That philosophy is a dynamic and changing discipline subject to the sociocultural—and indeed, the political—context of the times is underscored by Lawson (1991): “Philosophy and education are intertwined with each other and with the cultural values of our soci­ety. Each reciprocally influences and is in turn influenced by the oth­ers. [A]dult education is produced by the sum of forces operating within society, and educational thinking is influenced by political philosophy as well as by theories of knowledge, theories of existence, and so on” (p. 289). Even the vocabulary we use to express ideas about the philosophy of adult education reflects this exchange. According to Lawson, “The terms do not have fixed immutable meanings; therefore, terms such as adult education remain perpetu­ally fluid and systematically ambiguous. We catch their meaning only as snapshots in time, yet they reflect their origins either by retaining some of the original ethos or by reacting radically against it” (p. 290).

Ideas and Experience: Liberal and Progressive Perspectives

The oldest educational philosophy in Western societies is liberal edu­cation, also called classical humanism and perennialism. This philos­ophy traces its roots back to the Greek philosophers, early and medieval Christian theologians, and Enlightenment scholars such as Locke, Kant, and Hegel. The aim of education was to produce an intelligent, informed, cultured, and moral citizenry. The first expres­sion of this philosophy in North America was in the Colonial col­leges, where the curricula consisted exclusively of liberal studies (philosophy, ancient languages, fine arts, and religion).

Liberal education values dominated educational practice in the United States until the mid-nineteenth century. Adult education, like other areas of education, reflected this tradition. Benjamin Franklin’s Junto, a discussion group whose members wrote essays on politics, philosophy, and ethics, was one of the earliest forms, even­tually merging with the American Philosophical Society (Merriam, 1979). Other examples of adult education reflecting liberal educa­tion philosophies were the establishment of Lowell Institute in Boston, Cooper Union and Bread Winner’s College in New York, the national Lyceum Movement, and Chautauqua (Knowles, 1977). Other examples include the People’s Institute in New York City, Meiklejohn’s Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin, and the San Francisco School of Social Studies (Stubblefield and Keane, 1994). All of these involved reading books and participat­ing in study groups, lectures, and courses in philosophy, religion, sci­ence, literature, the arts, and economics. Then and now, a liberal adult education perspective values the acquisition of knowledge, the development of a rational perspective, and the ability to ana­lyze critically.

Today, the prominence of adult liberal education has been eclipsed by other orientations that are more congruent with contemporary issues and concerns. Nevertheless, there is still evidence of this tra­dition in the Great Books Programs, in college liberal arts curricula, in continuing education programs, and in community-based programs sponsored by libraries, museums, and institutes of higher education. For example, Elderhostel services and Learning-in-Retirement Insti­tutes for older adults are sometimes held on college campuses.

There are also those who continue to espouse a liberal philoso­phy in education and adult education. Adler, who was instrumen­tal in the establishment of the Great Books Program, in 1982 published a manifesto of sorts promoting the need for educating people in the liberal tradition, which Adler thought was the best preparation for lifelong learning. Bloom (1987), in his best-seller The Closing of the American Mind, argues for a liberal education that centers on reading the classics. Likewise, Hirsch, Kett, and Trefil’s Cultural Literacy (1987) is concerned with what knowledge one needs from the Western cultural tradition to be deemed “literate” in today’s world. While both of these books specifically address undergraduate curricula, their perspective and the subsequent debates over appropriate curricula have impacted the growing num­ber of adults returning to higher education. The position the books take may also raise questions for adult educators in other settings. What is the appropriate curriculum for adults in formal or informal educational settings? How do adults best develop critical-thinking skills? Is familiarity with cultural classics necessary to being an edu­cated adult?

A more direct contemporary influence on liberal adult educa­tion is from British philosophers Lawson (1975, 1982) and Pater-son (1979, 1984). In analyzing the concepts of education, adult, and adult education, these philosophers come to the conclusion that education is inherently neutral and that the aim of education is to transmit knowledge that is “educationally worthwhile” (Paterson, 1979, p. 94). According to Paterson, what is educationally worth­while is, for the most part, traditional liberal studies. The role of the teacher is to decide what is worthwhile and to transmit it to students. These views are more accepted in Great Britain—where adult education is defined more narrowly as liberal education—than in the United States.

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the emergence of sci­ence and the scientific method, industrialization, and urbanization mandated a new approach to education—one that was more respon­sive to a growing industrial society. The new approach, loosely referred to as the progressive education movement, drew from the phi­losophy of pragmatism, which placed more value in knowledge derived from observation and experience than from tradition and authority. The dimensions of pragmatism that were particularly appealing to educators and politicians were (1) the acceptance of empirical rationality for understanding and solving social problems; (2) the reliance on experience rather than authority for one’s source of knowledge; and (3) the allowance of social action and social reform as a legitimate concern of politicians, educators, and philoso­phers. By the turn of the century, according to Elias and Merriam (1994), “with the emergence of science and the growth of the new industrial society after the Civil War, the debate between the defend­ers of liberal education and the advocates of a more progressive and pragmatic education grew more intense. Secondary education became more vocationally oriented as the curriculum was expanded to include vocational and life-related subjects. At the same time, progressive education began to dominate the national scene” (p. 19).

