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Abstracts

Volume 32, Number 2, October 2000

[Dorothy Lander] [Mark Murphy] [Nancy Jackson / Steve Jordan] [Stephen Gorard] [Astrid Von Kotze / Linda Cooper] [Tabeth Kazoboni] [Roseanne Benn] [John Payne]

This paper applies narrative inquiry to the organising metaphors for reading and writing a qualitative thesis in adult education. Three perspectives are featured: methodologists and theorists; graduate students writing adult education theses; and faculty advisors who read and respond to graduate students' theses. My autobiographical account of writing two adult education theses and reading many graduate students' theses shapes my narrative inquiry into the interplay of metaphors between reader and writer. Practice-based exemplars explicate the dominant narrative genre and journey metaphors for organising theses. The inquiry traces readers and writers in a responsive, dialogical relationship characterised by restorying each other's metaphors using in-kind and different metaphors. I propose different organising metaphors for reading and writing qualitative research in the postmodern era. I re-place the journey-narrative genre of 'beginning to ending' with cartographies and storying/re-storying 'in the middle'. Cartographies re-metaphorise the writing and reading of adult education theses and in the process adult educator authors are re-metaphorised as situated, bodily works-in-process.

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Adult education, lifelong learning and the end of political economy
MARK MURPHY
University of Stirling, Scotland

The concept of lifelong learning has become ubiquitous in education policy and theory, a development that has not escaped the attention of those working in adult education. For all the debate, little has been said regarding the political and economic forces behind its renewed importance. The paper argues that one of the main reasons for this silence is the uncritical acceptance of globalisation and post-industrial theories of social change. Individually, these theories constitute the end of politics and the end of economics respectively. When combined, they signify a theory of change that neglects the political economy of lifelong learning. This neglect paves the way for an acceptance of lifelong learning policy as a neutral reaction to benign and inevitable technological transformations. A structural theory of power is needed in adult education in order to place policies such as lifelong learning within the context of late capitalism.   

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Learning for work: Contested terrain? 

NANCY JACKSON
McGill University, Montreal, Canada

STEVE JORDAN
University of Canterbury, New Zealand

The insistent questions that adult educators need to...ask...are 'Who benefits?' and 'In whose interests?' rather than beginning with the assumption that all adult learning is equally valid, equally important, and that the only issues for adult educators are how programmes can be 'delivered' in the most efficient way. (Payne, 1995, 272)

To understand the complexities of workplace learning we need a way of analytically connecting...learning in particular workplaces to both the micro-politics of that workplace and to it's wider political and economic context. (Foley, 1999, 181)

Learning is, in essence, a political process in that it leads to change and the disorganization of existing patterns of influence and control [and]...disrupts the continuity of power relationships and hierarchies. (Keep and Rainbird, 2000, 184)

Abstract

This paper explores some common political dynamics and conflicting interests underlying the rise of neo-liberal skills training policies across the OECD throughout the decade of the 1990s. It focuses primarily on recent debates and policy developments in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, drawing on related literature from Canada and Britain. In these and other countries influenced by the OECD, policy makers have forged an apparent consensus across social groups - business, labour, equity seeking groups, individuals - with diverse and sometimes conflicting interests in the structure and purposes of skills training. Such a 'unitarist' approach is built on the presumption of mutual benefit. Yet the resulting reforms have had a remarkably unilateral effect: they move control over and benefits from skill training away from individuals and unions and into the hands of private capital. Where skills development was once seen as a chance for individuals to gain bargaining power in the labour market, in the last decade it has become a means for employers to gain workers whose knowledge and skill is already tightly harnessed to the 'bottom line'. 

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Adult participation in learning and the economic imperative: a critique of policy in Wales

STEPHEN GORARD
Cardiff University, Wales

A consideration of the policies for post-compulsory education and training for the newly devolved region of Wales in the UK leads to the identification of some clear practical problems in the way of their successful implementation. The policies of target-setting, the economic rationale for learning and the overcoming of barriers via technology contain potential flaws. The evidence for these problems stems from a new large-scale survey of adult learning experiences in Wales described here. It is noteworthy that despite repeated claims by the new National Assembly for Wales for evidence-based policy and practice in education, the recent Education and Training Action Plan which was adopted as policy by the Assembly with all-party support contains no reference to any publicly funded research evidence from Wales (or elsewhere) other than the seriously flawed 'Future Skills Wales' survey. This paper sets out to provide a small part of that missing evidence. While this paper is a consideration of the situation for Wales, the findings will be of more general concern for the UK and other countries in which simple human capital theory forms the basis of much education and training policy.

