in adult learning research.