The most eloquent and widely known advocate for the applica­tion of pragmatism to education was John Dewey. He was able to translate these new perspectives into concrete educational goals and programs and also to “place education at the very heart of social reform” (Elias and Merriam, 1994, p. 49). From Dewey and others emerged a philosophy of education, the major principles of which found expression in adult education. Those principles are

•          A broadened view of education that goes well beyond liberal education

•          A focus on learners and their needs and experiences rather than on predetermined content

•          The use of scientific methodology incorporating prob­lem-solving, activity, and experience-based approaches to instruction

•          A shift from teacher as authority figure to teacher as facilitator of learning

•          Education as an instrument of social action and social change.

The progressive movement in the United States coincided with the development of the adult education field, and for this reason has had a pervasive impact on adult education. From the 1930s on, many of the architects of the field, such as Eduard Lindeman, Ruth Kotinsky, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Harry and Bonaro Overstreet, Alain Locke, Malcolm Knowles, and Cyril Houle have been pro­foundly influenced by the ideals of progressivism.

Examples of progressive adult education can be found in many forms, including citizenship programs, community education, coop­erative extension courses, many adult basic education approaches, civic education programs (such as public-issues forums), the New School for Social Research, and many programs of the American Association for Adult Education and the Adult Education Associ­ation of the United States of America. Indeed, many contemporary adult educators espouse the principles of progressive education out­lined above, as do numerous adult education programs.

Lindeman, who was directly influenced by Dewey, is probably the most prominent proponent of progressive adult education. His book The Meaning of Adult Education, published in 1926—the same year that the American Association for Adult Education was founded—continues to be a standard resource for articulating the philosophy of contemporary adult education. For Lindeman, the aim of adult education was to improve the individual and society: “changing individuals in continuous adjustment to changing social functions—this is the bilateral though unified purpose of adult learning” (p. 105).

Life experiences play a significant role in adult learning. Linde-man’s “conception” of adult education “points toward a continuing process of evaluating experiences” (p. 85). He advocated a “situa­tion” approach to learning and stated that “the best teaching method is one that emerges from situation experiences” (p. 115). “Every adult person finds himself in specific situations with respect to his work, his recreation, his family-life, et cetera—situations which call for adjustments. Adult education begins at this point” (p. 122). And like Dewey, Lindeman (Gessner, 1956) saw a new role for the teacher: “He is no longer the oracle who speaks from the platform of authority, but rather the guide, the pointer-out, who also participates in learning in proportion to the vitality and rele­vance of his facts and experiences” (p. 160).

Writers after Lindeman have reinforced the applicability of pro­gressive education’s principles to adult education. Bergevin (1967) called for a problem-centered approach to adult education, which was instrumental in the civilizing process and essential for preserv­ing a democratic way of life. Knowles (1980b), who has had a tremendous influence on adult education, developed his theory of andragogy out of both humanistic and progressive philosophies. As Pratt (1993) observes, andragogy rests upon Knowles’s belief in “the ideals of a democratic citizenship and the belief that civic and democratic virtue would arise out of natural self-fulfillment through adult education” (p. 20).

The linking of liberal and progressive philosophies of education in this section reflects their convergence in adult education. Law-son (1991) comments that contemporary adult education “emerged as individualistic, libertarian, egalitarian, and democratic in its main outlines. The picture that emerged did of course represent a whole series of ideas and values drawn from the tradition that gave it birth. It was a picture uniquely suited to liberal democratic societies as they had then developed” (p. 292).

Liberal and progressive philosophies also share some similar goals. Both value the development of critical-thinking skills, as well as an informed and cultured citizenry who can provide leadership in maintaining and enhancing a democratic society. Where they differ is in the means they use to achieve these ends. Instructional methods, curriculum content, and the role of teacher and learner clearly differ in these two orientations.

Performance and Potential: Behaviorist and Humanist Perspectives

Behaviorism is a psychological theory that draws from a number of philosophical systems, most notably logical positivism, which is char­acterized by the view that reality exists external to the knower and can be known through the senses, and that this reality is observable and measurable. Founded by Watson in the 1920s and developed into a scientific system by Skinner between the 1930s and 1970s, behaviorism is concerned with the overt, observable behavior of animals and humans.

Behaviorists believe that human actions are the result of prior conditioning and the way in which a person’s external environment is arranged. Emotions, feelings, intellect, and so on are the means by which humans rationalize their responses to environmental stim­uli. Much of the early research on adult learning was conducted from a behaviorist perspective, the most notable being Thorndike’s (1928) studies.

It was Skinner (1974), however, who brought behaviorism to the forefront of American education. The now familiar concepts of reinforcement and operant conditioning were readily applied by Skinner and others to learning and hence to the entire educational enterprise. Skinner also provided a philosophical base for his psy­chology of behaviorism. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), Skinner proposes that by arranging the environment to elicit desired responses, we can control human behavior and thereby develop a better society—and ultimately ensure the survival of the human species. Skinner’s philosophy sees personal freedom as an illusion: the “struggle for freedom is not due to a will to be free, but to certain behavioral processes characteristic of the human organ­ism, the chief effect of which is the avoidance of or escape from the so-called ‘aversive’ features of the environment” (1971, p. 42). In Skinner’s philosophy, a carefully designed educational system is key to survival.

