Sustaining critical communities: stretching the academy

Ian Martin and Mae Shaw, Edinburgh University, Scotland, UK

Paper presented at SCUTREA, 29th Annual Conference, 5-7 July 1999, University of Warwick

Introduction

This conference is about exploring spaces for adult education and adult learning - and, presumably, making the most of them. In this paper, we want to explore the particular institutional and conceptual space we occupy as university teachers of adult and community education. We do so for two reasons: first, because we feel that, in some ways, this space is being rapidly closed down - or, at any rate, actively reconstructed and increasingly regulated; second, because, whatever the problems and pressures we encounter in our work, there is a danger of not making the most of the space we still have. In‚ this respect, we would argue that, despite all the constraints, those of us who work in university departments of adult education probably retain more relative autonomy than most of our academic colleagues and certainly more than most of our professional colleagues in practice. In addition, adult education conceived as a creative and, indeed, dialectical space (see Steele, 1997) where the disciplines meet, compete and collide (rather than a discipline in its own right or even a single and coherent field of practice) is inherently difficult to manage and control - which is, of course, what attracts some of us to it!

Context and purpose

One advantage of teaching on courses, such as our own, which are simultaneously academic and vocational is the legitimacy this confers on our role in developing both intellectual understanding and professional competence - thus avoiding the closures implicit in either over-theorisation or narrowly conceived notions of professional competence:

The logic of the professional role .... is to support people in identifying and challenging the root causes of their poverty and social exclusion. It is not only legitimate to engage with groups struggling to improve their conditions but it is also an essential aspect of any educational practice committed to social justice. (Rosendale, 1996)

In defining our own position as educators, we identify ourselves with what is broadly understood as the 'radical tradition' in the history of British adult education. We would not wish, however, to be too purist or exclusive about what this means because some versions of it have been over-determined, to say the least, by particular theoretical and ideological presuppositions (for example, see Westwood, 1991; Thompson, 1997). Our own concern would be to ensure that a range of contemporary radicalisms contribute to the reconstruction of this tradition today - which we regard as an important and urgent task.

A good general characterisation of the position from which this argument proceeds is provided by Keith Jackson (1995). He describes what he calls the 'adult education of engagement' in the following terms:

the view that adults bring something which derives both from their experience of adult life and from their status as citizens to the educational process; that adult education is based on a dialogue rather than a mere transmission of knowledge and skill; that education is not only for personal development and advancement but also for social advancement; that adult education constructs knowledge and does not merely pass it on; that adult education has a dialectical and organic relationship with social movements.

It is worth making a number of points about this. Such students come to the educational encounter as, in Freire's terms, 'knowing subjects' who, as citizens, have a particular, equal and indivisible political status. The curriculum is constructed, partly at least, from the intellectual and personal resources as well as the social and political interests they bring with them. They are social actors - not empty vessels, deficit systems, bundles of need or, indeed, primarily producers or consumers. Moreover, their educational interests and aspirations are shared and collective. This is the starting point because it is what they have in common as citizens (although more individual and idiosyncratic patterns of personal development may well follow). Learning is essentially about making knowledge which makes sense of their world and helps them act upon it in order change it for the better. In this sense, 'really useful knowledge' (see Johnson, 1979) is not so much about what kind of knowledge counts as about who decides what kind of knowledge counts - and why, and what they want to do with it:

Really useful knowledge .... encompassed all that was required to 'enlighten' learners, ie for them to understand the world in terms of their own experience of it and to recognise their potential power to act effectively and collectively to change it. In this sense, it epitomised a truly emancipatory form of 'counter-education' and was the antithesis of 'provided education'. (Martin, 1994)

As such, groups of students in this kind of adult education may be properly said to constitute 'epistemological communities' (Eyerman and Jamison, 1991). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, adult learning grows in and out of such communities, or social movements, as they exist in the 'real world', struggling and striving outside the walls of the classroom and the gates of the academy. Adult education's relationship to these movements is a symbiotic one. This insight, crucial to the radical tradition, has never been better expressed than it was in the Ministry of Reconstruction's 1919 report on adult education:

The growth of movements which have as their aim the creation of a better social order is not less important than the process of education itself. In some ways, it is more important, for such movements to create the background of aspiration and endeavour which is the foundation of more directly educational work, and suggest the questions for which men and women seek in study to find an answer. (Ministry of Reconstruction, 1919)

The argument seems to us to be all the more worth making at present because we now find ourselves somewhat ambivalently positioned in the process of merger with another institution which has a very different culture and tradition of higher education from that of our own. We are not, of course, alone in this. In several parts of the UK - and elsewhere, no doubt - there has recently been a spate of (more or less) shotgun weddings between different kinds of institution. These seem to have either a somewhat over-developed or, alternatively, a radically under-developed sense of their role as agents of vocational preparation and professional development. In such hasty and expedient couplings, departments of adult and community education have gone both ways - but, in the end, they all face the same kind of problems and, we would argue, possibilities.

