Establishing Conceptual Boundaries: What is an Adult Education Project?

Abstract

In a movement toward workforce development as an academic entity, the identity of adult education as projects for inquiry is troubled. In some academic programs, adult education has been termed adult learning in the service of promoting teaching and learning for the workplace. However, adult education’s inquiry, its projects, might be more than just teaching adults or researching how adults’ learn. This paper presents an argument that adult education projects might have a social justice focus. Adult education might serve as a critique of social, educational, and political policies concerning work and the workplace. It would be helpful for us (faculty in an academic program in workforce development and education) in the future to agree on a definition of what is meant by “projects in adult education”. In fact many adult education researchers do projects in areas that might actually be considered HRD, or even policy development. Would these not be considered adult education projects simply because the researcher’s professional identity is with human resource and or workforce development? What are the conceptual boundaries of “projects in adult education”? The above quote was posed to our four member faculty, each representing identities in adult education, human resource development (HRD), career technical education, and policy studies. The question arose in the awarding of dissertation support endowed by professor Andrew Hendrickson, faculty member in adult education and the Director for the Center for Adult Education at the Ohio State University from 1947-1967. During the post World War II era, adult education was recognized by the College of Education as an area of study focusing on adult learning primarily in home, educational and community settings. The award stipulated support for a doctoral student doing research in adult education. To the faculty of the 50s -60s the boundaries of adult education projects must have been clear since the award did not specify conceptual boundaries. Over the past fifty years the study of adult education has remained but the academic entity known as adult education has lost its unique identity. In an era in which graduate programs in adult education are going under the rubric of workforce development, the meaning and boundaries of adult education is becoming problematic. What might be the boundaries that distinguish an adult education project from projects that research or teach adults? The academic study of adult education at my university is located in a program area named Workforce Development and Education. The name represented a merging of identities among three academic courses of study, adult education, HRD, and career technical education. Stein, D. S. (2006). Establishing conceptual boundaries: What is an adult education project? New Horizons in Adult