Alley or Autobahn? Assessing 50 Years of the Andragogical Project

Abstract

Fifty years after the publication of “The Modern Practice of Adult Education,” andragogy has significant presence in English-language adult education and related fields. This article takes stock of the development of this mid-century intellectual project. The context of mid-century adult education in North America is described, and the rhizomatic relationship with previous instances of the idea is examined. The effects of the project on practice and theory are considered and difficulties regarding lack of theoretical development and empirical investigation are identified. The discussion argues that the continuation of the andragogical project depends on development of key aspects, including stronger connections with international manifestations of andragogy.

The term andragogy became widely known to the English-speaking adult education world with the publication of Knowles’s (1970) “The Modern Practice of Adult Education.” Knowles set out deliberately and optimistically to change the field of adult education. As a central figure in the field, he hoped that the idea of andragogy could add coherence and unity to the practice and the study of adult education. The intellectual project of andragogy attempted to establish a core for a discipline and profession seen at that time as scattered and lacking a conceptual center. Our aim in this discussion is to assess the impact of this project. While the authors are cautious about providing a definitive statement regarding the “success” of andragogy, we believe it is possible to provide insight into the effects of this project after half a century in the English-speaking world. From this, we can learn not only about the contours of our own field of adult education but also about the way ideas travel in the academy and the wider world.

There is a lot of ground to cover in considering the andragogical project. We look at the nature of intellectual projects, the history of the term andragogy, and the context of adult education in the 1960s before turning to the publication of Knowles’ work and developments since. Our conclusions are both positive, in terms of the degree of influence andragogy has had across many fields, and less so, when considering the theoretical development of these concepts and their unifying potential.

We come not to praise Malcolm Knowles nor to bury him. He was uncontestably a major figure in our field throughout the second half of the 20th century and a passionate advocate for education for adults. The lesson we draw from this review is simply this: the establishment and maintenance of an academic discipline is a deeply challenging and problematic project. This provides us all with reason to pause and consider how we can contribute to the development of our shared field.

An Intellectual Project

In this discussion, we have chosen to consider andragogy as an intellectual project. The term refers to deliberate efforts to attain specific aims within or across disciplines, and the desired ends can range from the transformation of an entire field of knowledge to a change in one aspect of understanding. Intellectual projects can take on an institutional form, driven by funders or others with influence over the work of researchers, or they can be individual and eclectic. Intellectual projects can be self-organizing, rely on attracting the interest of fellow travelers, or they can be deliberately and strategically built. The key aspects shared by all these forms of intellectual project is centrality of ideas and conscious selection of aims.

For people establishing academic careers, a defined intellectual project is essential and is a material consideration for appointment and tenure (Steinberg, n.d.). Over their career, one professor may have a range of different work bound by a central concern. Manuel Castells has reflected on his 5 decades of sociological analysis, and the summary “highlights the common thread that brings together my intellectual project through a great diversity of topics: the quest for a grounded theory of power” (Castells, 2016, p. 1). The most influential intellectual projects are often collective. One example is the reconstitution of the field of German studies over the past 4 decades. Staring as a bounded discipline, German studies has evolved to use tools derived from the German context and experience to understand comparative and interdisciplinary questions (Applegate & Trommler, 2016). These changes included a number of intellectual projects concerning common curriculum and the necessity of explicit German language teaching. The German studies example may have resonance for adult education academics, demonstrating the evolution of an emerging discipline into a rich cross-disciplinary collection of interests bound together by a central commitment.

Andragogy is perhaps the most durable intellectual project of adult education in the 20th century. It demonstrates two key aspects of such a project very strongly. It is concerned with ideas and across a fairly wide scope. Within it there are assumptions about the nature of adulthood, an implicit model of human development, and a philosophy of relationship and the learning it underpins. The project has clear—and somewhat ambitious—aims. Knowles (1970), the primary North American progenitor of andragogy, was explicit about his intention to create a unifying theory for the field of adult education.

Given this positioning, it seems appropriate to analyze andragogy using the sorts of questions and perspectives applicable to other intellectual projects. There is a need to understand the genealogy of the ideas it contains, their content and their coherence, as well as to ask about the extent to which the aims of the project have been achieved. If those goals have not been met after half a century, it is fair to ask if the dreams of the andragogue will ever be fulfilled.