Many concepts and practices in education (including adult edu­cation)—such as behavioral objectives, accountability, competency-based curricula, instructional design models, and some program-planning and evaluation models—are behaviorist in nature. Tyler’s Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, first published in 1949 and still in print today, is a good example of a planning model from a behaviorist orientation. Most contemporary program-planning models have drawn heavily from Tyler (see Sork and Busky, 1986). Furthermore, at least two arenas in which adult education takes place—business and industry and the military—work largely out of a behaviorist model in the design, implementation, and evaluation of training. It is in fact telling that education in these settings is referred to as “training.” Much of the burgeoning literature in human resource development is firmly rooted in a behaviorist phi­losophy (see, for example, Carnevale, Gainer, and Villet, 1990; Jacobs, 1987; Nadler and Nadler, 1989).

Like liberal philosophy, humanism as a philosophy draws from the same Greco-Roman thinkers, from the Italian Renaissance, and from the Enlightenment scholars of the eighteenth century. Unlike liberal philosophy, however, humanism is a very broad philosophy that has been able to incorporate a number of expressions and themes over the years, including scientific humanism, Christian humanism, Marxist humanism, and existentialism. This ability to absorb several emphases has led to the popularity of humanism as a philosophy for formulating educational practice.

Drawing heavily from the philosophy of humanism, humanistic psychology emerged as a challenge to behaviorism’s reign in the early decades of the twentieth century. Known generally as the “third force,” humanistic psychology objected to the deterministic per­spective of human behavior favored by behaviorism and Freudian psychoanalytic theory. By the mid-1950s, writings by Maslow, Rogers, Buhler, and Bugental—all prominent psychologists—had estab­lished humanistic psychology’s view of human nature and learning. Philosophy and psychology from a humanist perspective came together midcentury with the codification of basic principles and tenets in the Humanist Manifesto I and II, and in the principles delineated by the Association for Humanistic Psychology (Elias and Merriam, 1994).

Assumptions common to both humanistic philosophy and psy­chology are as follows. First, human nature is intrinsically good. Human beings are free and autonomous creatures who exercise choice in determining their behavior. Humanism also emphasizes the notion of the self—a self that has the potential for growth and development, for self-actualization. Finally, the focus on self does not mean self-centeredness; a person has the responsibility to develop to the fullest, which in turn contributes to the good of humanity in general.

These tenets mesh particularly well with American democratic values, which emphasize independence, individualism, and self-ful­fillment. The translation of these humanistic assumptions into edu­cation, primarily by Rogers (1969, 1983), has resulted in the shaping of contemporary adult education into a humanism-based practice.

When applied to education, and to adult education in particu­lar, humanistic assumptions lead to a focus on developing the potential of the learner; indeed, the development of persons is an oft-expressed goal of the entire enterprise of adult education. Fur­ther, humanistic education is learner-centered because the view assumes that learners are internally motivated, can identify their own needs, and can make decisions about content, instructional method, and evaluation. The teacher is a facilitator of students’ learning, not an authoritative dispenser of information. The learn­ing transaction necessitates affective as well as cognitive involve­ment; consequently, learning has an impact not just on the behavior but also on the attitudes and personality of the learner. To effect this involvement, instructional techniques that are experiential, nonthreatening, and collaborative work best.

Many adult educators research and write from a humanist per­spective. Probably the most prominent writer in the field is Mal­colm Knowles, whose work on self-directed learning, groups, and andragogy are clear expressions of humanistic psychology. Andra-gogy is Knowles’s charter for adult learning. It consists of assump­tions about the learner and explains how those assumptions translate into practice.

In an essay titled “Andragogy After Twenty-Five Years,” Pratt (1993) finds that andragogy is based on the humanistic values of placing the individual at the heart of the learning transaction, of believing in the goodness of human nature and the potential for growth and fulfillment, and of valuing autonomy and self-direction. “Clearly,” Pratt concludes, “andragogy is saturated with the ideals of individualism and entrepreneurial democracy” (p. 21).

Andragogy and self-direction in learning have come to define much of what is considered unique to adult education. Self-directed learning has, in and of itself, evolved into a major thrust of research and theory-building in adult education, and its predominant orien­tation is humanistic (Brockett and Hiemstra, 1991; Caffarella, 1993).

With its broad philosophical and psychological base, humanistic adult education has seen several other recent expressions in the lit­erature. McKenzie, drawing from humanism, liberal education, and existentialism, wrote two books presenting a philosophical framework for adult education (1978, 1991). In the earlier work, McKenzie sug­gests that adult education can effect a courageous, Promethean spirit in individual learners. He offers seven mostly humanistic principles about the goals of adult education. In his 199l book, McKenzie proposes that the ultimate goal of adult education is for adults to construct a worldview that is personally meaningful. Adults can do this on their own, “but insofar as any educational experience con­tributes to a person’s interpretive understanding of the world, edu­cation is involved in worldview construction” (p. 109).

