This article considers the role played by adult education in a temporary community called Resurrection City in 1968. It draws on primary source documents and oral testimonies from three archives. Social movement theory and the ideas of Freire and Gramsci provide a conceptual framework. In May 1968 around 6,000 poor people from across the United…

This article inspires critical and creative thinking about the promotion of citizenship development through programmes of study designed primarily to enhance adults' vocational skills. It does so through presenting an empirical case study of an important adult education programme delivered by the Department of University Extension at the…

In 1947 the Truman Commission on Higher Education accentuated the importance of adult education in its report entitled "Higher Education for American Democracy". In 1970 a new US "Handbook of Adult Education" signifying the move to a more professionalised field of study and practice was published. The intervening years encapsulate a time of…

In critical and feminist educational circles there has been a lively debate between those who call for more emphasis on contextualisation and concrete practices and those who defend a more generalised view of critical pedagogy. The unceasing march of corporate globalisation and neoliberalism make it absolutely urgent that educators and organisers…

The article is based on activist research working in an anti-deportation social movement, and on sixteen interviews with both experienced and less experienced activists between 2009 and 2011. The anti deportation social movement made up of a range of organisations, is identified as a left social movement situated in an historic producer…

Popular education movements can be dated back to the religious heresies of the Middle Ages but only become well-formed movements following the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In this article I outline the scope and nature of some of the most effective of these movements which have come to inform the concept of the "public sphere" advanced by…

Donald Swanson, a library scientist at the University of Chicago, has coined the phrase "undiscovered public knowledge". As a university-based adult educationalist I am particularly interested in the "undiscovered public knowledge" which lies in the spaces beyond the academy, especially in the many associations, groups and movements involved in…

This paper considers how Hegel's philosophical idealism influenced the thinking and practical activities of four successive holders of the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow between 1866 and 1927. It argues that their activities were shaped by Hegelian concepts of citizenship, which engendered a commitment to encouraging the…

This paper argues that there is no other way to describe history, and particularly the personal life history of people, apart from in the form of a narrative. It also suggests that as history is not understandable, save in the form of a narrative, the narration as such "makes" history. Drawing on the findings of a research project on…

The author analyzes the collaboration between unions and universities to provide courses in "Industrial Studies" in Great Britain from the mid-1970s to the present. He states that the main problem between these two entities was one of clashing educational philosophies. (CH)

This literature review shows that independent learning and self-improvement were promoted in early nineteenth-century Canada. However, learner autonomy in the working classes faltered in the face of lack of resources and political opposition. (SK)

Writing on adult education history is dominated by the "Great Tradition" perspective. A new historical agenda that is more open to movements and ideas in contemporary social history could move the field from history of adult education to histories of adult learning. (SK)

Reviews the history of the term andragogy and compares concepts in Germany, France, Holland, Britain, Finland, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Delineates five differing schools of thought. (SK)

Traces the origins of what is known as cultural studies in pre-World War II workers' education in Britain. Elaborates the contributions of G.D.H. Cole, E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, and Richard Hoggart. (SK)