Andragogik in Central Europe

Andragogy, as a word and a concept, has a considerably longer and more complex history in Europe, and particularly Germany, than in North America. This cannot be considered only as a prehistory of andragogy before the Knowlesian era, as it represents a distinct and significant intellectual history with a system of philosophy and practice. One powerful metaphor to represent the history of andragogy is a rhizome-like structure (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). As this suggests, it is possible to find instances of andragogy in several locations, with the connections between them buried from view. There are early instances across central Europe as well as the 50-year-old instance reaching into Anglo-American adult education (Savicevik, 2008). These instances do not follow an orderly, hierarchical progression. Adult education research has been called an “undisciplined discipline” (Plecas & Sork, 1986), and this characterization applies to the manifestations of andragogy. Fully understanding the andragogical project in North America from 1970 to the present requires engaging with this history.

The word andragogy was first used in 1833 in its German form andragogik by Alexander Kapp (Reischmann, 2004). Kapp (1833) was interested in the implications of Plato’s teachings for state education, which was a major focus of the Prussian state at the time (St. Clair, 2020), and he used andragogik to refer to education for adults. The most likely origin of the word seems to be that Kapp simply amended the existing word pedagogy by changing the reference from children to men. The literal meaning of the term pedagogy is the leadership of children, though it is understood as “the art and practice of teaching” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2005). Andragogy builds on the Greek roots of the word pedagogy and would mean something like the art and practice of teaching men. The fundamentally gendered nature of the term has received insufficient attention. To be gender neutral, the term would be something like anthragogy.

The term andragogik did not catch on and lay fallow for nearly 100 years. In the 1920s, Germany was struggling with a number of existential questions after defeat in the First World War and the imposition of a peace agreement widely seen by Germans as punitive and disrespectful. Germans had gone within 5 years from living in one of the cultural and economic centers of the world to mass starvation and social unrest. There was a crisis of the national project (Germany was still less than 50 years old at the time) and a failure of the prewar gerontocracy to provide direction (Zweig, 1943/2013). This led to a great deal of soul-searching about the meaning and future of human life and society, with much of it reflecting 19th-century romantic thought. There was a view Germany had been led astray by the war, and the culture of Goethe and Schiller should be reinvigorated by a new understanding of what it meant to be human in the industrial 20th century. Anglo-American civilization was perceived as too pragmatic and shallow, and there was a desire to avoid overcommercialization of society.

Adult education attracted theoretical interest as part of this postwar reconstruction and reflection. One group of thinkers, called the Hohenrodter Bund, used the concept of andragogik to capture thinking about the purpose and practices of education for adults (Reischmann, 2004). Eugen Rosenstock-Hüssy was a key member of the Hohenrodter Bund and wrote a great deal about the crisis of modernity and human spirit experienced in the wake of the First World War in Germany, and throughout Europe, before emigrating to the United States to escape the Nazis in 1933 (Loeng, 2013). For Rosenstock-Hüssy, an idealist thinker, andragogik lay apart from both schooling for children and existing adult education, which he saw as demagogic or malicious. He viewed andragogik as a philosophy distinct from the humanist liberal adult education or vocational studies. Andragogik, to summarize a very complex idea very briefly, represented a strategy for people to connect with their human and spiritual destinies in the service of social evolution and had to be based on the interaction of knowledge and experience. He wrote,

The mere seeker after conventional knowledge, the dogmatist, the professional, the philosopher, the rationalist, all those who cannot and do not want to transform their knowledge in the light of events do not belong in andragogy. Priest and Levite pass, only the Samaritan is ready to rethink and act! (Picht & Rosenstock-Hüssy, 1926, p. 214, translated by authors)

The term fell out of favor around the end of the Weimar Republic, but the rhizomes rose again in the 1950s in central Europe. Andragogik was still far from an everyday term, and the meaning remained elusive, though within specialist communities there was a consensus around the study of processes preparing adults for the vicissitudes and challenges of responsible social life (Reischmann, 2004). Among the influential users of the term in German were Hanselmann (1951), a Swiss psychiatrist, and Pöggeler (1957), a German educator, who were consistent in their use of andragogik in a high-level and theoretical sense. From this time, andragogik/andragogie/andragogy has slowly gained in popularity in mainland Europe as a term for the study of adult education and its social context, often with an emphasis on academic aspects rather than programmatic or practical matters.

