Adult Education 1964-1973: Reflections of a Changing Discipline

Abstract

This study addresses the question: can the adult educator remain currently informed of important concerns and issues in adult education through the pages of Adult Education? The study of Adult Education from 1964 to 1973 was designed to generate infor mation concerning: 1. kinds of articles published; 2. content of articles published; 3. number of articles based on dissertations and theses; 4. contributors of articles; and 5. general trends. One hun dred and sixty-one articles written by 163 different authors were printed during the nine-year period. The articles were character ized by variability according to kind, content and authors. The findings, conclusions and implications are discussed.

How pluralistic is the research field on adult education? : Dominating bibliometrical trends, 2005-2012

“…The focus was on developing knowledge in order to define and develop the field (Jensen, Liveright & Hallenbeck, 1964) and much research was directed at developing programs and instructional methods. This is illustrated, for example, by Long and Agyekum's (1974) analysis of articles that was published in the AEQ (then named Adult Education). They found that during the period 1964-1973 more than half of the articles (55%) concerned one of the three following areas: program planning and administration, instructional material and methods, and adult learning.…”

“…Studying this field by analysing its leading scientific journals has become a popular strategy in recent years (Hayes, 1992;Blunt & Lee, 1994;Rachal & Sargent, 1995;Taylor, 2001;Fejes, 2008;Harris & Morrison, 2011;St. Clair, 2011;Larsson, 2010;Fejes & Nylander, 2014), and the early examples of bibliometric studies and content analysis of adult education research date back to the 1970s (Dickinson & Rusnell, 1971;Long & Agyekum, 1974;Boshier & Pickard, 1979). In this article, we study the top-cited articles in three of the leading English-speaking adult education journals between the years 2005-2012 in order to examine if and in what aspects the field is shaped as heterogeneous and pluralistic.…”

Adult education research: exploring an increasingly fragmented map

“…Numerous articles examining the scholarly field of adult education have appeared since the 1960s, employing content analyses of adult education journals (Dickinson & Rusnell, 1971;Long & Agyekum, 1974), country comparisons (Brookfield, 1982), and citation analysis (Boshier & Pickard, 1979). Some articles looked at subdisciplines such as adult basic education (Fisher & Martin, 1987) or specific aspects such as the impact of feminism on adult education (Hayes, 1992).…”

“…While in 1963 86 adult education dissertations were reported, that number increased to 173 by 1969 (Long & Agyekum, 1974). Dickinson and Rusnell (1971) reported a strong increase of research related to adult education and scholars affiliated to university departments, and Long and Agyekum (1974) observed an "increasing sophistication in adult education research " (p. 106) between 1964 and 1973. Guided by funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Commission of Professors of Adult Education in the US set out to define the conceptual foundations of adult education (Jensen, Liveright, & Hallenbeck, 1964). Officially titled Adult Education: Outlines of an Emerging Field of University Study, this book is popularly called the "Black Book."…”

Citation Patterns of Articles Published in Adult Education 1968-1977

“…Recent attempts to study the publishing behaviour of adult educators (13,37,38,48) did not include systematic examination of citations found at the end of each article. Recent attempts to study the publishing behaviour of adult educators (13,37,38,48) did not include systematic examination of citations found at the end of each article.…”