Negotiating border-crossings when ‘adult education’ meets ‘vocational learning’. Comparative historical notes on defining the ‘research object’

Abstract

This paper offers a theoretical perspective on socio-historical research addressing the social organisation of communication and learning as cultural practices. It is critical of mapping the field of ‘adult education’ in terms of ‘absences’ regarding the historical dimensions of ‘organised adult learning’ investigated. It offers a comparative exploration of vocational dimensions of organised adult learning that characterise divergent historiographies in the Netherlands and Germany until 1945. Post-1945 policy repertoires are explored in terms of the socio-historical shift from ‘collective employability’ repertoires stressing permanent education social advancement towards the construction of neoliberal repertoires from the late 1960s articulating ‘individualised employability’. The conclusion argues that research should focus on recovering a critical perspective regarding shifts and breaks in historical conjunctions of cultural practices that characterise relationships between the ‘adult’ and ‘vocational’ dimensions of organised adult learning.