Adult education research and its relevance to adult education practice

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Adult education research and its relevance to adult education practice

Colin Titmus, University of Leeds
Stuart Marriott, University of Leeds
Kjell Rubenson, Universities of British Columbia and Linköping

Degrees of impurity

Stuart Marriott

This contribution ruminates about approaches to the problem of ‘pure research’ in relation to the study of continuing education. It explores a number of unresolved puzzles which I brought away from the symposium on ‘Discipline-based research’ at the 1986 meeting of SCUTREA. My points of departure are the widespread feeling that we need to firm up our intellectual credentials, and the equally widespread doubt and disagreement about how that is to be done.

I take somewhat as given the quite extensive literature contrasting ‘disciplines’, ‘perspectives’, and ‘fields of study’. It throws some light on the position of ‘education’ in the academic pantheon, but there is probably not much to be gained by further elaboration in that direction. Neither shall I refer to the ‘realms of knowledge’ debate fomented by philosophers and epistemologists in education; it is an important debate, but one which does not quite pin-point what concerns me.

Ramos (1981) has argued that to be worthy of recognition for graduate-level study, a subject must be capable of establishing its epistemological foundations from within its own resources. This looks like an autarkic fantasy: it is philosophically questionable and practically incorrect. The setting up of a ‘graduate school’ depends on social convention, political and financial astuteness, and the manufacture of acceptability. (An interesting fact about the founding fathers of modern sociology, Durkheim and Weber for example, is the considerable amount of time and energy they gave to shaping the institutional structures of their calling, to organising professional associations, conferences, journals and so on, in addition to writing about intellectual and methodological foundations.) Research is organised knowledge, and that is as much a matter of social co-ordination as of epistemological or practical progress. Becher (1983, 1984) has studied various areas of intellectual endeavour in universities from the perspective of cultural anthropology. His implicit message is that we should not worry unduly about whether this or that is or is not genuinely a ‘discipline’; institutional acceptance is the key, and it is more productive to clear our minds about how this or that actually works once it is in place.

According to Becher, education as a university subject is to be placed among the applied social sciences, sharing their position below the academic salt, dependence on soft knowledge, and domination by intellectual fashion rather than by cumulative scholarly or technical achievement. Fashion is a correlate of faction: educational studies provide a home for essentially competing schools of thought, and are classified by Becher as a ‘power culture’; correspondingly, external influence is registered less through demonstrable skill or authority than through ideological negotiation and persuasion. All this I take to apply with a vengeance to the study of education for adults. Thus the questions arise, internally and externally, ‘Whose adult educational knowledge?’ and ‘Knowledge for what purposes?’ Or perhaps we wobble between ages of innocence (the early 1960s?) when the answers seem so obvious that such questions do not suggest themselves, and ages of imprecation (the mid 1970s?) when they are reinvented and posed with increasing aggressiveness.

An innocent version is found in Coolie Verner’s early work on the ‘theory of method’ (1959,1962). For Verner the catalogue of concerns in the university study of adult education was generated by the inherent organisational logic of the institutions that actually existed to promote and deliver adult education. It did not take long for that kind of position to be undermined: education for adults was seen as an increasingly diverse field and administrative definitions became looser; it turned into an increasingly conflict-ridden field, demanding, for some, ideological opposition to any or all officially sponsored delivery organisations; for others the discovery of self-directed learning led to a studied neglect of formal institutions; and so on.

Critical sociology supersedes the study of practical administration, but are we any better off? What has happened to the mould-breaking doctrines of yesteryear? Curiously enough, all these turns of fashion seem to be underlain by an almost universal view that the study of education for adults is pretty directly concerned with equipping policy makers, administrators and practitioners to do a job better. The conflicts are really about the scope and definition of the job, the identification of patron saints, and the appointment of tomorrow’s standard bearers. The intellectual apparatus deployed is too often derivative, stale even, set up to produce foregone conclusions.

I do not suppose I shall receive automatic applause for saying, as I happen to believe, that the ‘university’ is definable as the place where, among other things, knowledge and insight are to be pursued ad libitum. It is a point of view that demands far finer argument than there is scope for here. I must keep to the question of the relationship between relatively pure knowledge-gathering and the education of educators of adults. Is there anything to be said for a dish of disciplinary or intellectual purism in this banquet of study and research to which we invite practitioners? Are there subjects worth tasting because in the judgement of the teacher/supervisor they simply nourish? (From personal experience I could list a number of studies, historical and social-psychological, which have greatly enriched my awareness and possibly even my practice of the trade. They bear on education for adults, but they are not about education for adults, and equally significantly they were written, not by fellow tradesmen, but by authors concerned to gather much wider swathes of human experience.)