In French, the use of andragogie became more popular in the early 1960s, driven partly by Québec French usage. For example, the Université de Montréal changed the name of its adult education area to andragogie in 1968 to 1969 (Danvers, 2003). By 1978 the term was widely accepted, with the “Dictionnaire de la langue pédagogique” giving the following definition:

Neologism modelled on the term “pedagogy” based on the Greek words aner, andros (man) and pais, paidos (child), and promoted by UNESCO as a term for what we call training or continuing education. (Foulquié, 1978, translated by authors)

There are several other instances of the term emerging around the late 1960s, demonstrably before the publication of “Modern Practice.” In Poland, there was an established area of social science investigation called andragogics (Turos, 1971). In the Netherlands, the first chair of Andragologie was established in 1966 at the University of Amsterdam with the appointment of Tonko Ten Have. Unusually, in the Netherlands of the time andragogy was a reference to the activity of teaching adults (Van Enckevort, 1971), while according to a doctoral student at the university andragology (note the extra “lo”):

. . . is a scientific discipline that arose around 1950 in an atmosphere of post-war education, the pursuit of prosperity and well-being, the growing belief in the social contribution of sciences and the fear of the loss of human values due to progressive industrialization. (Maaike de Boois, interviewed in Wolthekker, 2018, translated by authors)

The resonance with Rosenstock-Hüssy’s context and approach is remarkable. One striking common thread is the tendency of andragogy to arise when there is social transition and rebuilding going on post-War Germany, the Québec Quiet Revolution, 1968 in France, post-War Netherlands. Without wishing to overstate the case, we suggest this could be extended to include the United States of the late 1960s, as the country reeled from a turbulent decade.

The Context of Adult Education in 1960s North America

One dominant aim for adult education across the North American continent during the three post–Second World War decades was institutionalization through the creation of a profession and academic discipline. One strategy for institutionalization was to lobby for increased public provision, bringing adult education alongside schooling as a standard public sector activity. Reorganization and coordination of the field at the level of delivery was a second strategy, and the third was creation of an academic discipline (Carlson, 1979; Damer, 2002).

The 1960s was probably the period of most intense interest in establishing adult education as a scholarly discipline. It had previously been regarded as a practical concern, applying intellectual apparati borrowed from liberal arts or agricultural extension (Rose & Hansman, 2019). The Commission of Professors of Adult Education formed in 1957 and at their first meeting

the Professors were asking for answers to such basic questions as WHO, WHAT, WHY, and HOW; beyond that they were plagued by the ubiquitous question of status and the relationship of the Professor of Adult Education to the rest of the university. (Whipple, 1957, p. iv)

The Commission were behind the publication of one of the most important U.S. adult education publications of the 1960s: the so-called “Black Book” (Jensen et al., 1964). This was a collection of chapters in which the great and the good laid out their thinking on adult education, its principles, organization, and, to some extent, its future. Among the chapters in the “Black Book” was one on terms and definitions, presenting adult education as the “relationship between an educational agent and a learner in which the agent selects, arranges, and continuously directs a sequence of progressive tasks that provide systematic experiences to achieve learning . . . ” (Verner, 1964, p. 32). Both the instrumentality of this definition and the dominant role assigned to the instructor are notable. One review of the “Black Book” began with the insightful sentence: “This book is by eighteen authors in search of a profession” (Brunner, 1965, p. 208). The field received an enormous boost from the 1966 Adult Education Act in the United States (Parker, 1990), and it continues in modified form to the present day.

Malcolm Knowles was at the center of the developments and during the mid-century period. Born in 1913, he began working in adult education in the 1930s after completing his undergraduate degree at Harvard. While employed by the National Youth Administration in the second half of the decade, Knowles had the opportunity to spend time with Eduard Lindeman, an American adult education thinker and writer. This relationship was critical to Knowles’s (1989) vocational and academic life (Smith, 2002). Knowles (1950) studied and reflected on the field when in the navy during the Second World War (Henry, 2011) and started publishing books on adult education soon afterwards. In 1951, he became an executive director of the Adult Education Association of the United States and by the end of the decade was an associate professor at Boston University (Smith, 2002). He contributed a chapter to the “Black Book” (Jensen et al., 1964), a work-person-like text called “The field of operations in adult education” (Knowles, 1964). Knowles was an established figure in the field by the 1960s.

