Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge

Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge
Author: Ian Bryant
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2004-08-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1134810504

This book offers some suggestions as to ways forward from this dilemma. Drawing on the new intellectual frameworks of critical pedagogy, feminism and postmodernism and their impact upon educational theory, practice and research, the book focuses on the changing contexts of adult education. By building on the notion of going beyond the limits of certain current adult education orthodoxies, the authors try to provide alternatives for practice. The final three chapters deal with research, focusing on a critical macro-analysis of mainstream paradigms, a review of alternative approaches, and a more micro-analysis centering on the role of the socially-located self in the research process.

Adult Education as Theory, Practice and Research

Adult Education as Theory, Practice and Research
Author: Robin Usher
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2014-06-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1136628290

The authors argue that the aim of research should be to improve practice through a process of critical reflection. Focusing clearly on the everyday concerns and problems of practitioners, they emphasize the importance of practical knowledge. Their definition of ‘practice’ is wide, and includes the generation of theory and the doing of research as well as front-line teaching. They show how notions of ‘adult learning’ and ‘the adult learner’ have been constituted mainly through theory and research in psychology and sociology, and examine action research as a mode of understanding. They conclude by looking at the curriculum implications for the teaching of adult education as reflective practice.

The Modern Practice of Adult Education

The Modern Practice of Adult Education
Author: Derek Briton
Publisher: Suny Press
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1996
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Examining his own struggle to escape the confines of modernist thought, Briton (education policy, U. of Alberta) challenges the dominant de-politicized vision of adult education, questioning the modernist tenets and moral integrity of its contemporary practice. He favors commentary over empirical evidence, a multiplicity of voices over a prescriptive narrative, an ethical attitude over formulaic prescriptions for practice, and inter- disciplinary over internal sources to substantiate its claims. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Learning Society in a Postmodern World

The Learning Society in a Postmodern World
Author: Kenneth Wain
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2004
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780820468365

Lifelong learning has become a key concern as the focus of educational policy has shifted from mass schooling toward the learning society. The shift started in the mid 1960s and early 1970s under the impetus of a group of writers and adult educators, gravitating around UNESCO, with a humanist philosophy and a leftist agenda. The vocabulary of that movement was appropriated in the 1990s by other interests with a very different performativist agenda emphasizing effectiveness and economic outcomes. This change of interest, described in the book, has signified the death of education. The Learning Society in a Postmodern World explores different theoretical resources to respond to this situation, mainly those that propose some restoration of an educated public or, to the contrary, individual self-creation, and uses the works of a broad range of philosophers and thinkers - notably MacIntyre, Habermas, Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, and Baudrillard. In addition, it raises important questions about postmodern and poststructuralist responses to education in the postmodern world. Its comprehensiveness and historical background make it an essential textbook for theoretical courses in lifelong learning and in educational theory in general. A broad range of interests and subject matter make it important reading for educators, policy specialists, media specialists, researchers on the subject of lifelong learning and on the relation between education and the postmodern world, political theorists, philosophers, and philosophers of education.

Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education

Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education
Author: Arthur L. Wilson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 765
Release: 2009-04-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0470545984

Sponsored by the American Association of Adult & Continuing Education"This monumental work is a testimony to the science of adult education and the skills of Wilson and Hayes. It is a veritable feast for nourishing our understanding of the current field of adult education. The editors and their well-chosen colleagues consistently question how we know and upon what grounds we act. They invite us to consider not only how we can design effective adult education, but also why we practice in a particular socio-economic context." --Jane Vella, author of Taking Learning to Task and Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach "This new handbook captures the exciting intellectual and professional development of our field in the last decade. It is an indispensable resource for faculty, students, and professionals." --Jack Mezirow, emeritus professor, Adult and Continuing Education, Teachers College, Columbia University For nearly seventy years, the handbooks of adult and continuing education have been definitive references on the best practices, programs, and institutions in the field. In this new edition, over sixty leading authorities share their diverse perspectives in a single volume--exploring a wealth of topics, including: learning from experience, adult learning for self-development, race and culture in adult learning, technology and distance learning, learning in the workplace, adult education for community action and development, and much more. Much more than a catalogue of theory and historical facts, this handbook strongly reflects the values of adult educators and instructors who are dedicated to promoting social and educational opportunity for learners and to sustaining fair and ethical practices.

Postmodernism and Education

Postmodernism and Education
Author: Richard Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1134851162

In this book, the authors explore and clarify the nature of postmodernism and provide a detailed introduction to key writers in the field such as Lacan Derrida Foucault Lyotard They examine the impact of this thinking upon contemporary theory and practice of education, concentrating particularly upon how postmodernist ideas challenge existing concepts, structures and hierarchies.

In Defense of the Lifeworld

In Defense of the Lifeworld
Author: Michael R. Welton
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1995-08-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1438423853

In Defense of the Lifeworld brings together five important critical commentaries on the state of the discipline and practice of adult education in North America. Jack Mezirow, Michael Collins, Mechthild Hart, Michael Welton and Donovan Plumb draw on critical theory, feminism and postmodernism. They examine the historical emergence of critical learning theory, the psycho-cultural dimensions of transformative learning theory, the vocation of the adult educator in our immoral times, the need to radically rethink the meaning of work and learning, the contribution of Habermas to the development of a new social learning paradigm and the provocative challenge from postmodernist discourses to the critical adult education project. This innovative text contends that the human lifeworld (where we learn what life means, what binds us together and what constitutes an autonomous personality) is deeply threatened in our late twentieth century world. Consequently, the task of the critical adult educator is to preserve and extend forms of communicative action through reflection, dialogue and critique.

Making Space

Making Space
Author: Vanessa Sheared
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2001-06-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0313002894

Representative of a wide range of adult education and lifelong learning frameworks and experiences, this book gives voice to emerging perspectives and offers thought-provoking critiques of established practices and accepted theories. Those in the adult education academy, as well as other voices often excluded from the discourse in adult education, offer critiques of the social, political, economic, and historical forms of hegemony in the discipline. They analyze the ways in which these hegemonic norms and practices have affected adult learning environments and the participation rates of varying groups and shed light on how adult education as a field of practice can marginalize individuals based on their ethnicity, race, gender, class, language, age, or sexual orientation. These critiques provide a powerful statement about silence, invisibility, and the marginalization of the other, and suggest that adult educators may complicitly, if not implicitly, marginalize adult learners. This book will provide professors and students, adult literacy teachers, corporate trainers, community-based organizers, and others with alternative ways to think about adult education practice, adult learners, and the multiple, intersecting realities that influence the teaching/learning transaction. In so doing, this book provides practitioners and academicians with a forum to dialog about emerging theories and practices, and through the discourse they can begin to merge theories and practices through language that is accessible and inclusive.