Dissent from the tyranny of ‘applied’ study (conservative or radical) leads one to consider a much more subtle question of applicability - the personal education of the practitioner in continuing education. The practitioner discharges a function, in a situation, and according to acknowledged or unacknowledged moral and political commitments. Function, situation and commitment may be complicated enough, but are they the whole story? What about the person inside? Are there educational experiences more to do with developing persons-in-roles than with equipping functionaries or inspiring servants of causes? This question of the personal preparedness of practitioners has been addressed (inconclusively to be sure) in other areas. It is a feature of the applicability of ‘applied social studies’ (educational studies included) to be set alongside our anthropological awareness of fashionable posturing and political in-fighting.

Policy research

Kjell Rubenson

Cross (1981) has observed from a North American perspective that articles dealing with theory are rare in adult education. One explanation commonly offered is that the emergence of a specialised field of study has been linked with the professionalisation of adult education, and the accumulation of knowledge has been based almost solely on efforts to improve the practice of adult education. To strengthen the ‘knowledge base’, it has been suggested, more attention must be given to intra-disciplinary issues; we should be aware that contract research may contribute to policy formation for agencies like Ministries or Departments of Education, but generally does not contribute greatly to the growth of generalisable knowledge. From a Swedish perspective this view can be questioned. Instead of getting into a fruitless debate over ‘basic’ versus ‘applied’ research, we should examine what policy research is and could be. The purpose here is to present the Swedish tradition, and contrast it with the situation in other countries.

Policy research: the Swedish tradition

The relative success of educational policy research in Sweden over a period of 20 years is closely related to broader features of the country’s educational policy and administration. Marklund (1984) identifies three formative factors:

  • rolling reforms of schools
  • central direction of schools
  • the sectoral principle as an essential aspect of research policy.

The third of these is particularly relevant to the theme of this paper.

It is a tradition in Sweden to refer to three main forms of research finance: (a) basic grants to universities for research and research training; (b) allocations to research councils and similar bodies; (c) allocations to and from national authorities in various policy fields, called sectors. The term ‘sector’ denotes a field of national policy and administration, such as health and social welfare, defence, the labour market, communications and traffic - and education, which is under the central authority of the National Board of Education (NBE).

The sectoral principle can be briefly described as follows. The central authority in any sector of society should have resources and be responsible for R&D activities relevant to that sector. Research work should be entrusted to university departments and draw on the scientific competence of the universities. (When adult education became a central policy issue in the late 1960s this resulted in a major expansion of research. Despite long traditions in adult education practice it was not before it entered the policy scene that it evolved as a field of research.)

The Swedish tradition is one of contract research, but linked to long-term policy development. The contrast with what is traditionally defined as research aimed at producing generalisable knowledge is less easily made than it would be in the Canadian tradition. I would, however, be wrong to assume that the ‘sectoral principle’ is undisputed and goes uncriticised by advocates of basic research.

Policy research versus basic research

The eternal debate about the freedom of research and researchers versus the needs of society and the demand for influential research can be approached through certain concepts introduced by the Swedish Royal Commission on Research Councils (SOU 1977:52). Intra-disciplinary relevance concerns the value of any piece of research for the development of the discipline as such; social relevance concerns the extent to which the research could have an input to society at large. Clearly the key to discussing the second of these is the level of visible relevance, that is, directly intended impact on society.

In the general debate it is common to equate intra-disciplinary relevance with basic research, and high social relevance with applied research. This is a confusion which leads to an over simplified view of research:

Character / Basic research / Applied research
Function / Intra-disciplinary importance / Social relevance
Motive / Intra-disciplinary initiated (development of theories and methods) / Sectoral (policy) initiated (applied research and development work)

I would like to argue that these distinctions are less evident that they seem to be, and that they create a danger of confusing the character and function of research with the motives for initiating it. From the simplistic point of view it would be assumed that research motivated by policy considerations is exclusively applied, without relevance to the development of theories and methods. The simplistic view also suggest that the scientific base on which policy research rests is developed free from the social and sectoral problems to which its theories and methods are to be applied.

A more adequate alternative would require us to think in three dimensions:

Conclusion

Using the Swedish system as a point of departure, I argue that policy research under certain conditions can be of crucial importance for the development of knowledge within the discipline of adult education. Forces preventing such a development are:

  • the structure of departments of adult education and their emphasis on practice and teaching
  • the existing tradition of policy research in most countries
  • the far-reaching specialisation in knowledge production.

Reproduced from 1988 Conference Proceedings, pp. 496-500  SCUTREA 1997