Journal of Adult and Continuing Education

Using a content analysis approach, this article shares the results of scholarly adult education study on museum and library adult education and learning as represented in peer-reviewed publications over the past 60 years. Findings show a paucity of studies in general, but particularly around libraries. The majority of publications on libraries were ‘non-research-oriented’, and published in the 1950s and 1960s; museums were all but ignored until studies began to appear in the 1990s. Early concerns focused on elitism and the educational role, while later studies began to debate social and interpretive issues. Although museum and libraries theorists call for critical discourses and studies, with few exceptions adult education research is dominated by liberal discourses. We conclude the article with a number of recommendations for future study in this important yet underresearched and undertheorized area.

Amidst calls for libraries to regain their socially progressive roots and connections to community, this study analyzes two interwoven cases of nonformal, community education in northeastern Nova Scotia, initiated by libraries that aimed to revive those links. Through a reading circle and a people's school, librarians used historical materials on the Antigonish Movement of that area to help people not only understand their social movement past but also critique what was missing and apply the principles to contemporary problems. The study explored the interplay between identity, locality, and history, as well as the library's role and what could be learned from the activities. This study makes a contribution to adult education in, through, and with libraries in what is currently an underresearched area.

The ability of US museums to attract and engage ethnically diverse audiences, including African Americans is a problem that has plagued museums for decades (Falk, 1993; Philipp, 1999). Scholars have sought to understand traditional visitors' perceptions of museums in order to better to increase visitations and promote lifelong learning, but research based on African-American conceptions is largely absent. To understand African-Americans' conceptions of museums and their consequential effects on visitation decisions, an interpretative qualitative study was conducted. As a part of this study, eight African-American participants constructed concept maps to exploring their mental models of museums. Using map and constant-comparative methods of analysis, three themes emerged from this map data. First, museums are perceived as places of learning and education, which influences participants' visitation decisions. Second, museums are perceived as offering a narrow and often inaccurate representation of African Americans. Third and final, participants visit in order to escape socioculture pressures. The affect of each theme is discussed and implications for museum and adult educators are provided.

The Library of Birmingham (LoB) is a £193million project designed to provide a new space for lifelong learning and knowledge growth, a physical and virtual portal for Birmingham's citizens to the wider world. In cooperation with a range of private, public, and third-sector bodies, as well as individual citizens, the library, due to open in June 2013, will articulate a continuing process of organic growth and emergence. Key delivery themes focus on: arts and creativity, citizenship and community, enterprise and innovation, learning and skills and the new media ecology. A landmark design in the heart of the cultural district of the city, the LoB aims to stimulate sustainable economic growth, urban regeneration and social inclusion by offering a wide range of new digital learning services, real and virtual community spaces, and new opportunities for interpreting and exploiting internationally significant collections of documentary archives, photography, moving image, and rare printed books. Additionally, the LoB will offer physical space for creative, cultural, enterprise, and knowledge development. This paper outlines the cultural and educational thinking that informs the project and the challenges experienced in developing innovative service redesign.

Docents – volunteer adult educators in art museums – adapt their tour content and process to best suit their audiences. This interpretive qualitative study explores the strategies docents used in four art museums in the Northeastern United States to tailor their educational activities and attempt to make them more relevant and interactive. Findings show strategies include assessing tour-goers' place of residence, prior knowledge of art, reasons for attendance, and observations of their gestures in order to make art and the visit relevant. Findings also show, however, that docents inadvertently perpetuate stereotypes of museum visitors; assessing one's audience is indeed nuanced and very complex. The results present challenges to museums to not only engage in the further education of their docents, but understand how their educational work can thwart efforts to overcome stereotyping of audiences.

Public libraries have traditionally provided key inputs to support lifelong learning. More recently, significant social and technological changes have challenged this sector to redefine their role in this field. For most public libraries in Europe this has meant continuing their role as providers of information and advice while increasing services to help learners with processing and evaluating knowledge. In some cases, new roles are undertaken with limited legislative changes and stagnant levels of funding. A consortium representing 12 European Union (EU) countries, ENTITLE, undertook a survey amongst its members in 2008–09 to scope policies and strategies linking learning and public libraries. This paper uses results from this survey to establish a typology of lifelong learning in public libraries in these countries. It explores how traditions, institutions, and policies influence learning provision at public libraries. The results show strong provision of learning services for children in almost all these countries, but inconsistent provision for adults. The paper argues that there is a divergence amongst these 12 countries in terms of innovation and resourcing. Those with a stronger provision benefit from local autonomy, the drive and skills to create partnerships, and formal legal and strategic recognition as partners in this agenda.

The current interest in the role of lifelong learning and cultural engagement for change is not new. This article looks at a most unusual precedent and a neglected area in the historiography of adult education – the use of cultural education provision in asylums in the nineteenth century to promote cure and restoration of the ‘insane’ to society. Focusing on the example of Crichton Royal Institution in Scotland, but with reference to other asylums, the many activities offered to patients – formal adult education classes, access to asylum libraries and museums, publication of asylum periodicals, musical and theatrical entertainments, drawing and painting, and attendance at cultural events beyond the asylum walls – are discussed. The article examines the reasons for their introduction, assesses the impact that such activity had on the lives of this most marginalized of social groups, and argues that they can be seen as an early and innovative example of lifelong learning in practice.

This paper contextualizes and analyzes a study of an ongoing series of visual arts workshops for women, commissioned from the Centre for Continuing Studies, Edinburgh College of Art, by clients in Dubai. The focus of workshops was on women from the Gulf taking ‘leadership’ courses in Dundee, but they were also vehicles for Gulf women to engage in visual arts education in a cross-cultural context which offered them novel lifelong learning pedagogical strategies. The study's primary question was how visual art practice could offer non-art specialist women from the Gulf new routes to achieve transformative learning and renegotiate a broad range of cultural expectations. Findings showed that exploring their creativity helped the women to enhance their confidence through a changed sense of self; navigate cross-cultural contexts; and locate devices for remapping personal boundaries. These findings also suggest the potential for arts education to open up new possibilities for women to work in museums and galleries in the Gulf where ‘culture’ is a increasingly significant economic driver.