Bridging the Gap between Human Resource Development and Adult Education: Part Two, the Critical Turn

Abstract

Human resource development (HRD) as a scholarly endeavor and as a practice is often criticized in the adult education (AE) literature and by AE scholars as manipulative and oppressive and, through training and other interventions, controlling workers for strictly economic ends ( Baptiste, 2001 ; Cunningham, 2004 ; Schied, 2001 ; Welton, 1995 ). The reasons for this disapproving perspective are numerous and include HRD's primary conceptual foundations as being performative and based on human capital theory that tends to situate humans within the rubric of expendable resources. Additional support for this critique comes from an assumption that HRD as a whole is embedded within a rational/functional paradigm that tends to support ‘any means to profit’ over democratic treatment of people in the workplace. Similarly, although less vocal and antagonistic, HRD scholars have been critical of AE's ‘academic’ and ‘theoretical’ elitism versus the pragmatic and socially responsive practice of AE.