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The study of adult education: epistemology, the subject specialist and research
Barry Bright, University of Hull
Introduction
As an approach to this topic a contextualist perspective may be useful. This involves assuming that teaching and research, and indeed all the activities of lecturing staff within adult education, is a function of the context they are within and from which they emerge. In addition to financial, administrative, institutional, geographic and professional aspects this also includes individual differences and similarities between individuals in terms of their perception of and therefore approach to adult education and other contextual elements (e.g. role of, and degree of commitment to, adult education, attitude towards perceived relationship between first degree subject and adult education, intra-university relationships between departments, etc.). The context as a whole contains a multitude of interacting and interdependent assumptions, expectations and definitions (a priori and post hoc) which are often implicit as opposed to explicit but which, nevertheless, influence and determine behaviour and activities individually and collectively. To fully understand the nature of these activities (for present purposes this includes, obviously, research), and problems concerning their execution and effect, there is a need to consider and analyse both the context from which they emerge and the context to which they are directed (these could be different in terms of objectives and activities if not in a variety of other ways). Only by such analyses can implicit assumptions and value judgements be identified and the possible problems and self-fulfilling prophecies they may entail, be discussed.
Given the complexity of the context within which adult education and its research activities occurs it is not possible here to examine anything but a small part or individual dimension/aspect of it. The context to be considered in more detail further below is the epistemological. Research and teaching in adult education both involve knowledge and thereby define adult education epistemologically. Conversely, the epistemological base utilised by adult education defines and determines both its teaching and its research in content and method. Although teaching and research may be regarded as comprising different activities they may both be influenced in important ways by the same epistemological context they exist within. Therefore questions and analyses concerning the epistemological nature, origin and status of adult education’s knowledge base may be expected to be of importance in terms of its teaching and research activities (depending on the outcome of the analysis). More specifically, the epistemological context of adult education is held to be centrally and fundamentally concerned with the epistemological relationship between it and disciplines such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, economics, history etc.
Adult education and epistemology
A previous analysis[1], I suggested that adult education may be epistemologically dependent upon such disciplines to the extent of being relatively indistinguishable from them, i.e. the psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc. of adult education is essentially mainstream psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc. This was attributed to the assumption and adoption, by adult education, of the academic, theoretical and intrinsic discipline model of the content-method relationship represented by such disciplines. The adoption of this model was held to be fundamentally contradictory since the epistemological structure and nature of adult education displayed opposite characteristics to those of its source disciplines. In terms of the latter, independence characterised inter-disciplinary relationships whilst dependence and inter-relatedness characterised intra-disciplinary relationships. In contrast, adult education was held to be characterised by dependent interdisciplinary and independent intra-disciplinary relationships i.e. by the postulated literal incorporation of the independent academic, theoretical discipline model, adult education contradicts the model it incorporates and becomes a dependent inter-disciplinary composite of its independent source disciplines. It was also suggested that adult education’s adoption of this model and the epistemology it implies, obviates the need to operate upon, inter-relate, synthesise, elaborate or focus its derived content in a manner to delineate the logic and validity of its own activity. Generally this was found not to be the case for other subjects taught at university and at other levels which stand in the same relationship to their knowledge source. Such subjects, which include, for example, town planning, nursing, and education itself, appear not to have adopted the theoretical academic model despite being dependent upon source disciplines which represent it. Such subjects appear to recognise the relationship and tension between theory and practice and define themselves essentially in terms of the latter, an emphasis which is reflected in both teaching and research. Assuming the logic of this analysis, the evidence supporting it and its assumption of the traditional vertical independence of intrinsic disciplines, it would appear to have important implications not least for the definition of adult education itself, its teaching and research activity, the status and treatment of its knowledge base within these activities and the role of the subject specialist operating within it.
