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Abstracts

Volume 33, Number 1, April 2001

[ Ralf St Clair ] [ Michael Welton ] [ David Becket /Gayle Morris ] [ Nick Frost / Richard Taylor ] [ Jane Castle / Gillian Atwood ]

Considering Capital: The limits of Curriculum in an Employment preparation programme
Ralf St Clair,
Illinois State University, USA

This article addresses the formation of curriculum in an employment preparation programme using a theoretical perspective combining the work of Bernstein and Bourdieu. The employment preparation programme (UTP) was situated within a Canadian labour union with a progressive, community-centred philosophy. Despite this orientation, the programme was strongly reproductive of current liberal constructions of unemployment as a personal trouble rather than a public issue, resulting in a highly prescribed educational process. I explain this using ideas of social and cultural capital, viewing UTP's primary function as transmission of appropriate forms of capital to unemployed people. Like economic capital, social and cultural forms have to be guarded against contamination and inappropriate expenditure, leading to the imposition of a strong boundary around valuable knowledge. The challenge for progressive educators in vocational settings is to find a way to transmit the capital necessary for success in the workplace, while also leaving the boundaries sufficiently open for the experience and knowledge of participants to be recognised, and for the possibility of other forms of workplace relations to be recognised.

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Civil Society and the Public Sphere: Habermas's recent learning theory
Michael Welton
Mount St Vincent University, Canada

This article argues that Jürgen Habermas's commitment to a deliberative form of democracy, the foundational importance of the lifeworld for healthy human existence, and civil society as the pre-eminent learning domain can help the global adult education movement to understand its potentialities and limitations in a rapidly changing world. The article explicates Habermas's recent articulation of civil society and the public sphere in Between Facts and Norms. We turn to Habermas to learn more about civil society in order to construct an adequate theoretical framework towards the achievement of a learning society that encourages active citizenship, nurtures people-centred work and fosters public spaces that engage a significant minority of citizens in deliberative processes committed to the common weal.

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Ontological Performance: bodies, identities and learning 
David Beckett, the University of Melbourne, Australia
Gayle Morris, Northern Melbourne Institute of Technical and Further Education, Australia

In these post-Cartesian times, adult educators are retrieving the body as a significant site of learning. In this article we explore this in two linked ways: conceptually, in the light of broader perspectives in the social sciences, in policy analysis, and in philosophy; and also through empirical evidence, from adults' workplace learning experiences, and from adult literacy classrooms. We conclude that from practical embodied actions (that is, from ontology), significant epistemological claims can be generated, such as could shape adults' learning for, and in, the workplace. 

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Patterns of Change in the University: the impact of 'Lifelong Learning' and the 'World of Work'
Nick Frost, University of Leeds, UK
Richard Taylor, University of Leeds, UK

Lifelong Learning is agreed to be a key concept in the new 'knowledge society'. This paper discusses the nature of the changed environment of higher education and the influence of adult education theory and practice upon lifelong learning. Currently, commitment to lifelong learning, as far as higher education is concerned, is largely rhetorical. The paper discusses the fundamental changes in higher education that will be needed if this rhetoric is to be turned into reality. Both government policy and the wider social and political context make the relationship between the university and the 'world of work' increasingly important. Work-related learning, as an aspect of lifelong learning, is thus a significant development in higher education and the paper discusses its positive and negative aspects, viewed from the perspective of radical, social purpose education.

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Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) for Access or Credit? Problematic issues in a University Adult Education Department in South Africa
Jane Castle, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Gillian Attwood, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

The main question posed in this paper is whether the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) in higher education should focus on access or credit. We begin by tracking the origins of RPL development in South Africa, then go on to show how the broad context of higher education influences RPL. We raise four problematic issues involved in RPL, including the difficulty of establishing equivalencies between the different kinds of experience, knowledge and learning that adults may have acquired. We conclude that emphasis should be placed on RPL for access rather than credit, and that resources should be channeled into opening pathways for adult learners into higher education and supporting them en route.