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Exploring the transformative potential of project-based learning in university adult education

ASTRID VON KOTZE
University of Natal, South Africa

LINDA COOPER
University of Cape Town, South Africa

This paper critically explores the potential of Project Based Learning (Pbl) to facilitate socially transformative kinds of learning. It focuses on a model of Pbl developed at the Catholic University of Leuven for students of 'Social Pedagogy', which has its origins in the social democratic concerns of linking student learning to real-life community problems. The paper explores the pedagogic and epistemological considerations for adopting such a model of Pbl in university adult education in South Africa. It argues that it has the potential of allowing students to construct new knowledge which is action-oriented and socially relevant; of emphasising collective learning and promoting an inclusive approach to knowledge production and dissemination; and of strengthening critical reflectivity and creativity. In the final section, the paper raises concerns around recent shifts that reflect increasing pressures on universities to become more vocationally and market oriented. It concludes that Pbl can as easily be used to support the ideology of 'new vocationalism' as it can to support a more radical education agenda. The challenge facing university adult education in South Africa is how to use Pbl not only to equip students with the means to survive in a 'risk society', but also to build their confidence and ability to challenge and re-negotiate the current terms of globalisation.

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Picking up threads - women pursuing further studies at the University of Zimbabwe

TABETH KAZIBONI
University of Zimbabwe

 The study aims to identify the motivating factors and the barriers encountered by women returning to study at tertiary level at the University of Zimbabwe. Data were collected from two main sources - survey questionnaire and in-depth interview. The study reveals that women in Zimbabwe are returning to study to empower themselves economically, improve their skills at work and to elevate their status in society. It is evident that work overloads and financial constraints hinder their participation. The study shows that these barriers are mainly a result of the gender expectations created by cultural and social values, which have relegated women to second class citizenship and confined them to the home. The government of Zimbabwe, Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and women's agencies' efforts to remove gender discrimination are frustrated by a male-dominated society that is yet to fully accept women as equal partners. Apparently some women seem to accept the situation they are in thus defeating the efforts of those who are trying to uplift them. Out of the study, recommendations are made for policy makers and programme providers to consider in the effort to enhance development of women.  

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The genesis of active citizenship in the learning society

ROSEANNE BENN
University of Exeter, UK

This paper, building on definitions of citizenship from the literature, develops a list of attributes that promotes active citizenship. It then reports on the results of a survey of adult education participants, which aimed to identify, where, if anywhere, these abilities had been acquired. It concludes that the workplace is the main site of learning of citizenship skills with the school setting doing particularly badly. There are messages for adult educators. Citizenship has to be learned like any other skill. However, most effective learning will not take place through the formal curriculum but through positive experiences of participation. Participatory democracy is learned through practice and therefore the adult education experience should itself be an experience of participatory democracy. The skills of citizenship can be learned in any adult classroom. Providers might do well to consider their own list of citizenship skills, perhaps using the ones given here as a starting point. The curriculum, pedagogy and approach to the programme could then be constructed with the aim of developing these skills. 

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The contribution of Individual Learning Accounts to the lifelong learning policies of the UK government: a case-study

JOHN PAYNE
University of Leeds, UK

 This paper reports on a large-scale quantitative survey of adult learners in Bournemouth, Poole and the County of Dorset who have used the UK government's Individual Learning Account (ILA) initiative to fund their learning. It concludes that while there has been an element of public funding substituting for private and employer sources, the initiative has contributed to lifelong learning objectives by drawing in new participants and by encouraging previous participants to take on more demanding learning tasks. It also emphasises that some groups under-represented in 'workplace' learning initiatives (for example older workers, part-timers and the self-employed) have participated in substantial numbers. The importance of advice and guidance in helping people to behave reflexively in a period of intense social and economic change is also stressed. The emphasis throughout is on the empirical data. The evidence is placed, however, within a theoretical framework that sees the outcomes of government policy as fundamentally contested and messy rather than inscribed in the intentions of politicians and civil servants.1