Raises issues about self-directed learning: its relatively unquestioned status, emphasis on individuals, and practices that are not necessarily emancipatory. Reflects on the way language shapes what is known. (SK)

If used creatively, information communications technology can develop critical intelligence and promote social justice. It can be used to counter the dominant market ideology in contemporary education. (SK)

Looks at the current fashion in language used to describe and promote adult education. Suggests that "professionalism" supports high-cost training for those who can afford it and wholesale destruction of adult education services for those with the least experience, but great need, of successful education and training. (SK)

The discourses of citizenship in the lifelong learning agenda are narrow and economistic, emphasizing adult learners as workers and producers, reducing adult education to training for work. The discourse of democracy and social change, an adult education tradition, is being neglected. (SK)

Transferable skills ostensibly useful for employment need not limit education to narrow vocational goals. Such skills could be applied equally to other meaningful and socially useful work, restoring the liberal values of adult education. (SK)

Describes initiatives in Scotland intended to reinvigorate the tradition of social purpose and political commitment in adult and community education: Concept, the journal of contemporary community education practice and theory; the Really Useful Knowledge program; and the Edinburgh biennial adult education conference. (SK)

What is missing from the citizenship debate is discussion of democracy, social justice, and equality. The political economy of citizenship still reflects and reinforces the major social divisions of power and excludes many. Democratic citizenship should be viewed in an expansive and nonnational way. (Author/JOW)

The nature of adult education may suit it for a partnership role in the Green movement--people concerned about the environment. Because Greens are ideologically diverse and generally well educated, adult educators' best opportunity may be in fostering awareness of ways in which environmentalists learn, as adults. (SK)

Current notions of the learning society are dominated by the notion of the learning market--lifelong learning for economic competitiveness. Learning for active citizenship and liberal democracy, once a major purpose of adult education, is being lost in the process. (SK)

Current rhetoric about lifelong learning views vocationalism and employability as the central purposes of education. However, job training cannot provide complete answers to complex social and economic problems, and adults have diverse needs beyond economic ones, necessitating more comprehensive lifelong learning. (SK)

Recent protests and vigilante actions in Britain related to pedophiles raise issues for adult educators. Educators must be prepared to struggle along with learners in the creation of knowledge based on reason and emotion and shaped by ethical and political considerations. (SK)

Discusses propositions about adult education: no type is neutral; it requires understanding of historical change; it should include analysis of power; curriculum is a social construction; instruction involves principle and purpose as well as technique; and adult educators should undertake critical reflection and dialectical thinking. (SK)

Examines three factors that are shifting the role of adult educators away from normative practitioners and agents of social change to enacters of the dominant discourse of lifelong learning: professionalization, technicist pedagogy, and policies of economic determinism. (SK)

The new Labour government in Britain may signal a resurgence of the social purpose tradition in adult education. Interviews with 35 adult and community educators revealed some sense of hope and possibility, but the lessons of the past must not be forgotten. (SK)

Prison educators are caught between public opinion swings from retribution to rehabilitation, from security to human rights. Even prisoners do not see education as a tool for future employment. The link between education and recidivism rates is difficult to establish. (SK)