The introduction of andragogy at the end of the 1960s cannot, therefore, be seen as the act of a rebellious upstart. It does not reflect the desire of a neophyte to overturn established wisdom or shake up an ossified field. It takes its place as one of a series of efforts, generally more aligned than not, to define a core for adult education practice and theory. Knowles (1970) had been thinking about the ideas that would be presented in “Modern Practice” for at least 5 years before the book was published (Henry, 2011), and the influence of Houle, Lindeman, and others on the work is clear. Andragogy fits with both the disciplinary project of creating an academic specialization and the modernist project of defining a unitary core for the field. Given Knowles’s positioning this cannot be credibly seen as coincidental, and indeed Knowles was open about his desire to consolidate adult education. In “Modern Practice,” Knowles (1970) writes,

The field of adult education has long sought a glue to bind its diverse institutions, clientele, and activities into some sense of unity; perhaps andragogy will give it at least a unifying theory. (p. 51)

The development of andragogy in a North American context was, for Knowles, a logical move to meet the need of the field to define itself and create clear boundaries.

Rise of the Andragogical Project in North American Adult Education

The first time the word andragogy was publicly used to designate Knowles’s approach to adult education was 1968, in an article in Adult Leadership (Knowles, 1968). At that point, the word was spelled as “androgogy.” Only 2 years the first North American book on andragogy, “Modern Practice” (Knowles, 1970), was published. The book had a mixed reception, but proved to be highly influential on adult education practice and formed the core of Knowles’s writing and teaching over the next 30 years.

One immediate question is why Knowles, recognized for pragmatism, chose such an unusual and even “non-English” word as the title for his ideas. On the face of it, this does not seem like a good fit, or the type of thing Knowles the pragmatist would do. There is a question around how Knowles even came across a specialized term from central Europe. There are at least two possible answers.

As noted, Knowles regarded Lindeman as one of his mentors. Lindeman had come across the term andragogik during a study trip in Frankfurt directly from Eugen Rosenstock-Hüssy and, at one point, lobbied for its adoption in the United States (Lindeman, 1926). Indeed, Brookfield (1984) has argued that Lindeman should be considered as the true originator of andragogy in the United States. It is plausible that Knowles and Lindeman had discussed the term. However, while Lindeman represented the term as meaning more than a method for teaching adults, he may not have fully transmitted the more complex undertones it had assumed in German theorizing.

A second possibility is that Knowles first heard the term in 1966 from the Yugoslavian adult educator Dusan Savicevik (Henschke & Cooper, 2007). Knowles did not acknowledge this in “Modern Practice” and did not recollect the conversation when asked about it. However, Knowles (1989) was scrupulous about acknowledging Savicevik in later writings, and at one point agreed to coauthor a book on andragogy with him. Unfortunately, this project fell through, possibly due to disagreements about the term itself (Savicevik, 2008).

These two answers are, of course, not mutually exclusive, and there is certainly a reasonable chance that Knowles had come across the word several times in his career. There is the interesting philosophical question of whether terms are ever really invented by individuals or whether common contexts lead a number of people to think in similar ways simultaneously. In this case, there is evidence Knowles regarded himself as the creator of andragogy in North America. Before the publication of “Modern Practice” Knowles approached the editors of the Merriam Webster dictionary for advice on how the term should be spelt in Anglicized Greek (as andragogy appeared to have Greek antecedents) and included the letter in “Modern Practice.” In the letter, Knowles (1970) writes “since this book will be rather widely used in our field, it may result in a new word being added to the lexicon of adult education in this country” (p. 305). This was an explicit attempt to legitimate the term, and implicitly established a claim by Knowles to be the originator of the term in English.