Sometimes considered a separate school of philosophy, phenom­enology has emerged as another perspective on adult education. Like McKenzie, Stanage (1987) offers the field a way of thinking about adult education—in this case, from the perspective of investigating various phenomena central to the field using the “tools” of phe-nomenological analysis. It is in his focus on feelings, consciousness, and experiences of the adult learner that Stanage expresses a humanistic orientation.

Finally, Jarvis’s writing on types of learning and paradoxes of learning can be seen to draw from humanism as well as from exis­tentialism and critical social theory. He writes, for example that “teaching and reflective learning and human growth and develop­ment are all facilitated in the process of genuine human interaction. Teaching is a humanistic enterprise, and only in human relation­ships is it possible to establish the best conditions for human growth” (1992, p. 245).

Critical Philosophy

The emergence of a critical or radical philosophical framework in American adult education can be dated to the late 1960s and early 1970s in the writings of Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich. Their work is considered “radical in the political sense of utilizing education to bring about social, political, and economic changes in society” (Elias and Merriam, 1994, p. 139).

A radical perspective draws heavily from the views of Karl Marx, who maintained that capitalism produces a class structure wherein the ruling class owns the means of production and thus has control over—and in fact exploits—the working class. To bring about a more egalitarian (what Marx called “classless”) society, revolution­ary change in social, political, and economic structure must occur.

Most societies use institutionalized education to reinforce and perpetuate the status quo—that is, the power arrangements and class structure in place. This line of thinking led Illich (1970) to call for the deschooling of society, and prompted Ohliger to mount an attack against mandatory adult education (Elias and Merriam, 1994).

Critical philosophies share with progressivism a commitment to social change. However, unlike progressives, who base their view on the assumption that the system of democracy is basically good and that change can be brought about by modifying the system, those with critical views tend to see capitalistic and democratic per­spectives as fundamentally flawed. The critical perspective, then, holds that change can best occur when the existing system is aban­doned and replaced with a different perspective.

The most eloquent proponent of the radical position was, and still is, the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Maintaining that edu­cation can be used to effect radical social change and liberate (as well as domesticate and oppress), Freire has had a profound influ­ence on adult education worldwide. Freire’s educational philoso­phy can be found in a number of publications (1970, 1973, 1985; see also Freire and Faundez, 1989; Shor and Freire, 1987), and is summarized by Beder: “Freire (1970) believes that the oppressed lack critical consciousness of the forces that control their lives, and lacking that consciousness, they are powerless to redress the oppres­sion that dominates their lives. The role of adult education is, through dialogue with learners, to facilitate acquisition of critical consciousness. Once learners become conscious of the forces that control their lives, they become empowered, and empowerment leads to action” (p. 47).

Two recent works drawing from a Marxist base are by Inkster (1985) and Youngman (1986). Inkster’s work has a historical focus on mechanics’ institutes, while Youngman looks at restructuring contemporary adult education. Youngman finds Freire’s philosophy and pedagogy too broad-based and eclectic to guide adult education practice; he instead proposes a socialist pedagogy based on an explicit Marxist framework wherein “general knowledge and tech­nical expertise” are acquired to “reorganise production and society in a fully democratic way” (p. 197).

A critical philosophical stance also draws from critical theory and feminist theory, both of which acknowledge their linkages to Freirian concepts of oppression, liberation, and empowerment. In addition, both look to society and how it is structured to understand how certain individuals come to be in more powerful positions than others. Both are interested in finding ways to empower individuals and groups to change the oppressive conditions of their lives. While critical theory focuses more on economics and the institutions of society, feminist theory emphasizes interlocking systems of sex, race, and class in analyzing assumptions and power relationships that serve to oppress and control women.

When applied to adult education, critical theory’s main thrust has been to critique the field’s growing preoccupation with tech­nical competence at the expense of social action. For example, C. Griffin (1983, 1987) suggests that instead of defining itself in terms of needs, designs, strategies, and structures, adult education should define itself in terms of the philosophical and political ideals that commit workers to the field in the first place.

Collins (199l) also laments the field’s being sidetracked into the “ideology of technique,” and he calls for adult educators to be polit­ically involved: “A critical practice of adult education provides a context where shared commitments towards a socially more free, just, and rational society will coalesce. If these shared concerns are to drive a transformative pedagogy, . . . conventional notions of professionalization will have to be set aside in favour of a voca­tion that seeks to work directly with . . . popular constituencies” (p. 119). Pietrykowski (1996) argues that adult educators must be “attuned to the various ways in which power is deployed through their own discourse about particular discipline-specific knowledge” (p. 82).

A practical illustration of critical theory in the context of adult literacy can be found in deMarrais (1991). Using the case study of “John,” she explains how John’s socioeconomic background and his early experiences with schooling resulted in his being functionally illiterate at age thirty-five. “Critical theory,” she writes, “takes the burden of school failure from individual students and looks to other reasons for these failures” (p. 17).

