Foreword

 

Klaus Künzel

 

Transitions are changes of a quiet and inconspicuous kind. They are well matched with the calm business of adult education, whose home ground is neither the market place nor the barricade. It is of their nature to connect, to form links between people, times and structures. They are unassuming - perhaps even hesitant - of manner and smooth over the rough edges of junctures and decisions. Transitions take their time to let forms emerge and do not cease to make sense if no new solid frame becomes identifiable in permanence. Here again there is a parallel to educational effort, which shares with the concept of transition the attractiveness of permitting the interplay of continuity and change within flexible boundaries.

With the publication of this volume of the International Yearbook of Adult Education, transition is at hand in a change of editorship. In succeeding its founder and hitherto editor, Joachim H. Knoll, I welcome the opportunity of asserting the continuity of our cause and of reflecting on editorial pointers whose directional tendency, though open to modifications, should not belie the tried and trusted course.

The Yearbook will continue to provide access to what one might call the 'international references' in and of adult education. But how should this loose term actually be interpreted? Are we now dealing with the same references and topics that all those years ago at the Yearbook's incipience either came to light or seemed particularly interesting to its initiator? Has the international dimension of adult education become tangibly and systematically incorporated into the self-definition and theory of our discipline over the past three decades? Or does internationality - at least in European terms - manifest itself first and foremost as 'community action' in cross-border project work in the field of continuing education and in lifelong learning models, promoted in proportion to its transferability and organised in short-term object alliances?

On the topic of providing access, we might well use the imagery of unlocking and opening things up in regarding the plurality of cultural practices which mould the landscape of adult education in various states and regions as a treasure trove ready to be to unearthed. Its pickings will enrich first and foremost the relevant community of experts, then continuing education systems seeking to stimulate innovation by information transfer, but will ultimately fall to adult education as an idealised 'praxis' of universal spread and application. Historically speaking, the 'access motive' can be associated with the urbanisation and modernisation of the professional profile of adult education.

Other motives, too, play their part, such as the political moves for international understanding and the exchange of civil experience, for example, and even prescriptive lecturing and schoolmasterly precepts for collective improvement are not uncommon. So it was that the Allied policy of 're-education' after 1945 was born of the 'enlightened' notion that a nationally developed culture of education could - on the wings of the hegemonic self-assuredness of a victorious civilisation - be universalised in its normative and social conditioning potential and successfully implanted into a receiving society. Although we should not overstretch the didactic fertility of the post-war history of German adult education with its double experience of collective retraining in 1945 and 1989/90, it seems apparent that the concept of national systems of continuing education occupying different stages of developmental maturity plays an important role in the 'access motive', as does the expectation of transferred profit from it. One example of such suppositions endowing international research and co-operation efforts with a pronounced trait of pragmatic and imperial finality can be seen in the adult education activities of the European Community. To legitimate their foothold in the process of European unity, it is deemed necessary to hold the premise that adequately operationable and validated standards of professionalism and systemic quality in adult education can be worked out by multilateral study groups and development committees and successfully maintained across the board as international benchmarks. The educational political ambitions of the European Commission to secure transfers by introducing the regulative idea of a 'best practice' standard point in this direction: without a minimum of synergising and equilibrating of principles and standards of practical execution, there can be no sustainable harmonisation of life chances and living conditions in the regions of the Union.

The unfolding of the concept of internationality in adult education is closely linked to this motive of optimisation. Generally speaking, the programmatic exigences of progress tend to overshadow the multiculturally inspired idea that adult education could enrich its store of knowledge - and perhaps even enjoy the experience of difference - by crossing boundaries and cultures to make the acquaintance of a plurality of educational worlds. This quest for progress has given politically supported research into foreign ideas and experience a strategic and almost utilitarian drive, as evidenced in the growing significance of comparative education and research during the period between 1965 and 1975. Profiting from international achievement had become a calculated exercise with a message easily to be conveyed via political and public media. Hardly surprising, then, that J.H. Knoll could expect a broad consensus when referring in the third volume of the International Yearbook (1973) to the utilitarian wisdom of such learning profits. Concurrent recommendations of UNESCO and the Council of Europe on 'lifelong learning' or 'éducation permanente' showed the visionary climate of change had reached supranational platforms: the early 70s were the heydays of the planners and of reforming euphoria.

Knoll writes at the time: "As the science and practice of adult education can enjoy increased attention in the process of cultural and educational reform, it becomes imperative to give it an international orientation as a preventative measure against mistakes that have become apparent elsewhere." (p.7)

It would be difficult to call upon the international dimension of adult education so decisively to fulfil such an ambitious task nowadays. In this respect the International Yearbook is now at a different point of departure. In 1970, academic involvement in the political advisory process and in reforming tendencies was one of the politically and methodologically accredited hallmarks of a modernisation drive which was demonstrated by all sectors of German educational science. Over the past two decades, however, there has been a tangible reduction in mutual expectations of performance and synergy between politicians, educational practice and educational science. The withdrawal of overstretched technocratic demands on the serviceability of the Arts and Social Sciences will have been a contributing factor in this change, coupled with a waning belief in the 'doability' of educational reform in the grand manner. It has nevertheless to be said that even in the nineties there are still some conventional blueprints of modernity on the drawing-boards of supranational educational policy. The White Paper of the European Commission entitled "Growth, Competitiveness and Employment" (1994), despite its basic respect for the principle of subsidiarity in relation to the greater part of Community educational policy, is orientated towards the progressive programmatic concept of an international transfer of structures and skills, and is aimed at raising and setting community-wide educational quality standards.

