Adult and Continuing Education: Continuities and Discontinuities

Overview & Synopsis

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the five-volume set, "Adult and Continuing Education." This publication is a monumental and diverse collection of material related directly or indirectly to the broad theme of adult and continuing education. The collection captures a great deal of the thought which has informed the development of adult and continuing education (if not its "essence"). In the General Introduction the editors point to a number of themes that have shaped debate in the field and which are represented in the collection: the tension between conceptualising adult education as a field of practice rather than as an academic discipline, the attempts to demarcate the field in terms of the unique characteristics of adults and adulthood, the drift away from adult education as a social movement as many of the activities become dispersed and institutionalised, the adoption of lifelong learning as a replacement narrative more in keeping with contemporary social and economic concerns, the tension between the social reproductive aspects of adult education and it radical social justice and transformative tradition, the differences between institutional adult education provision and community provision, concerns over the professional preparation of adult educators, and the role of disciplinary knowledge in the scholarly study of adult education.