With regard to the latter, a research function is institutionally present, the execution of which represents the major research effort within adult education. If the above analysis is correct, its implications for the subject specialist may be expected to be reflected in current and past research. Logically, if adult education’s adoption of the theoretical, independent discipline model of the content-method relationship entails an inherent contradiction, the role of the subject specialist and the activities they engage in must also involve and express this contradiction. In terms of the above analysis, it is suggested that the term ‘subject specialist’ is a misnomer in that it neither applies to an individual’s first degree specialism and its expression within adult education nor to an epistemologically distinct body of knowledge called adult education. In this sense the subject specialist is in an epistemological ‘limbo’. Although expected to demonstrate research prowess in terms appropriate to an academic, theoretical, intrinsic discipline and despite being referred to as the ‘specialist’, the subject specialist within adult education is effectively reduced to generalist in the subject of her/his first degree. Because of the epistemological pervasiveness of the term ‘adult’ in all of its source disciplines, adult education’s failure to attempt to delineate as a professional collective which aspects of the multitude of potentially relevant aspects within source disciplines are or how they can become more relevant, and the reduced teaching time allocated to source disciplines in adult education compared to undergraduate degrees in these subjects, the subject specialist is forced into a generalist mode which isolates her/him from both their specialist subject and adult education. This creates such problems as being out of touch with developments in their first discipline and consequently being out of date in terms of the knowledge they possess. Such problems obviously have research implications but they also generate a lack of confidence in terms of first disciplines and create professional identity problems. Is one a subject specialist working with adult education or a specialist in the subject of adult education? In terms of the above analysis the answer to both questions would appear to be in the negative, epistemologically. Asking or being aware of the question is important in itself, however; if adult education is to develop a distinct body of knowledge, either theoretically or practically defined, it must, it would seem, begin the process of considering answers to this question as, and as part of the process of developing, a professional entity.
Adult education research
Research is one important way by which a discipline or subject develops and consolidates epistemologically and professionally. The current paper, for example, represents (or at least attempts to represent) this process and amounts to research about research from an epistemological perspective, i.e. it attempts to be reflective and, although it contains its own self-fulfilling and questionable assumptions, points to the possible existence of other assumptions and definitions endemic within current approaches to the epistemology of adult education. Yet, how much research of this epistemologically reflective kind is undertaken within adult education and, perhaps more importantly, how much research investigates the relationship between its theoretical knowledge base and its practical activity? Generally, the vast majority of research in adult education reflects directly its epistemological dependence upon and its indistinctiveness from, its source disciplines. Books and articles invariably adopt a within discipline stance and often merely regurgitate findings, principles, theories or perspectives from source disciplines with little interpretation since many of these are implicitly defined in terms of adults. Further and explicit differentiation of different types of adults relative to different theoretical conceptualisations often emanate from within the source disciplines themselves rather than from within adult education. A lot of research is not carried out by practitioners within adult education. Numerous books and articles concerned with the psychology of adults appear to be written by psychologists or by individuals within adult education who adopt a discipline-based approach at a fundamental level (mainly in the US). It could be argued, in this respect, that psychology, for example, has discovered the adult and is busily engaged in differentiating and describing the phenomenon in its own terms and the best methodologies with which to study it. Again in adult education, many books and articles on learning theories amount to ‘cook-books’ of learning principles which could equally be applied to non-adult education and which represent bad eclecticism in the use of mixed theoretical metaphors and philosophical models. Such research violates the epistemology of the theoretical discipline from which they are drawn and contradicts, because of the essentially but largely implicit practical orientation they have, the theoretical academic model of adult education. A practical approach may have to violate the independence of theoretical models within a discipline and/or that existing between disciplines, but this can only be done in full recognition of such an approach and the surrendering of a purely theoretical one. Adult education would appear to be equivocal in this regard and consequently its research fails to fulfil either approach to the detriment of its own identity.
[1] Bright, B. P., ‘The content-method relationship in the study of adult education’, Studies in the Education of Adults, Vol. 17,