Adult Education @ 21st Century

Adult Education @ 21st Century tackles tough questions concerning how to respond to and engage with transnational education markets and multicultural diversity in a global environment typified by disorienting changes and continuities. Researchers from different countries demonstrate various ways in which the teachers of adults mediate and mitigate the oppressive consequences of the contemporary transition to globalization and the resentment and alienation to which it gives rise. Based on analyses of their work, the contributors argue that teachers and policy makers involved in adult education are significant agents of innovation. From Germany and Norway, across Malaysia and Australia to Canada, the contributors to this book are engaging in transformative projects that are informed by globally oriented thinking and actions aimed at enhancing local viability.

The Editors: Peter Kell is Associate Professor in Adult Education and Further Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and has extensive leadership and research experience in vocational, professional and tertiary education. His research interests include adult literacy, transnational education markets, and technological innovations in vocational education. He is the co-author, with Michael Singh and Ambigapathy Pandian, of Appropriating English: Innovation in the Global Business of English Language Teaching (Peter Lang, 2002). Sue Shore is an active researcher and academic in adult education at the University of South Australia and past Director and Chair of the National Adult Literacy and Numeracy Research Consortium. Her research interests cover the uses and abuses of practitioner research, explorations of the literate subjectivities, and understanding the effects of whiteness on theory building. Michael Singh is Professor of Education at the University of Western Sydney where he is researching changes and continuities in education in terms of social justice and the sustainability of ecological and multicultural diversity. Professor Singh’s research focuses on the transitions in educational policies, pedagogies, and politics arising from the historical, ideological, and localizing practices of globalization. Professor Singh studies educational change/continuity in relation to the shifts between industrial to post-industrial political economies, information management and knowledge production, as well as national and post-national identities.