Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge. Learning beyond the Limits

• Main Authors: Usher, Robin, Bryant, Ian, Johnston, Rennie
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 1997
• Subjects: Adult Education; Adult Learning; Citizenship Education; Educational Research; Identity (Psychological); Modernism; Postmodernism; Reflective Practice; Research Methodology; Self Actualization; Social Science Research; Theory Practice Relationship
• ISBN: 0415120209; 9780415120203
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203639771

This book examines the relationship among theory, practice, and research in adult education. Chapter 1 analyzes key features of modernity and postmodernity to highlight significant contemporary socioeconomic and cultural changes that have an impact on adult education. Chapter 2 sketches what a contemporary adult education for citizenship might look like. Chapter 3 approaches the metapractice question by looking at ideas that contributed to an understanding of the way in which education is governed: Durkheim's "modernist" theory of education, Foucault's "governmentality," and Bourdieu's idea of "habitus." Chapter 4 focuses on "disciplinarity." Chapter 5 focuses on conceptions of the self and their implications for the way experience and experiential learning is constructed in adult education discourse. Chapter 6 moves beyond resolving the theory-practice relationship in a philosophical way to a more grounded resolution where the relationship is seen as part of a "metapractice." Chapter 7 examines limitations of Schon's modeling of the process of reflection-in-action by critiquing the theory of reflective practice and his methodology of unpacking the process. Chapter 8 examines the mainstream approaches to social science research in terms of three influential paradigms of research. Chapter 9 deals with two research approaches beyond the conventional limits of mainstream research traditions: emancipatory and postmodern. Chapter 10 extends the analysis of self to consider its location within the experience of doing research. The book contains 220 references and an index. (YLB)