Adult Learning, Critical Intelligence and Social Change

Book excerpt: What lies beyond the current preoccupation with education and its relationship to economic growth? Has the idea of community engagement in the mixed economy of welfare through a radical, critical form of participative learning disappeared, or is it re-emerging in a different form? Adult Learning, Critical Intelligence and Social Change offers a wide range of perspectives on these and other issues which have emerged since the 1980s. In the last 15 years, adult education has been subjected to restructuring around the promotion of market forces, moving away from the agenda of education for transformation towards a narrower agenda of meeting vocational needs. In the process, it has become demonstrably less neutral and more overtly controversial, more vital than ever in providing essential skills and knowledge and in developing alternative visions for democratic social change. This book reviews the context of these developments and focuses on contemporary debates in workplace and community based adult education and the impact of NVQs, competence based approaches and APL on women and ethnic minority communities.Individual essays illustrate critical and dynamic approaches to adult learning, providing examples of commitment and progressive perspectives in practice, in Britain and beyond. The book opens with a critical review of the context for these changes and of the theoretical debates which attempt to analyse and explain them. The chapters which follow offer specific challenges to postmodernism in relation to adult learning, and focus more generally on critical debates around culture and theory. Developments in trade union education, women's education and vocational education are considered in depth. Both as an expert overview of developments since 1980 and as a source of inspiration for a more progressive agenda, this collection will appeal to students and practitioners in all forms of adult education