| dc.description | In my dissertation, I examine the emergence of North American adult education (1945-70) as an identity quest to attain space (a recognized and useful presence) and place (a respected and valued position) in the dominant culture and its institutions. I argue that, despite widespread social and cultural change forces permeating life, learning, and work after World War II, scientific, technological, and economic change forces were ascendant, predominantly shaping mainstream adult education as a techno-scientized enterprise. I investigate how the modern practice of adult education evolved as a noticeably middle-class form of education in this period. I explore the degree to which the mainstream enterprise operated within a learning paradigm designed to serve the needs of an emerging postindustrial culture in which the pervasive architecture was the military-industrial complex. I also examine how social and cultural forms of adult education survived as important border practices with space and place inside and outside mainstream practice. In my research I turn to critical postmodern theory which I use as a pedagogical tool to provide ideas to guide the analysis of adult education's identity quest in times when life, learning, and work were being reconfigured. I write this history as an account that addresses dispositional, contextual, and relational issues affecting adult education. My purpose is to render an account of enterprise people, politics, and ideas created in the intersection of the descriptive, analytical, and interpretive. In grappling with the question "What is adult education?" I also investigate knowledge production as the enterprise emerged in the post-World War II culture of change, crisis, and challenge. As well, I examine the effects of the Ization Syndrome (techno-scientization, individualization, professionalization, and institutionalization) on the construction of adult education's identity. I conclude by considering the extent to which adult education was able to form learning community in itself and build community within other cultural communities. | en_US |