To my mind, the editor of the 'International Yearbook of Adult Education' would be ill advised to become subordinate to any such connotations of political will. I say this firstly because factors leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam and an enhanced redefinition of the principle of subsidiarity have made it increasingly difficult to assess the remit of the EU to mould the structure of an educational 'Euroland', and secondly because the scientific pursuit of adult education in its international perspective is faced with challenges which relate to new subject matter and involve other research priorities. We must ponder here on the consequences of important sociological analyses of a developed industrial society (e.g. Giddens, Beck, Bourdieu, Schulze). We must also think upon the irrevocable changes of the world in which we live (Lebenswelt), on changes in our work culture brought about by informatisation and virtualisation.

Finally we have to take note of the global changes which are now addressed and referred to in educational programmes at all levels of supranational, national and societal responsibility. Within these programmatic statements, behavioural obligations are being proclaimed - such as the organisational and normative concept of lifelong learning - which affect social formations ('learning society', 'learning organisation') as much as the sphere of private lifestyle and educational attitude. It would be easy to compile a much longer list of such developmental tasks, but the points mentioned should suffice to demonstrate the spectrum of phenomena and concerns at hand. The Yearbook will make further effort in future to make these accessible and give them an adult educational profile.

Bringing back to mind the predominant aims of J.H. Knoll in the first volume of the Yearbook in 1969, we can identify the opportunity for continuity afforded by his intention to create a "forum for international discussion", in which "problems of particular interest or relevance to scientific study or practice" can be expounded and debated on (P.9). The 'new relevant topics and research priorities' which I have outlined above will maintain this direction and promote articulation of theoretical intent. I shall conclude with a few further comments on this.

To find the key to the international references of adult education we can follow two ways: by verification or by construction. They can be verified, for instance, by the historical disclosure of relevant encounters, influences, national models of adult education practice or converging international developments in topical areas, such as the relationship between the State and continuing education or the challenges which are presented to adult education by the new information technologies.

The prevailing approach of verifying or disclosing procedures is most commonly found in research formats such as description, reports and empirical analyses. Contrary to the more passive and implicit connotation of 'verification' the active semantic content of 'construction' refers to a productive operational concept. Here the central premise is that international references do not constitute an object accessible to scientific representation waiting to be 'verified', as it were. They are rather the result of communicative action, i.e. of processes in which experts from various countries and regions join forces in relating to a key issue which is relevant to the work and profession of adult education and which is in need of theoretical clarification.

In that sense a 'key issue' is able to unfold its heuristic potential if it promotes the growth of international/intercultural patterns of theoretical reflection and if - by being fully aware of the risks inherent in any attempt to gain access to general problems via paradigmatic procedures - it avoids levelling off the individual profiles and approaches of contributing authors but instead employs them for the sake of greater quality of differentiation and interpretational tolerance(s). The editor hopes that the topic of 'evaluation' provides such an opportunity for reflection and is able to enhance the development of joint ventures in the theoretical pursuit of adult education. In following this path the Yearbook should be fairly well in line with the foresighted goals and perspectives of its founder.

I should not like to send this volume of the Yearbook on its way without addressing some words of gratitude to those who have given me the opportunity of this new task, supported it with funds and advice and invested their energy in its execution. First and foremost I would like to thank Joachim H. Knoll for having entrusted to me the continuation of his creditable work. His many pacemaking impulses in international and comparative continuing educational research will leave their imprint on this Yearbook well into the future. His achievements will not be forgotten, especially in this time of transition. My thanks also to the Böhlau Verlag and Herr van Ooyen, who have approved and supported the editorial move to Cologne without ado and agreed to changes in the layout. The University of Cologne, represented by its Registrar Dr. Neyses, has very kindly agreed to provide funding for work on the Yearbook, for which I am most grateful.

Amongst those whose support I have had the privilege of relying on and without whose help a publication of this nature would not be possible, I would like first in line to thank the experts who were prepared to submit their original contributions on the topic suggested to them, and furthermore Martha Friedenthal-Haase (University of Jena) and John Field (University of Warwick) for having consented to sustain me with their academic competence. And finally, but by no means least importantly, I extend my warmest thanks to the members of my staff Brigitte Bosche, Stephanie Schell-Faucon and Ines Pepping for their loyal support in investing so much energy in so many different ways in preparing for publication the content and form of this 27th annual volume.

 

Cologne, October 1999,

Klaus Künzel