AbstractsPsychology

African American Women Wounded Warriors’ Lived Experiences of Self-Directed Learning: Success Through the Veterans Administration Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Program This study explored the self-directed learning lived experiences of African American women wounded warriors in their successful journeys through the Veterans Administration Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Program. Garrison’s (1997) self-directed learning served as the conceptual model to study the learning dimensions. Collins’ (2009) Black feminist epistemology served as the lens. Study data were collected by asking three African American female disabled veterans to discuss their lived experiences of motivation, self-management, and self-monitoring employed to obtain self-directed learning goals. Three 90-minute interviews were conducted with each participant to garner descriptive data about the participant’s life history, details of the lived experience, and the meaning of the lived experience. The study found that participants’ engagement with others stimulated their intrinsic motivation and encouraged their decisions to enter a self-directed learning program. The findings support the importance of participants’ utilizing personal accountability methods to self-manage the completion of self-directed learning plan objectives. The findings noted that the participants’ self-monitoring of information resulted in commonalities and differences regarding the acceptance of lived experiences espoused by others to validate knowledge.