Editorial

This is the fortieth volume of Studies in the Education of Adults and the Editorial Board has thought hard about how to celebrate our birthday. We have had many creative ideas (podcasts with previous editors, a digitalisation project to put all our back copies on the web, parties with as many authors as possible), and we may return to some of these over the next year or two. But we decided finally that we wanted to mark the occasion in line with the aims of the journal and through its regular processes. We therefore invite readers to consider submitting articles reflecting on some aspect of the last forty years of the study of the education of adults, using Studies as one possible source of data. These might be full-length papers, or take the form of reports of research in progress or critical comments (see our inside back cover for more details). And, of course, members of the Editorial Board and/or International Advisory Group (IAG) would be delighted to hear from anyone thinking about an idea and wishing to discuss it. We will follow our usual review processes and would hope to publish in our spring 2009 edition, so we would need papers by September 2008 at the latest.

Although an editorial cannot do justice to the journal’s history and to all those who worked so hard to establish and then develop it, a short excursion to mark the occasion is, nevertheless, instructive. I have yet to collect a full run so anyone who would like to donate copies, particularly those published before 1995, should get in touch with me.

When the journal was established, the first editor of what was formerly known as Studies in Adult Education, Professor Tom Kelly from the University of Liverpool, suggested in his foreword that, since adult education had suddenly become a ‘large-scale operation’ (1969, p. 1), far from the much smaller tutorial tradition of the ‘ancient universities’, and because Britain was one of the ‘foremost countries in the world in practising adult education’, the time had come to explore the whole range of adult education in Britain ‘from philosophy to basket-weaving’, in the hope that scholars and practitioners would benefit. The journal was to be published half-yearly (as now), by the British Universities Council for Adult Education (UCAE) which is, despite a name change to the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning, still one of our sponsors. That first edition contained four papers, a substantial book review section and, interestingly, shorter reviews of relevant articles from other journals. The four papers reflected British concerns with: adult education locations and practices such as residential colleges (Garside, 1969) and dual-use adult education centres (Leslie, 1969); policy (Jehu, 1969) with a consideration of the implications of a social services seeking to integrate social, educational and health services for individuals and families); and the study of adult education itself – a paper by Duke and Marriott (1969) argued that social and behavioural sciences were essential to the academic and professional study of the education and training of adults.

The appearance of the journal could be seen as an indication of an identity crisis – how was UCAE to establish adult education as a legitimate intellectual field in universities, while maintaining its authority in adult education practice? Such colonial confidence – that Britain was a foremost country practising adult education – and simultaneously such intellectual defensiveness – the need to make a case for adult educators to draw on theoretical ideas from sociology and other social sciences in order to develop academic and professional self-awareness and critique – could be the basis for an extensive historical analysis of the state of adult education today.

The journal processes also seemed to reflect this identity crisis: all the features we would expect of a journal – a statement of scope and purpose, an indication of how to submit papers, a description of the review process – were absent, suggesting that the journal did not yet see itself as an academic forum. Furthermore, because there was no mention of associate editors or an editorial board of some kind, it appeared that the Editor was solely responsible for the direction and content of the journal: explicit accountability and transparency were not deemed necessary at this stage.

The National Institute of Adult Education (later to become NIACE and still our publisher) took over the journal during the 1990s, with UCAE maintaining its support as a sponsor. SCUTREA became a co-sponsor during the early 1980s, with ESREA joining in 1994. A series of editors – H.A. Jones from the University of Leicester, Stuart Marriott from the University of Leeds, Teddy Thomas from the University of Nottingham, Sallie Westwood from the University of Leicester, John Wallis from the University of Nottingham and Richard Edwards, now at Stirling University – incrementally changed the journal, modernising its processes and making more explicit its aims and accountability structures. For example, during Stuart Marriott’s editorship, a separate reviews editor, management committee and a number of editorial advisors were identified on the inside front cover, and notes for contributors appeared inside the back cover; he introduced a name change (to the current Studies in the Education of Adults) in 1984. The journal’s appearance, relatively untouched for twenty years, was transformed in 1990, during Sallie Westwood’s editorship. In 1995, John Wallis made explicit the principles of the journal for those submitting papers, and Richard Edwards instituted the practice of writing a regular editorial when he took over in 1998. He was also responsible, with NIACE, for developing the online version of the journal, and for establishing the IAG.

