Trends and Direction of Adult Education

Overview & Synopsis

In this paper, I will analyze the shifts of adult education historically through the lens of power and policies, technology, the nature of the field, and the structural constraints in the context of higher education. The findings show that in general, in the field of adult education, there has been a change from social justice, anti-poverty to efficiency and job-oriented adult education; from more social and politically-driven in the past decades to more job-related and economically-driven in recent years, from serving the marginalized people to serving the elites. Technology, nature of the field of adult education, and structural setting of the higher education constrained the development of adult education. [For the complete volume, "American Association for Adult and Continuing Education Inaugural 2020 Conference Proceedings (Online, October 27-30, 2020)," see ED611534.]