We also want to write about this because the apparently inexorable logic of the current politics of publication and research is to draw us away from the messy business of social and political engagement towards, in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) terms, the more fertile and fashionable pastures of technical and intellectual disengagement: in number crunching surveys of 'participation' and 'access' (when surely the prior question is, in what, to what and on whose terms?), increasingly bland and sanitised packages of continuing education and professional development (when surely the prior question is, for whom and in whose interests?), earnest assertions of the importance of social capital in building the learning society (when surely the prior question is, what destroys norms and networks of trust and mutuality in communities?), or the ludic irony of certain kinds of postmodern 'theorising' which seem so privileged, effete or simply out of touch with most people's social reality, postmodern or otherwise (when surely the prior question is, what does all this really amount to, why bother?).

Our concern to reassert another way of thinking about - and doing - teaching, writing and research has been sharpened by a small-scale local research project we have been conducting over the last two and half years (see Martin and Shaw 1997a; 1997b). The focus of interest in this work has been on how adult and community educators sustain their motivation for and commitment to social purpose education in a rapidly changing, and sometimes hostile, policy/political environment. This has helped us to identify more clearly various constituencies of educational policy and practice with which we would seek to collaborate (for example, academic and professional colleagues, local activists and some of our own students). It has also encouraged us to see how the role of university adult education can be stretched, in both ideological and practical terms, to support these particular interests conceived as critical - and critically engaged - communities (see Martin, 1999).

It is important to point specifically to the significance for our work of the current political and cultural context in Scotland. The prospect and the process of 'democratic renewal' poses particular possibilities - as well as problems - for educators, especially those who are interested in linking the political discourse of active citizenship with the educational discourse of lifelong learning and the learning society . We recognise the danger of 'talking this up' too much, but we believe that we must see the present conjuncture as a unique opportunity to reconnect our curriculum with the lived experience of people in Scottish communities (see Crowther, Martin and Shaw, 1999). In Scotland today we have to find ways of showing how the learning society must learn to be a more democratic and genuinely inclusive society. One way of doing this is determinedly to counter the narrowly economistic discourses of citizenship which have come to dominate adult education theory, policy and practice in recent years (that is, adult learner as either worker/producer or adult learner as customer/consumer) and to complement these with the older and richer discourse of adult learner as social actor and political agent.

Theory and practice: re-making the argument

This is, in essence, a marriage of two strong partners. The strengths and range of disciplines at the University, as one of Europe's leading centres of excellence in teaching and research, will complement the professional educational expertise of Moray House [Institute of Education]. (Professor Sir Stewart Sutherland, Principal of Edinburgh University, formally announcing its merger with Moray House Institute of Education in August, 1998)

One of the things the process of institutional merger is making us rethink is the relationship in our work - and, more specifically, in our teaching - between theoretical/critical understanding and practical/professional competence. This is partly because we work in a relatively small institute of education, one that has traditionally defined its priorities primarily in terms of 'professional educational expertise'. It has recently become part of a much bigger and more prestigious institution which has traditionally defined its priorities uncompromisingly in terms of academic 'excellence in teaching and research'.

In describing our position on the relationship between theory and practice, we take as our starting point the contention of Michael Collins in Adult Education as Vocation: A Critical Role for the Adult Educator (1991) that the distinction and the connections between theory and practice are, essentially, resolved in our heads:

Though an understanding of theoretical constructions is important to any serious vocational endeavour, it is more efficacious to think in terms of engaging thoughtfully with theory and then, putting ourselves into practice rather than putting theory into practice. In other words, serious engagement with theoretical models improves our potential as reflective practitioners, which in turn manifests itself in actual performance. (Collins, 1991)