Feminist theory, which includes a diverse range of views, is also influencing philosophical thinking in adult education. Indeed, ele­ments of humanistic psychology, radical thought, and critical the­ory can be found in various feminist writings. Some writers, such as Hart (1992), focus on the structured nature of power relations in society that results in women being marginalized; others emphasize the individual woman and how women come to be empowered. Whether the analysis is from a societal or an individual frame, the key is a critical stance toward women’s experience.

Feminist pedagogy explores these issues from the context of education. In adult education, a number of writers have examined curricula and instructional practices in light of women’s experi­ences and have suggested ways to enhance women’s learning (Blun-dell, 1992; Hayes, 1989; Hayes and Colin, 1994; Tisdell, 1993a, 1995).

Critical theory and feminist theory as parts of the critical philosophical perspective represent the most recent thinking and writing in adult education. They present the field with provoca­tive analyses of our practice and call attention to some of the assumptions under which the growing enterprise of adult education operates. In a sense they stretch and extend, yet underscore Freire’s notions of oppression and empowerment.

Yet another perspective beginning to have an impact on adult education—and one that draws from a number of philosophical frameworks, including critical theory and feminist epistemology—is constructivism. Sharing the reaction of Gestalt psychologists against behaviorists who reduce a phenomenon to its parts (reductionism), constructivists believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Rather than being a single unified theory, though, construc­tivism is “a cluster of related perspectives that are united in their underlying view of the world” (Candy, 1991, p. 254).

Phillips (1995), for example, sketches contributions to con­structivism from science and math education, cognitive science, feminist writings, Kuhn’s work on scientific revolutions and para­digms, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, and Dewey’s and James’s ideas on knowledge construction. He compares construc­tivism with “a secular religion,” and states that “as in all living reli­gions, constructivism has many sects” (p. 5).

What all these strains of constructivism have in common is the notion that reality can be known only subjectively (a moderate con-structivist view) or that reality apart from the knower does not exist (a more radical view). Knowledge is the meaning that people make out of their experiences. Individuals construct meaning, but cul­tures are also socially constructed realities. Some constructivists are more concerned with perception and cognitive activity, others with affective domains, and still others with sociopolitical constructions of knowledge.

Constructivism has recently captured the interest of K–12 edu­cators, and we are beginning to see it framing some of the thinking in adult education. As Phillips (1995) observes, “[T]he educational literature on constructivism is enormous, and growing rapidly” (p. 5). Candy’s book (1991) on self-directed learning is also from a constructivist perspective. “Learning,” Candy writes, is “an active process of constructing a system of meanings and then using these to construe or interpret events, ideas, or circumstances. As such, the constructivist view of learning is particularly compatible with the notion of self-direction, since it emphasizes the combined charac­teristics of active inquiry, independence, and individuality in a learning task” (p. 278, emphasis in original).

Mezirow’s theory (1991a) of perspective transformation, with its focus on meaning-making and individual growth and development, also draws from both constructivism and humanistic psychology.

Engaging in Philosophical Thinking

We have presented (1) a rationale for the importance of engaging in philosophical thinking and (2) a review of several existing philosophical frameworks, any one of which a practitioner might adopt as a personal philosophy of adult educa­tion. More commonly, one might operate from an eclectic position, choosing compatible aspects of different theories to explain and guide practice. There are even inventories available to assist adults in this process (O’Neil, 1981; Zinn, 1990). Particularly helpful is Zinn’s Philosophy of Adult Education Inventory (PAEI) (Zinn, 1990). Based on the schools of philosophy outlined in Elias and Merriam (1994), PAEI is designed for adult education practitioners who want to identify their personal philosophy of education and compare it with prevailing philosophies.

Working from existing schools of thought has its drawbacks, however. As Apps (1985) has observed, this approach “can prevent analysis and original thought. Once one reads through a description of these various philosophies, the tendency is to try to fit one’s own philosophy into one of these established philosophies. Once one has done so, the inclination is to become comfortable with this new-found intellectual home and stop questioning and challenging and constantly searching for new positions. We cannot retreat into someone else’s philosophy as a kind of storm cellar that protects us from facing our practice head on” (pp. 72–73).

As an alternative, Apps suggests a process in which we first iden­tify beliefs we hold about adult education; we then search for con­tradictions among our beliefs. The next step is to try to uncover the sources of our beliefs, such as personal experience or the authority of others. Finally, we evaluate our beliefs, considering which ones to maintain and which ones we might want to change. This “belief analysis process” puts us in touch with our own implicit philosophy of adult education.

Apps (1985) provides some additional concrete activities for engaging in a philosophical analysis. We can examine the assump­tions that underlie our own or someone else’s practice, clarify defi­nitions, search for metaphors, or examine slogans. Hiemstra (1988b) suggests a similar process using a “Personal Philosophy Worksheet.” This worksheet asks you to identify, for example, your beliefs about reality and the nature of being human, as well your views about pro­fessional practice, including its aims, method, and content.