It is not necessary to reiterate the content of Knowles’s idea of andragogy in detail, but some contours are relevant. The andragogical approach to practice is spelled out at some length in “Modern Practice” and many contributions by Knowles and other authors. It initially centered on four assumptions about adults and their learning (Knowles, 1970):

• Self-concept. Adults are used to being self-determining, and adult education must recognize this in its approach.

• Experience. Adults bring experience to education, and this should be acknowledged as a valuable resource.

• Readiness to learn. Adults have a greater or lesser readiness to learn based on their individual and social context.

• Orientation to learning. For adults, learning is about problem solving, and education needs to demonstrate application to be seen as a good use of time.

By Knowles’s final version of andragogy (Knowles et al., 1998, pp. 64-69), two more assumptions had been added:

• The need to know. It is necessary for adults to be aware of why they need to know something. What is the benefit of learning?

• Motivation. Internal motivators are the strongest for adult learners, even though their intrinsic drive to learn may have been dampened by life experience.

The derivation of these assumptions is not clearly explained, and Knowles was always very clear they were assumptions used to provide a grounding for andragogy and nothing more. The assumptions fit very well with mid-century human development theory in psychology, which proposed self-actualization as the most highly valued endpoint of development, and may well reflect the extent to which Knowles was influenced by Rogers’ (1957) work on human growth. However, the term assumption is, in itself, not very illuminating.

The Aims of Andragogy

When Knowles started using andragogy in North America his intention was to provide the field with a unifying theory. This could work in the same way as the theory of the unconscious in psychoanalysis. While different branches of therapy conceive of the unconscious in different ways, there is broad agreement regarding its significance in human life and happiness. To the extent, “Modern Practice” set out to establish a theory for the discipline of educating adults it was compatible with the European manifestations. Knowles (1970) defined andragogy as “the art and science of helping adults learn” (p. 38), and this definition is reasonably close to the European concept of andragogy as a framework for the adult education field.

However, reading “Modern Practice” 50 years later, one of the most striking features is the extent to which it presents as an atheoretical practical guide rather than a well-evidenced explanatory framework. The central assumptions of andragogy are laid out in only 17 pages, and the book includes 70 pages of exhibits and examples, one of which is “How andragogy works in leadership training in the girl scouts” (Knowles, 1970, p. 363). There is a chapter called “The far out notion of adult education as an art form” (p. 129). The difference between the aspirations of the book and the actual content led to confusion about its purpose relatively soon after publication (Hartree, 1984). Andragogy could be considered as a learning theory, a philosophical statement about adults, or a set of guidelines about course design. From its initiation, the intellectual project was threatened by the ambition to provide both a universal theory and a set of recommendations.

A group of andragogues mounted a rigorous defense against such critiques in the early 2000s, claiming that it was never intended it to be a general theory of adult education, but simply one form of transactional model for adult learning (Holton et al., 2001). This does not seem entirely compatible with Knowles argument, cited earlier, that “perhaps andragogy will give [the field] a unifying theory” (Knowles, 1970, p. 51).

Questions of scope and intent manifest as a consistent tension running through the global andragogical project. One aspect of this tension reflects North American tendencies to view andragogy as one way of thinking within a broad discipline running up against European views of andragogy as an entire theoretical discipline, including all the philosophical and practical varieties within it. The shared use of the term andragogy addsa semantic dimension to this tension. Saussure (1959) talked about the signifier, meaning the word used, and the signified, meaning the object to which the word points. “Dog” is the signifier in English, and the four-legged furry beast is the signified. When Knowles adopted “andragogy” as the signifier, it pointed back to the European tradition of scientific study of education for adults, but when Knowles actually explains what he means by andragogy in detail (as he did for almost 40 years) it is clear the signified is one specific approach to educating adults. This misalignment of signifier and signified reduces the ability of andragogy to provide field-encompassing theoretical distinctiveness or to recognize fully the European development of the conception. As an intellectual project, Knowlesian andragogy would benefit from clarity around its boundaries and intentions.

Part of the boundary-setting process would be working out a clear justification for Knowlesian andragogy; in simple terms, to what problem is this a solution? Based on the 1970 text, andragogy can be considered as a life-phase model of teaching and learning, justified by the notion that learners have different needs in different phases of their lives. All the assumptions of andragogy are based in, and represent, needs specific to adults. Andragogy is the solution to the problem of fulfilling those needs. This is a strong and clear claim (whether one agrees with it or not), and certainly aligns with the developmental perspectives of the time. Many educators might be comfortable with this justification, as children’s developmental stages are well accepted and this simply extends the idea.