Our last edition (39:2) on identity, agency and structure in the education of adults, edited by guest Editor, Kathryn Ecclestone, was only the second symposium in our history (the first, on the learning society, appeared in 1999). We intend to publish another symposium in October 2009 and are therefore publishing a call for papers on Critical Perspectives on Practitioner Research in this edition. The symposium will be guest-edited by Mary Hamilton, University of Lancaster and Yvon Appleby, University of Central Lancashire. More information about the symposium is available immediately after this editorial.

And so we come to this edition. We begin with a piece by Andreas Fejes, which suggests one possible approach for analysing the last forty years of the study of the education of adults. His analysis and critique of the take-up of Foucauldian ideas in post compulsory education and lifelong learning is based on a review of four journals (including Studies) between 1999 and 2006. He argues that Foucault’s ideas have been used superficially, principally as part of a critical discourse, and suggests that they have merit as an interpretative strategy, rather than for decoration (as he puts it). Such an argument is highly contentious, as Fejes demonstrates through his careful defence of his approach, and there is scope within the journal for those who disagree with the analysis and/or conclusions to contribute critical comments (see the inside back cover).

Esther Prins’s ethnography of participation in a Freirean-inspired literacy programme for women and men in rural El Salvador asks critical questions about claims that such programmes foster personal, interpersonal and collective empowerment. Although she recognises the many benefits of these programmes, including the expansion of social networks, she comes to the view that literacy education is a necessary but insufficient basis for changing entrenched social and gender hierarchies (limitations which other researchers have failed to recognise).

Erkki Olkinuora and colleagues from the University of Turku in Finland have also sought to explore critically taken-for-granted assumptions that lifelong learning brings about societal change. They conducted a number of sub-studies with three generations of Finnish adults (young adults, middle-aged and elderly people) in order to explore the meanings of lifelong learning for each. Their argument recognises that the meaning of and willingness to participate in lifelong learning vary considerably between and within generations, and they attribute this in part to changes in the structure and content of the labour market. But they also recognise that the ‘supply’ side of lifelong learning is crucial in this analysis. Such attention to generational aspects of lifelong learning is unusual but instructive in reminding us of the importance of both cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches.

Within the pages of this journal, we have discussed thoroughly the significance of metaphors for learning and their impact on our theoretical understandings, particularly in relation to the metaphors of learning as acquisition and learning as participation. Donovan Plumb introduces a new metaphor – learning as dwelling – derived from the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold. Plumb’s analysis helps us realise that many views of learning rely on the notion of humans as somehow separate from the world, able to conceive of the world prior to acting on it. The ‘learning as dwelling’ metaphor encourages a view of learners as ‘woven’ into their natural, social and cultural worlds and, argues Plumb, offers a rich resource for critiquing common perspectives such as trans - formative learning and learning in communities of practice.

The theme of (and challenge to) the domestic is taken up in Darlene Clover and Joyce Stalker’s comparative analysis of women’s learning and activism through fabric arts and crafts. Drawing on their research on 28 fabric arts projects in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand, they take a feminist approach and argue that such projects are important spaces for both individual and social learning, although they recognise that the broader social and political arena have an impact on the extent to which such projects are seen as public interventions.

We rarely publish research on teachers in the field of adult education, although many of our readers are engaged in the education of such teachers, and/or are teachers themselves. Christian Harteis and Hans Gruber’s study of intuition among teachers tries to examine how new and experienced teachers cope with new situations through intuitive cognitions. The challenge, of course, is to operationalise intuition and, unusually within the field, they resorted to a paper-and-pencil survey (the rational– experiential inventory) which tries to measure intuition in daily life and in teaching. When they found that the results contradicted their predictions, this understandably raised for them both theoretical and methodological questions about their approach. It might also raise questions about the relationships between intuition and learning, and the role of context.

Finally, we publish our only British article of this edition. Elfneh Bariso’s micro-study examines participation in lifelong learning in two areas in London. Such studies are useful in reminding us about the significance of local conditions, as well as the macro contexts which Olkinuora and colleagues deal with.

References
Duke, C. and Marriott, S. (1969) ‘Social science and adult education’, Studies in Adult Education, 1(1), pp.43–64.
Garside, D. (1969) ‘Short-term residential colleges: Their origins and value’, Studies in Adult Education, 1(1), pp. 2–30.
Jehu, D. (1969) ‘Some implications of the Seebohm Report’, Studies in Adult Education, 1(1), pp. 65–70.
Kelly, T. (1969) ‘Editor’s foreword’, Studies in Adult Education, 1(1): p. 1.
Leslie, M. (1969) ‘Dual use of premises in adult education’, Studies in Adult Education, 1(1), pp. 31–45