Once we are comfortable with articulating some of the beliefs and values we hold about our practice, we might go a step further and critically reflect on the origin of these beliefs and how we have come to adopt them. The critical school of philosophy offers us a model of some of the questions and issues we might raise. How have our positions in organizations and social structures defined our values? What part do power and oppression play in how we define the world? How has adult education’s historically marginalized status affected our stance vis-à-vis national educational policy? How has the drive to professionalize colored our values? Connecting our per­sonal views to the larger sociohistorical context may lead to a richer and deeper understanding of why we do what we do in our practice.

A final suggestion for engaging in philosophical inquiry is to examine some of the ethical dilemmas that arise in practice settings. Ethics is in fact a branch of philosophy that deals with moral rea­soning and moral behavior. Since ethical behavior is based on val­ues, a discussion of ethical issues can serve to uncover personal values and beliefs. Articulating one’s values provides a starting point for formulating a philosophy.

There are any number of ethical issues in adult education that could stimulate this kind of inquiry. Singarella and Sork (1983) and Brockett (1988a) have identified the areas of program planning, marketing, administration, evaluation, the teaching-learning trans­action, and research as fraught with questions of ethical conduct. In a study of adult education practitioners and their ethical con­cerns, McDonald and Wood (1993) conclude that “the ethical dilemmas cited by practitioners in the study as examples of what they encounter are dramatic testimony to the profound and varied ethical issues that they face” (p. 256). The authors call for “more dialogue (and more urgent dialogue) among practitioners locally and in the professional organizations about ethical problems, ethi­cal practice, and the roles that codes of ethics can play” (p. 256).

Our experiences in working with learners attempting to sort out their philosophy of adult education suggest that the best place to begin is with situations, incidents, or issues from everyday prac­tice. What tensions have you felt with colleagues, for example? What policies have been difficult to formulate? When have you needed to make a choice between several courses of action? What has been the point beyond which you refuse to compromise in a given situation?

Any such incident can be examined for the underlying assump­tions, the hidden agendas, the beliefs that may have structured your and others’ responses. Bringing these to the forefront and reflecting on them begins the process of articulating individual philosophies.

Adult Education for Social Change

Concurrent with the “economic” agenda has been a focus on social action. As Cunningham (1989) points out,

A reading of history in which adult education is freed from the concept of schooling should also indicate its rich tradition in bringing about social change. The edu­cation of adults is a social activity, not a discipline, and can be seen as unique in that its history is not made behind the backs of people; it is made by people. And the history that is made can be influenced by the educational process; thus adult education has been, and is today, a contributor to social transformation, even if this fact has been largely ignored [p. 40].

Writers point to labor colleges, folk schools, settlement houses, land grant colleges, cooperatives, and so on as early examples of this orientation (Cunningham, 1989; Lovett, 1988; McLaren and Lankshear, 1994). Third World development projects, old and new social movements, community-action initiatives, and the High­lander Center for Research and Education are contemporary exam­ples (Cunningham, 1989; Galbraith, 1990; Holford, 1995; McLaren and Lankshear, 1994; Newman, 1994; M. K. Smith, 1994).

Lovett (1988) believes that the “tradition of linking adult edu­cation to movements for social change is re-emerging as adult edu­cators grapple with the social, economic, political and moral issues facing people in complex, violent, unequal and rapidly changing society” (p. xv). This reemergence, or perhaps growth, of adult edu­cation for social change—whether evolutionary or revolutionary (Hamilton and Cunningham, 1989)—challenges mainstream “eco­nomic” adult education on several fronts.

Major Concepts of Education for Social Change

Education that focuses on bringing about social change, whether in the form of community development, community education, or nonformal or popular education, holds in common certain beliefs or values.

Collaborative Learning

Social-change education nearly always hinges on collaborative learn­ing: it is with people, not for them, and it regards individual learning as a by-product of collective learning and not an end in itself. This collaborative type of learning is locally initiated and locally controlled, and to take place it requires space—both physical and psychological—for groups of people to create their own knowledge and examine the roles that power and oppression play in society. In his book Local Education, M. K. Smith (1994) gives a fair amount of attention to notions of space, time, and place. “Local educators,” he writes, “have to co-ordinate activities with the rhythms and con­tours of the neighbourhood” (p. 87). The modes of work include being about, being there, working with individuals and groups, working on projects, doing administration and research, and reflect­ing on practice.

According to Smith, everyday conversations in everyday places within the community hold as much potential for change and learning as do more formal discussions and dialogues. Collabora­tive group exercises, discussions, and dialogues are all, of course, well-documented techniques in adult education literature, and Freire’s problem-posing and dialogical method are often cited as appropriate strategies for collaborative learning. Educators work­ing for social change warn, however, that merely appropriating these techniques is not the answer. Macedo (1994) proposes “an anti-method pedagogy that refuses the rigidity of models and methodological paradigms. The anti-method pedagogy forces us to view dialogue as a form of social praxis so that the sharing of expe­riences is informed by reflection and political action. . . . The anti-method pedagogy also frees us from the beaten path of certainties and specialisms” (p. xviii).