Knowles moves away from a life-phase model quite early in the development of andragogy, however, and adopted a modal approach. Andragogy is no longer a specific teaching and learning practice for use with adults, but a mode of teaching applicable to any context. The change was probably influenced by Houle’s (1972) explicitly anti-andragogical view of education, which dismissed the idea of a specific process for adult learning. This move from life-phase to modal understanding considerably undermines the argument for andragogy as common ground and moves Knowlesian andragogy further from a scientific framework for adult learning. When andragogy is no longer presented as a unifying set of principles for adult education and is presented as one approach to education irrespective of participants, it weakens the intellectual project.

It is possible andragogical assumptions remain a helpful way to think about education for adults, even though this is much more limited than andragogy’s initial claim. The challenge here is to understand the nature of these assumptions. It is unclear whether they are principles of adult education, normative statements about American adults in the 1960s, or simply aspirations people may hold. Educational thinking is often based on sociological, psychological, or philosophical theory, and it is usually not considered appropriate to build conclusions on untested assumptions. The assumptions are closest to being a philosophical statement of values and principles, but are not presented in this way. These concerns lead to questions such as whether andragogy should be understood:

As an initial guide to assist adult learners towards self-direction; as a process of learning appropriate for adults who have already attained the capacity to be self-directed, or as a means through which individual needs can be reconciled with institutional or organizational demands. (Tennant, 2006, p. 14)

These questions remain open. While the humanism, the practicality, and the respect for learners offered by the Knowlesian perspective must be acknowledged and admired, the overall experience of the intellectual project is eerily similar to that of its rhizomatic forebears—a journey with no clear destination, and therefore not leading to any of the picturesque destinations to which its progenitor aspired.

Theory Building or Bildung?

One of the aspirations of an intellectual project is for other researchers and writers to see the key ideas as inspiring and to develop them further. Often this includes empirical testing and illustration, as a way to build foundations for the views and perspectives mooted by the theory. One example familiar to many is Bourdieu’s (1997) theory of forms of capital (social, cultural, economic), which has proven to have significant explanatory power across many contexts. The key idea has been developed by other authors who have been able to find different applications and manifestations, and in doing so added richness and complexity to the theory (Putnam, 2000). This is not the case with Knowlesian andragogy, where the original formulation remains the dominant perspective.

Despite the lack of theoretical development there has been a considerable amount of writing on andragogy. A great proportion of the writing has tackled putting andragogy into practice in different settings. John Henschke, who studied with Knowles and is a strong proponent of andragogy, has stated

much of what has been published focuses only on its popularized use, reflecting either a wholesale support of Knowles’s version of andragogy and the attendant excitement it generates, or a fairly straightforward debunking and dismissal for the reason of what some call Knowles’s unscientific approach. (Henschke & Cooper, 2007, p. 8)

It is striking how much of the published work on andragogy is reporting on “applying andragogy in situation x.” The latest field in which andragogy appears to have gained purchase is online learning, surely challenging given andragogy’s emphasis on relationship and the currently limited knowledge regarding relationship building at a distance. Overall, the andragogical literature demonstrates great impact on practice in a wide variety of contexts, but little reinforcement of the core intellectual project.

Some of the theoretical question have great political and practical significance. When andragogy was introduced, the model for science was the creation of universal theory. In andragogy this led to the representation of learners without gender, race, or privilege. At the time, this was not necessarily seen as exclusionary, due to belief in a commonality of human experience able to transcend difference and serve as the foundation for theoretical exploration. In the intervening decades, this has been recognized as a simple assertion that, deep down, everybody resembles a middle-class White male. One example of this in andragogy is the adoption of self-actualization as the aim of adult education, leaving aside social and collective aspects of the adult experience. The politics of identity and class may not explain every aspect of human experience, but it is hard to deny their power and reach.

