This paper examines, from a perspective of postmodernity, the prospects for university adult education in the context of the development of adult educators. It is argued that it is only through engaging with the issues raised by postmodernity that adult educators can find the conceptual resources to engage with the complexities and uncertainties of the contemporary conjuncture. The paper outlines what is argued to be a condition of postmodernity by examining the economic, social, and cultural dimensions of this condition, and considers its implications for changing understandings of knowledge and education, the place of the university, and the tasks facing adult educators.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aviram, A.
(1992). The humanist conception of the university: A framework for postmodern higher education. European Journal of Education, 27(4), 397-414.
2.
Ball, S.
(1990). Politics and Policy Making in Education. London: Routledge.
3.
Bauman, Z.
(1991). Modernity and ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
4.
Beck, U.
(1992). Risk Society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
5.
Collins, M.
(1992). Adult Education as a Vocation. London: Routledge.
6.
Edwards, R.
(1994). From a distance? Globalisation, space-time compression and distance education. Open Learning, 9(3), 9-17.
7.
Edwards, R.
(1996). Troubled times? Personal identity, distance education and open learning. Open Learning, 11(1), 3-11.
8.
Edwards, R.
& Usher, R. (1996). "What stories do I tell now?" New times and new narratives for the adult educator, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 15(3) 216-229.
9.
Edwards, R.
and Miller, N. (1996). Demystifiers, champions and pirates: How adult educators construct their identities. Paper presented at Adult Education Research Conference, University of Tampa.
10.
Featherstone, M.
(1991). Consumer culture and postmodernism. London: Sage.
11.
Featherstone, M.
(1995). Undoing Culture. London: Sage.
12.
Field, J.
(1994). Open learning and consumer culture. Open Learning, 9(2) 3-11
13.
Giddens, A.
(1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
14.
Giddens, A.
(1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
15.
Gore, J.
(1993). The struggle for pedagogies: Critical and Feminist Pedagogies as Regimes of Truth. London: Routledge.
16.
Hammersley, M.
(1992). Reflections on the liberal university: Truth, citizenship and the role of the academic. International Studies in the Sociology of Education, 2(2), 165-183.
17.
Harvey, D.
(1991). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of social change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
18.
Hinkson, J.
(1991). Postmodernity, state and education. Geelong: Deakin University Press.
19.
Hunter, I.
(1993). Personality as a vocation: The political rationality of the humanities', in M.Gane and T.Johnson (eds.). Foucault's new domains. London: Routledge.
20.
Jansen, T.
and Van der Veen, R. (1992). Reflexive modernity, self-reflexive biographies: adult education in the light of the risk society. International Journal of Lifelong Education11(4), 257-286.
21.
Kenway, J.
(1995). Having a postmodernist turn or postmodernist angst: a disorder experienced by an author who is not yet dead or even close to it. In R. Smith and P.Wexler (Eds.), After postmodernism. London: Falmer Press.
22.
Kenway, J.
, with Bigum, C. & Fitzclarence, L. (1993). Marketing education in the postmodern age. Journal of Educational Policy, 8(2) 105-122.
23.
Kumar, K.
(1995). From post-industrial to post-modern society: New theories of the contemporary world. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
24.
Lash, S.
(1990). Sociology of postmodernism. London: Routledge.
25.
Lyotard, J-F.
(1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
26.
Lyon, D.
(1994). Postmodernity. Buckingham: Open University Press.
27.
Murray, R.
(1989). Fordism and post-Fordism. In S.Hall and M.Jaques (Eds.) New Times: The changing face of politics in the 1990s. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
28.
Plant, S.
(1995). Crash course. Wired, April, 44-47.
29.
Robertson, R.
(1992). Globalisation: Social theory and global culture. London: Sage.
30.
Sandywell, B.
(1995). Forget Baudrillard? Theory, Culture and Society, 12(4), 125-152
31.
Sarup, M.
(1993). An introductory guide to poststructuralism and postmodernism. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
32.
Soja, E.
(1989). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London: Verso.
33.
Usher, R.
(1992). Experience in adult education: a postmodern critique. Journal of Philosophy of Education26(2), 201-214.
34.
Usher, R.
& Edwards, R. (1994). Postmodernism and education: Different voices, different worlds. London: Routledge.
35.
Usher, R.
& Edwards, R. (1995). Confessing all? A "postmodern guide" to the guidance and counselling of adult learners. Studies in the Education of Adults, 27(1), 9-23.
36.
Vattimo, G.
(1988). The end of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
37.
West, C.
(1994). Keeping faith: Philosophy and race in America. New York: Routledge.