Educational practice is as much about values and purposes as it is about knowledge and expertise. And it is this essentially ethical and ontological sense of what we are about in the world that justifies the notion of adult education as a vocation in the proper, expansive and purposeful meaning of the term. Striking the right balance is, of course, a difficult task and a constant struggle - which is mirrored in the current restructuring of higher education. On the one hand, the whole emphasis of the new managerialism on throughput and output, performance measurement and competence encourages instrumental rationality and a narrowly conceived understanding of professional development. This can lead to a debilitating anti-intellectualism and a radically impoverished notion of vocation (for example, see Shaw and Crowther, 1995; Alexander and Martin, 1995). On the other hand, the restratification of higher education as, in effect, a market and the commodification of knowledge and research which is a consequence of this seem to suggest that (unless it can be sold) real knowledge should have as little to do with the real world as possible. For instance, in our own field, publication in a relatively esoteric - and therefore unread - academic journal counts for much more than writing for a professional publication which is regularly read by thousands of practitioners.

Our own view is that 'there is nothing as practical as good theory'. But the relationship between theory and practice is a dialectical one: theory posing problems for practice, practice providing the experience to interrogate theoretical analysis. Vocation, used in the proper sense of finding a way to live in the world, requires both theory and practice in dynamic interaction: praxis. It is this problematic that should be at the heart of our curriculum, driving it and resourcing it. This is the only way of avoiding the twin dangers of, in Rennie Johnston's words, 'actionless thought' and 'thoughtless action' (Johnston, 1992). And it is precisely this dialectical space - which, we would argue, should actually constitute the curriculum of the academy - that we must occupy and exploit in our work .

Stretching the academy

In the final part of the paper, we want to consider the implications of this argument for three particular aspects of the institutional and ideological space in which we work: first, our role as teachers in the task of constructing the curriculum and 'liberating knowledge' in our teaching; second, our role as writers and researchers in the task of relating our work to broader social and political purposes; third, our role as catalysts in the task of activating collective engagement in creative alliances and collaborations. Here, however, we must enter a caveat: stretching our work in this way has never been easy; on the contrary, it is a constant struggle. But the more we are driven by the pressures and constraints of an unsympathetic and sometimes antagonistic environment, the more important and necessary that struggle is - even when it fails.

In thinking about this process, it is useful to recall Martin Loney's explication of the idea of the 'unfinished message'. Towards the end of what is still one the best accounts of the British Community Development Project - a rich and messy engagement with the dialectics of theory, policy and practice if ever there was one - Loney (1983) refers to the work of the Norwegian criminologist, Mathiesen. He argues the need to develop carefully and systematically in our work 'competing contradictions' to existing social policies and institutions (rather than indulge in grand, rhetorical critique). The radical message should be left 'unfinished' in order to 'ensure against [its] exclusion .... from mainstream debate' because the 'objective must to be to create not a new finite social order but rather an open and experimenting society'. In our view, radical adult education has a vital and distinctive part to play in helping to create such a society. And yet, its message has often been too 'finished' to contribute constructively and creatively to the wider debate about what kind of society this should be. In a sense, this is precisely the problem and the possibility of the present conjuncture in Scotland, that is, for a radical redefinition of what we mean by lifelong learning and the learning society and a reconnection of these ideas to the ideals of democratic renewal and active citizenship.

What this means is that we have to look for, and make the most of, the spaces in our work which still give us a degree of relative autonomy. It is important to add, however, that finding these spaces is, in our experience, more a matter of keeping what we do informed by a general and inclusive commitment to equity and social purpose than a studied adherence any clear or preconceived strategy. In reviewing our work in these terms, the following examples suggest some of the spaces which seem to provide opportunities for stretching the academy.

As teachers: constructing the curriculum

* Re-theorising Community is a third/final year course in a BA degree in Community Education. Students are required to consider the hypothesis, developed in the curriculum, that 'community' may be understood as 'an intermediate level of social reality at which the dialectics of agency and structure are confronted in people's lived experience', and to test this out in the optional courses they choose to take in adult education, community work or youth work. This must be done in relation to the opportunities and constraints presented by the current policy context. 'Meso-level' theory demands a critical assessment of both modern and postmodern perspectives on contemporary social reality (see Alheit, 1999).

* Inclusive Education is a second year undergraduate course which challenges the hegemony of 'special educational needs' by building the curriculum around the interests and experience of disabled people themselves. The social movement of disabled people thus becomes the dynamic of the curriculum and a key resource for the professional development of the student - rather the object of professional intervention.