Andragogy has been strongly criticized for its failure to take structural aspects of human experience into account. From a 21st-century viewpoint, andragogy appears to depoliticize and individualize learning and education, isolating them from social context and approaching them as psychological matters. Andragogy can end up appearing neutered due to the invisibility of social justice or cultural concerns, especially when set alongside more contemporary forms of adult education theorizing (Grace, 2001; Sandlin, 2005). This is a significant deviation from the European roots, which were deeply concerned with the role of humanity in the society of the time. Andragogik embraced the broad social and spiritual issues with which andragogy has only flirted. While it is not entirely fair to criticize the early North American exponents of the idea for their individualistic view of andragogy, it is reasonable to ask what has happened over the past 50 years, and why the complexity of identity has not been recognized as an important theoretical and practical challenge. There is little evidence that andragogical thinkers have even recognized the salience of the “big three:” class, gender, and ethnicity.

The lack of critical edge or concern with diversity has been recognized in the andragogical literature. A group of Knowles’s coauthors have made an argument that the critical perspectives missed out by andragogy were nonetheless fully compatible with it (Holton et al., 2001). There have also been attempts to think through what a more critical andragogy would look like, and implement it (cf. Clemons, 2019; De Turk, 2011), but they are not fully convincing. The universal and humanistic andragogical view of learning does not sit comfortably with equity-informed approaches, which, by definition, focus strongly on the sociocultural concerns of specific groups. It appears extremely challenging to move andragogy beyond the learner as a rational, self-diagnosing, individualistic actor who views learning as leading to self-actualization. Andragogical approaches have been very well received in human resource development, and one wonders to what extent this is because the ideal andragogical learner resembles the ideal corporate citizen.

One concrete challenge of building a research base for andragogy is the difficulty of turning the “assumptions” into testable propositions. For example, it is necessary to demonstrate that recognizing adult experience leads to better learning outcomes. The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2018) allowed some degree of cross-cultural exploration of andragogical ideas. One analysis of this data concluded,

At the person level, our findings illustrated that andragogical assumptions most closely depict learners like Knowles. We found that preferences were highest in men with above high school educations and skilled occupations. Interestingly, we also found that andragogical learning preferences had very little to do with actually being an adult. . . . Cultural and sociostructural differences aren’t just noise that can be averaged out to construct a generalised picture of how adults learn. (Roessger et al., 2020, pp. 20-21)

This quote raises questions about the validity and reach of andragogy. It points to the challenge of empirical work around andragogy, and the extent to which the assumptions have not even been basically tested. Examining related research fields to inform the andragogical conversation is a useful one, however, and can lead to fuller understanding in some cases. One recent study examined how self-directedness was distributed among people in the labor market, finding that it was associated with both higher pay and higher socioeconomic status more generally (Liu et al., 2019). Even these limited empirical examples raise interesting questions about how andragogical approaches might interact with the imperatives of social equity. Other work, examining the changes and experiences of adults over the lifecourse (Biesta et al., 2011), may support a life-phase conception of andragogy, and suggests the switch to a modal model may have been premature.

The work involved in creating a viable and reliable set of empirical data capable of supporting detailed consideration of andragogical principles is considerable. It would take a well-organized program of research using a range of methods to clarify the claims of andragogy and test them. The theoretical and research gap is considerable, leading one set of authors to argue unequivocally that “for andragogy to remain a fundamental focus in adult education, it must overcome the major criticism that has plagued it for the last 30 years: Finding empirical data” (Taylor & Kroth, 2009, p. 10).

Alley or Autobahn?

The North American rhizome of andragogy set out 50 years ago, driven by Knowles, to add direction and rationale to a problematically loose field of knowledge. In order to achieve that end, Knowles adopted a term already in use in Central Europe and beyond, and applied it to emerging ideas around the development of adults and the potential contribution of adult education. Given the way in which intellectual projects often play out, it seems likely the andragogues expected this move would bring together people and ideas in a disciplinary fashion. “Modern Practice” could have been a starting point for building a theoretical and philosophical framework around not just adult-focused teaching and learning processes, but the meaning of adulthood in late-Capitalist society. But this did not happen.

