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Abstract

The field of adult education and learning has encompassed research and scholarship from diverse perspectives and these have changed over time. Approaches and trends across this domain of activity perhaps resonate with that of a wider field of education and the social sciences; the intellectual resources picked up at any one time wash through and across these domains of activity. At the same time 'the field' has never been a homogenous or easily identifiable entity. It is therefore difficult to make valid generalizations of the status of approaches within a defined field at any particular time or location. The visibility of what goes on is also significantly limited and obscured. This is partially in that what goes on as research may not be published in identifiably adult education literature, partially in the separation of the field into various foci of interest (adult, vocational, community, higher education, workplace learning etc.) with specialist journals for publication, and partially as a result of the dominance of the English language used for publication; thus a lack of dissemination of research and scholarly writing across language barriers. It is then only tentatively and with caution that any partial picture regarding change in the approaches to research and scholarship in a field of the education and learning of adults over time can be painted.One might perhaps think it quite safe to follow the language of policy as a framework for analysis of change in approaches to research at the most general level. For example, lifelong learning now appears an accepted and central concept in adult education policy over the last decades in many countries and a major focus of policy in the European Union (EU) and many of its member states. Emerging during the 1960s as 'lifelong education' it was linked to humanist values and ideas of personal growth. In the 1990s, now as 'lifelong learning', it became associated with a shift of policy emphasising competitiveness and economic growth. Lifelong learning became commonly argued within national and wider policies as a necessary feature for individual and collective well-being and a requirement if Europeans are to remain competitive in a global environment (cf. Fejes & Dahlstedt, 2012). However, policy promotion of lifelong learning at this level and its 'insertion' into discourses of adult education over time, never did indicate any direct translation as change in research approach in the field. Rather, over the period from the 1960s, discourses of lifelong learning have been bound up in quite complex ways with policies promoting lifelong education and learning and wider socio-political change and changes in the practices of [8] Andreas Fejes and Katherine Nicoll institutions for adult education and teachers and learners in many locations. The targeting of specific groups and objectives for learning through new government funding streams and projects has had no doubt localized effects on research and wider changes in the funding mechanisms for institutions have in som...