Adult Education Research: Western Europe

Abstract

This chapter highlights adult education research in Western Europe. In research, as in other aspects of adult education, Western Europe combines common elements with marked national characteristics. Research and scholarly enquiry into adult education were slow to grow in Western Europe because, among other reasons, practitioners were more concerned with meeting urgent needs for provision than reflecting upon and asking questions about what they were doing. There is no accurate register of work done, but it is certain that by no means all research came from universities, although their share is increasing. For the most part research is a response to problems of practice and seeks to illuminate and improve it in the short term. If it does not, it tends to be suspect or disregarded. Behind this approach lie the influence of adult educators and their organizations, whose traditional suspicion of the academic's isolation from the realities of the field partly explains the continuing research work of the institutes already mentioned.