The reasons why are complex, and we are certainly not in a position to identify them definitively. From our vantage point 50 years later, based on our lived experience within academic and practical adult education, we offer some possible influences. First, it is not clear that establishing one set of ideas as the “core” of adult education makes sense or is desirable. This is partly due to the variety of people, contexts, purposes, and approaches encompassed by the idea of adult education, but there is a positive impetus to keep our field open. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, there were very significant struggles for recognition of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and other dimensions of human life within adult education, and these did not sit well with the universality claimed by andragogy (see Bracken & Nash, 2010, for a brief review of this history).

A second factor is the timing of the launch of andragogy. Not only was there a rise of identity politics over the next few years, but the type of universalist theory it represented fell out of fashion (cf. Grace, 2001). Poststructuralist, critical, and postmodern theory had enormous influence on thinking over the following several decades and helped expose the degree to which the “Black Book” and associated efforts represented a top–down effort to define a field (Damer, 2002). It is possible that Malcolm Knowles’s own position at the center of the adult education establishment was a double-edged sword. A respected scholar, it could nonetheless be that his version of andragogy was insufficiently radical and incisive to inspire theoretical development.

The third, and possibly the most significant, reason the andragogical intellectual project did not expand in a theoretical sense was the type of approach it represented. Andragogy is not an explanatory theory, it is a prescriptive framework. This connects back to the earlier discussion about the purpose of andragogy, and the problem it set out to solve. Andragogy did not emerge in response to theoretical or empirical questions but reflected an organizational need. North American andragogy claims a theoretical power, both implicitly and explicitly, but the claim is unmatched by an appropriate conceptual apparatus. Andragogy is not a theory, it is a normative manifesto.

These three factors go some way to explain why andragogy did not have more theoretical influence but also why it has had such a significant impact on practice. The core values are based on respect for learners and educators alike, and it is important not to understate how much this has mattered to the field over the past 50 years. Andragogical principles have become, in many cases, the defining characteristic of adult education, and certainly adult education’s strongest influence other disciplines. In many cases they have been worn as a badge of honor signifying the humanism and egalitarianism of the adult educator, and on that level the North American andragogical project has achieved all Knowles could have hoped for.

Conclusions Tentative and Hopeful

The intellectual project of andragogy in North America has had limited success as a theoretical endeavor despite its great pragmatic utility. Further development will depend on systematic work incorporating empirical investigation of the assumptions and significant theoretical reworking to move away from universalist claims. The gendered nature of the term andragogy, reflecting its 19th-century roots, should be revisited, as should the alignment of the concept with European models. We would like to call on the words of a previous commentator who summed up progress of the andragogical project over the first 25 years. Pratt (1993) stated,

While andragogy may have contributed to our understanding of adults as learners, it has done little to clarify our understanding of the process of learning. We cannot say, with any confidence, that andragogy has been tested and found to be, as so many have hoped, either the basis for a theory of adult learning or a unifying concept for adult education. (p. 21)

After a further quarter century these words still ring true.

In terms of learning about intellectual projects, we identify two lessons from Knowlesian andragogy. The first is that intellectual projects need to reflect a persistent problem, and it must be clear what empirical or philosophical question the project is trying to answer. Knowlesian andragogy appears to have been motivated to a large degree by a need to address the specific issues of a specific field at a specific time, and as those issues receded so did the pertinence of the project. The second lesson is the importance of context. Knowles’s work could have been expanded and grown into the field-defining framework he hoped for. While there were weaknesses in the original formulation, they could have been addressed over time. That they were not addressed is more a reflection of the time and place than an inherent quality of andragogy.

The North American rhizome of andragogical thought has proven to be quite different from its European manifestations. Reflecting the Anglo-American context it has grown into a practice-based and pragmatic working framework rather than an idealist and fully developed science regarding adult learning. The weakness of the North American instance is the lack of theoretical center, mirroring the European lacunae around concrete application. It seems there could be great value in connecting the rhizomes in new ways, and working together to begin, from the ground up, to create a broad, shared space of andragogy. We would tentatively suggest that times of change may increase interest in adult education as a way to help adults adapt to new circumstances or as a means to change society itself. Andragogy may evolve into a way to capture those aspects of adult education that go beyond training and vocation to consider the broader human condition and the societal situation. Perhaps by joining up the alleys, we can build our autobahn.