Collaborative learning comes up against mainstream profes­sional practice when it runs counter to much of what is espoused about adult learning in North America. Andragogy, with its empha­sis on the individual adult learner’s characteristics and its human­istic ethos of personal development, has little to say about collaborative learning, critical thinking, and transformative learning—especially as characterized by Mezirow (1990, 1991a). And while collaborative learning, group interac­tion, and dialogical methods are espoused in the literature, actual practice in North America is more governed by competition, indi­vidual achievement, and didactic modes of instruction (Beder, 1987; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986; Tisdell, 1995).

Knowledge Production

A second defining factor of education for social action is the con­cept of knowledge. Knowledge, which is so fundamental to defining the profession of adult education, is construed quite differently from a social-action perspective. Knowledge is more than what is produced by society’s systems of government, business, and education and transmitted to the less knowledgeable. Legiti­mate knowledge can also be produced by the disenfranchised, those without degrees or certificates, and the uneducated. Social-action education “helps people to create their own knowledge, to celebrate their own culture, and to study their own history” (Hamilton and Cunningham, 1989, p. 443). Furthermore, this knowledge creation is a dialectic and dynamic process with no concluding, permanent, or objective end point. Knowledge is what is produced when peo­ple make sense out of their world, according to their experience in it. Knowledge is also what people construct to deal with the world as they experience it—the tools, approaches, and methods that work best in the particular situation.

In an interesting essay on the history of knowledge, R. Johnson (1988) traces what “really useful knowledge” has meant from a rad­ical perspective. He concludes: “Who produces the knowledges and for what reasons was a central issue for nineteenth-century radicals. Their answer was very clear: in the end it is the people’s knowledges that change the world. This means that self-education, or knowl­edge as self-production, is the only knowledge that really matters. Others may be resources here, but in the end you cannot be taught, you can only learn. Really useful knowledge occurs only in an active mood, and must have its active centre among subordinated social groups, the equivalents of ‘the people’” (p. 29).

The starting point, then, for social change is the notion that people can create knowledge that is more relevant, useful, and empowering than knowledge brought in by outsiders.

Power

Knowledge creation is linked to the concept of power. The goal of popular education “is to transform social reality into a more demo­cratic state by confronting dominant and dominating institutions through the creation of opposing knowledges—through the cele­bration of many indigenous cultures and the writing of many histo­ries of and by the people” (Hamilton and Cunningham, 1989, p. 443). This is akin to what Smith (1994) refers to as “embedding practice” in the local social system and community. Understanding the networks of power relations and the boundaries of power leads to challenging inequalities and ultimately seeking to change the bal­ance of power. Such work is, of course, highly political and some­times dangerous. It involves making visible that which has been assumed to be true and which maintains control of the powerful over the powerless. An analysis of power from the standpoint of what peo­ple know, rather than what they are told, leads to the identification of forms of oppression. Some of these forms are subtle—”part of the basic fabric of social life” (McLaren and Lankshear, 1994, p. 4).

Equally important to studying forms of oppression through an analysis of power is that in doing so, individuals and groups become empowered. In Freire’s words, people come out of a “culture of silence,” “name their world,” and realize that they can be actors in changing the world (1970). Newman (1994), in a provocative analy­sis of social-action adult education, writes that people not only need to name the world, but need to name the enemy as well: “When we ask who the enemies are we should try to prevent our learners [from] retreating into abstractions” and “depersonalised concepts such as society or hegemony or the unequal distribution of wealth. As far as possible we need to see these kinds of concepts as tools for analysis to be used in the search, not [as] the enemies themselves” (p. 149).

Analyzing power and oppression are only starting points, New­man suggests. “We and our learners need to find out more. . . . Who are the people, what are the organisations . . . [w]here do they oper­ate? Can we name them and do they have an address? (1994, p. 149; emphasis in original). Once we identify them, there are other ques­tions: “Are they really the enemy? Are they main players or bit play­ers in the exercise of oppression? Are they beneficiaries of a hegemonic control or merely the foot soldiers?. . . . What kind of power do they wield?” (p. 149)

Empowerment allows individuals and communities “to control certain aspects of their lives” (Hamilton, 1992, p. 84). This notion of empowerment has three dimensions, according to Hamilton (1992). The first is a cognitive dimension in which group members understand “their history, social status, conditions of subordination, and the related reasons for current conditions” (p. 85). The psy­chological component, which is the second dimension, refers to the affective, feeling aspects of empowerment, including self-esteem and self-confidence. The third dimension, economic, “refers to the cre­ation or development of productive activity that will enable citi­zens to improve their financial condition” (p. 85).

Praxis

Shared knowledge of oppression is aimed toward collective action to change that oppression. This leads to another important con­cept in social-action education: praxis—the interaction of reflec­tion and action. Without the doing, without taking action, all of the analysis or reflection is disempowered. In the notion of praxis that Freire presented, “reflection and action are both contained in praxis and cannot be isolated one from the other. The two activi­ties fuse into one dynamic process in which the learners act on themselves and on their world, bringing about a change in their own consciousness and in the way they engage with other people, organisations, institutions and objects around them” (Newman, 1994, p. 110).

