Abstract
The education of adults has always involved a wide range of diverse people working in diverse ways in diverse spaces. Sometimes our canonical texts obscure this aspect of our shared activity. However, it is becoming ever more visible as we find ways to record and acknowledge the contributions of the named and un-named educators who committed their lives to the learning of others.
In our societies more broadly we have recently seen the remarkable and continuing efficacy of social movements and informal learning as spaces for adult learning/education. Movements such as Black Lives Matter, Fight for 15, Fees Must Fall, and #MeToo share an impetus to raise awareness in order to create consensus around the need for change. In other words, to educate.
Helping to keep these spaces of learning open is no easy task, especially in a time when all sorts of pressures are coming together to close them down. That is one of the reasons our AEQ editorial team is so strongly committed to equity and social justice. We recognize the importance of having diverse voices in our major publishing outlets. The voices of adult educators—in North America and globally—are vibrant and varied, so the content of our journal must be too. As editors we see it as our obligation to curate bodies of knowledge that reflect a mosaic of learners, educators, and ways of being and knowing but we need your help. We need authors and reviewers who are equally committed to being change agents for equitable justice and learning. We encourage submissions reflecting that broader vision and more diverse representation of our field, including (but not limited to) race, ethnicity, geography, ideology, and gender identity. We, the editors, strive to personify the excellence offered by true diversity and equity. We strive to make AEQ a genuinely open space.
As we reflect on our field one-quarter of the way through the twenty-first century we are concerned about the future of one of our most important spaces, the Adult Education Research Conference (AERC). For decades this was a key gathering space for research-minded members of our field and an essential entry point for new researchers. It was unique in its unabashed emphasis on knowledge creation around the education of adults and the place where all the roads came together for those involved in the research side of our discipline. It was the place we could come to meet the authors of the papers we read in class and see them playing guitar. It was our human and intellectual center; a critical yet loving space.
AERC has been struggling over the last few years under the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and also, to some extent, because of the way it is organized. There is no AERC organization, just a group of volunteers who come together to organize the meeting. There is no money to be made from hosting the conference, so institutions are wary about agreeing to be the host. We are very fortunate that the University of Oklahoma has agreed to host for at least a couple of years.
There has been interest in folding it into the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE). It is not yet clear what this would look like and even how it would happen given the lack of governance around AERC. The most sustainable model for conferences currently appears to be to have a high-cost event with a professional organizing body and assertive marketing (think American Educational Research Association). This might be a viable pathway for AERC but there would need to be some sort of organization prepared to take this on—and it would be a long way from the “meeting of minds” AERC has provided for our field.
If we are to have a discipline loosely bringing together those interested in the education of adults we need to preserve our spaces. We encourage everybody to get involved in the thinking around AERC and how it can be made as valuable for the future of our field as it was for the past. If adult education cannot offer spaces in which diversity and vibrancy can thrive then other disciplines will. We must always push toward openness and demonstrate the promise inherent in the idea that inclusion and excellence are not in opposition. Without the inclusion there can be no excellence or equity.