The Encyclopedia of Adult Education is the first comprehensive reference work in this important and fast-growing field, and is an invaluable resource for adult educators who research and teach in the fields of higher education, work in community-based settings, or practise in public or private organizations. Its 170+ articles, written by an international team of contributors from over 17 countries, detail the research and practice of the field from its emergence as a separate discipline to the present day, covering key concepts, issues and individuals and providing a cutting-edge summary of ongoing debates across a wide range of perspectives, from self-directed learning to human resource development. Entries are arranged A-Z and extensive cross-referenced, with detailed bibliographies for each topic to facilitate further research.
Recent changes in the world effected by the transformations of information technology, globalisation, and the move towards a knowledge economy over the last thirty years have been as radical and fundamental as the changes resulting from the invention of the wheel and the printing press. We are now living in a new age in which the demands are so complex, so multifarious and so rapidly changing that the only way in which we shall be able to survive them is by committing to a process of individual, communal, and global learning throughout the lifespan of all of us. A number of international bodies and agencies have taken cognisance of these transformations and the demands they impose upon societies and communities of the twenty-first century and have developed and articulated policies intended to enable all citizens of the world in the twenty-first century to face these challenges. It is now a declared policy of many governments and international agencies that the only vehicle for such preparation is `education, education, education', and that preparing for the knowledge economy and the learning society of the future has to be a lifelong undertaking, an investment in the future that is not restricted merely to the domain of economic advancement but also to those of social inclusion and personal growth. Realising this, policy-makers across the international arena are grappling with the need to move from systems that emphasise education and training to the radically more unworked construct of lifelong learning. In this volume the editors and authors analyse, criticise, and rework the ideas, principles, and theories underpinning policies and programs of lifelong learning, re-interpreting them in the light of examples of `best practice' found in a range of educating institutions around the world. We believe that students of educational change and community development will find it useful and helpful to have available in this volume some of the most up-to-date thinking on the chief concepts, theories, and values of increasing policy interest in lifelong learning, together with a review of some significant examples of the different forms, focuses, and nexuses of thought and practice on this topic. All this enables us to offer some policy recommendations and practical suggestions as to ways forward in the endeavour to make lifelong learning a reality for all.
Discovering Radical Contingency examines the implications of postmodern culture for education, particularly those involving adult learners. Against a critical review of modernist culture and education, a comparative account of the postmodern is posited. That account is reconfigured as a set of six tensions. These tensions are then used in exploring the nature of educational practice and engagement in postmodernity, from different perspectives: through dialogues with students of that practice; through case studies of practice; as descriptive tendencies of engagement; and as nodal forms of programmatic activity. The book closes with chapters examining the nature of educational research and the professional development of adult educators in postmodernity.
This book presents and advocates for a framework of competing epistemologies and conceptions of ethics as a way of understanding modernist lifelong learning. These epistemologies are grounded in a recognition of the normative nature of knowledge that informs lifelong learning; each being framed by a different account of the sort of knowledge that is most valued and therefore foregrounded in lifelong learning policy, provision and engagement informed by the epistemology. Each epistemology is also characterised by its constituent conception of ethics. Four such epistemologies and conceptions of ethics are here recognised as having been important in the lifelong learning movement to date: disciplinary, developmental, emancipatory, and design. The authors argue that assumptions about knowledge and moral positions constitute a powerful but not well-understood feature of such arguments: awareness of these assumptions and positions could serve to powerfully advance the overall understanding of what is at stake in lifelong learning and adult education at all levels.
How do you tailor education to the learning needs of adults? Do they learn differently from children? How does their life experience inform their learning processes? These were the questions at the heart of Malcolm Knowles’ pioneering theory of andragogy which transformed education theory in the 1970s. The resulting principles of a self-directed, experiential, problem-centred approach to learning have been hugely influential and are still the basis of the learning practices we use today. Understanding these principles is the cornerstone of increasing motivation and enabling adult learners to achieve. The 9th edition of The Adult Learner has been revised to include: Updates to the book to reflect the very latest advancements in the field. The addition of two new chapters on diversity and inclusion in adult learning, and andragogy and the online adult learner. An updated supporting website. This website for the 9th edition of The Adult Learner will provide basic instructor aids including a PowerPoint presentation for each chapter. Revisions throughout to make it more readable and relevant to your practices. If you are a researcher, practitioner, or student in education, an adult learning practitioner, training manager, or involved in human resource development, this is the definitive book in adult learning you should not be without.
Rethinking Practice, Research and Education brings together philosophy with traditional methodological discourse, and opens a space for critical thinking in social and educational research. Drawing on the work of Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault and their descendants, this engaging critical examination of practice applies a deconstructive reading to the practices of research. Where is justice in the practice of research? How do paradigms for the production of knowledge shape what is given in the practice of research? What are the key issues involved in developing an ethos for the practice of research in the light of society's complex relationship with essential forms of technology? Each of these dimensions are explored, drawing on the traditions of research and their interplay with researchers' responsibilities to work towards justice in research. A must-read for researchers, bringing the language of philosophy to the current debate about the impact of social and educational research in practice.