The action component of education for social change takes many forms. It might be as individual as reporting sexual harass­ment or demanding access to a public official. It might be a collec­tive protest, a mass demonstration, a concerted effort to expose inequities in power and control. Newman (1994) writes that tak­ing action can include many strategies, including parleying with the other parties, consulting, and making a decision to collaborate. These strategies can be employed “guardedly” and “with one’s own interests uppermost in one’s mind” (p. 160).

Another set of strategies—negotiating, cooperating, or educating— assumes that learners have both common and conflicting interests. Lastly, if interests are predominantly in conflict, learners can dis­engage, defend, infiltrate, subvert, oppose, contest, challenge, or attack. Newman’s strategies are defined less by the nature of the conflict than by the nature of the learning: “Learning by defining the enemy does not necessarily lead to open conflict or impossible divisions. On the contrary, unions develop modes of working with managements. Feminists have accepted the collaboration of men in the pursuit of the cause. And indigenous people can work towards reconciliation with their invaders. But if the focus in the learning is not on the learners’ own condition so much as the condition, nature, and motives of their opponents, then the learning is likely to be clear-sighted, and the strategies realistic” (1994, p. 162).

The notion of praxis centers on a dialectic between reflection, or learning, and action; each informs the other, is defined by the other, and changes in relation to the other. This close connection between reflection and action is yet another way in which this “invisible” side of adult education challenges the mainstream. Because this dialectic is commonly couched in terms of the dis-juncture between theory and practice—between the practical and the scientific—professional adult educators have found it difficult to wed the two concepts in any meaningful way. Practitioners com­plain that theories and research about adult education that make up the knowledge base have little relevance to their everyday practice; professionals, and in particular academicians, lament what they see as the aimlessness and atheoretical nature of practice.

While the schism between reflection and action—that is, between theory and practice—is recognized, mainstream adult edu­cators do little about it. Newman (1994) poses a number of reasons for this, several of which reflect the disempowerment of professional adult educators themselves by their own rhetoric and forms of knowledge. For example, faith in human potential and the positive individual growth and development of learners has led adult edu­cators to be too nice, “too understanding, too ready to hear the other point of view, too caring, too nurturing” (p. 19). This results in an inability to define the enemy in any realistic way. In the same manner, many adult educators focus on helping people function bet­ter in the existing system, never questioning whether the system itself is creating artificial learning needs in the first place.

Probably the most promising mainstream effort to link reflection and action in the service of a social-action agenda is in the area of critical theory and critical thinking. Both Mezirow (1985, 1991a, 1991b, 1994) and Brookfield (1987a) propose that adult learning should be about developing critical thinkers who examine assump­tions and the world in which they live. Such learning can lead to empowerment, transformation, and emancipation—in short, social action. Both educators, however, have been criticized for empha­sizing the internal and individual nature of the process, with few guidelines as to how it actually plays out in the community. New­man (1994) writes, “Neither [Brookfield nor Mezirow] satisfactorily describes how learning for perspective transformation or critical thinking might contribute in a political struggle when the battle lines are drawn and the parleying is over” (p. 47).

Thus, a large arena of practice in North American adult educa­tion is rarely if ever considered in descriptions of the field and in discussions about professionalization. Adult education that has an agenda of social action or social change works largely outside main­stream cultural, economic, political, and educational institutions.

Indeed, its very nature challenges mainstream philosophies, beliefs, and assumptions. Its emphasis on collaborative learning, its views of knowledge construction, its analysis of power, and its wedding of reflection and action in the notion of praxis are all factors foreign to or only partially acknowledged by mainstream adult education. Because of what social-action adult education tries to do, it is ren­dered invisible by the rest of the field.

This analysis of such invisibility is meant to raise questions about the desirability of professionalizing the field of adult education. We do not mean to suggest that adult education should be only about social action or that adult education for social action does not have its own issues and tensions, some of which are shared by the main­stream field. R. Johnson (1988), for example, observes that the social movements of the 1970s were “strong precisely among those groups with the most extensive experience of formal education, especially in its more autonomous spaces in and around colleges and universities” (p. 27). Recently, Holford (1995) called for more study of the role of “movement intellectuals” who may hold ambivalent positions vis-à-vis the movement’s interests (p. 108).

Further tensions are caused by an emphasis on individual ver­sus collective empowerment, which according to Lovett (1988) is “the demand for access to educational institutions as opposed to the concern for local space for, and control over, their own educa­tional resources; the tension between concern with method as against an emphasis on content” (p. xxii). Even more problematic, but rarely addressed in the literature, is the potential for social-action education to cause the substitution of one form of oppres­sion and control with another. “How far . . . are radical adult educators prepared to engage in a fully democratic community edu­cation?” ask Taylor and Ward (1988, p. 251). “In a context where unemployed whites think that unemployment would be solved by ‘repatriation’ of black people and, generally, the adoption of National Front–type policies, are the facilitating roles of community education to be used? Obviously not: but how does this tally with community control?” (p. 251

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