Did The Growth And Development Of Adult Education In Canada Gain Cultural Status?

Contents

TOC o “1-3” h z u HYPERLINK l “_Toc377209347” Introduction PAGEREF _Toc377209347 h 1

HYPERLINK l “_Toc377209348” Chronology of Emergence Academic Adult Education in Canada PAGEREF _Toc377209348 h 1

HYPERLINK l “_Toc377209349” The Image of Academic Adult Education and the Legacy of Higher Adult Education Image as Extension PAGEREF _Toc377209349 h 4

HYPERLINK l “_Toc377209350” The Conspectus Struggle of Academic Adult Education for Place and Space in University PAGEREF _Toc377209350 h 6

HYPERLINK l “_Toc377209351” The program Development in the Postwar Academic Adult Education PAGEREF _Toc377209351 h 9

HYPERLINK l “_Toc377209352” Concluding Perspective PAGEREF _Toc377209352 h 11

HYPERLINK l “_Toc377209353” References: PAGEREF _Toc377209353 h 12

IntroductionAcademic adult education in Canada emerged in the middle of the larger field’s desire in the dominant cultural circles. This was due to increased space for useful and recognized presence and place of valued and respected position where its effects and presence was usually judged as peripheral in relation to the greater socio-cultural and institutional scheme of issues. The social cultural climate; indicated by enlarged population growth, trend towards urbanization, crises of depression and war, enhanced the need to promote adult education and the associated need for education of adult educators in Canada (Wilton, 1987).

Instrumental, social and cultural forms of adults’ education were considered as part of the solution towards the society’s ills and a way of assisting adults deal with the ruptures that took place in the presence of diverse change occurrences. Bergvin (1967) said the ruptures intensified after the World War II as the cultural and economic matters were radically reconfigured as the late capitalist society where the government intrusions and huge businesses became ordinary, and ostensibly, natural occurrences in the lives of people and in sociocultural arenas like adult education. Technology is said to underpin the transformed and emergence education. In this transformation, the cultural and economic intersected in the border zone where their transitions neither particularly synchronized nor separated.

Chronology of Emergence Academic Adult Education in CanadaDuring this change-force milieu, the clamor among citizen workers and leaners for adult education became even more pronounced. The era of 1940-1960 was followed by a large growth period in adult education. In this period, the academic adult education got designed to give structure and purpose towards the education of adult educators which emerged in the growing number of universities in Canada. University courses and other professional degree programs grew quickly in numbers during this era. Alongside universities and colleges being involved in adult education, their programs and courses were too traditional as they were read using insufficient scientific and technological methods (Fenwick, Nesbit & Spencer, 2006). The offerings were not favorable to cater for the wide range of contemporary adult educational needs generated by evolvement of late capitalist culture which gave dominance to the methods, devices and techniques applied.

Some researchers viewed this tendency to uphold the tradition as the blockage towards professionalization of adult education at the moment when enterprise remained the key margin of higher education. The inquiry for adult education’s authenticity in academia persisted as the increase in financial problems due to its trial to cater for diverse requirements in the face of diversification. However, the more professionalized kind of adult education got recognized in the University. As the number of graduate programs became higher, the academic adult educators worked to offer direction and leadership. There was an enhancement in the research of adult education majority of which rose from the program growth (Scott & Thomas, 1998).

By 1968, at least twenty universities in Canada offered the doctoral program in adult education and adult education had found its dwelling of sorts in the university. Some of the universities with no particular adult education program gave room for the students to specialize and wrote dissertations in the field. The graduate of adult education got established more gradually in Canada as various universities periodically offered specific adult courses. For instance, Sir George Williams College gave the initial undergraduate, and single-credit adult education in 1934. While by 1950, courses were offered at Laval University, Macdonald College, St. Francis Xavier and Sir George Williams College. J. Roby Kidd played the instrumental duty in advancing academic adult education in Canada. He advocated the formal training for adult educators, pronouncing that the Canadian Association of Adult Education planned for graduate adult education program which were to be offered once at one or more universities. He showed his concern with the uneven development of adult education in the country and invited for co-ordiantion of adult education initiatives at regional, community and national levels. This came as he felt that academic adult education could play the foremost duty in the process.

The Ontario College of Education offered the initial graduate adult education course in 1951 in Canada. By 1957, seven Canadian Universities got involved in the delivery of some form of academic adult education. Nevertheless, the country was proud of the existence of only one full-scale graduate-degree program in the adult education by late 1950s which commenced under the direction of Alan M. Thomas in 1957 at the University of British Columbia. However, the Canadian adult education strengthened its vocation sense in 1950s and the academic adult education enhanced in the 1960s alongside emphasis on training of adult educators and institutional development (Welton, 1987).

In 1968, the University of Montreal was the first French Canadian university to give adult education program. By 1970s, the seven Canadian universities gave graduate programs in adult education with the University of British Columbia of 1961, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of 1965 and University of Montreal of 1969 offering the doctoral programs.

The Image of Academic Adult Education and the Legacy of Higher Adult Education Image as ExtensionThe history of academic adult education emergence in Canada in the era of modern practice is the history of struggle for place and space in the University where the adult educational ancient image as extension hindered attempts to establish its image as an academic discipline. According to Scott & Thomas (1998) said that the image of adult education as an extension which reflected the field’s historical commitment to social education catered to relegate adult education to the realm of undisciplined in the view of many academics working across the university disciplines in both countries. Portman in his analysis of adult education concerning perennial peripheral location in the university, places the field’s long history as extension at the centre of location problem (Portman, 1978).

Nevertheless, higher adult education as an extension took place in the similar institutional setting it was alienated by the time from the day the university program and the name extension from the central work which was traditionally regarded to constitute the university’s real duty and purpose. Portman (1978) associated the urban university expansion and increase in the number of adult learners to its hallowed halls and extension grew within the decidedly distinct separation of evening and day programs. He recounted that during the 1920s, the evening session approaches surpassed the day session in overall enrollment.

The higher adult education programme quickly expanded to be part of the higher education in Canada and its programmes increasingly resembled that of regular university curriculum. Nonetheless, most of university administrators and faculty discerned the higher adult education to be separate from the actual work of university. As the extension functioned historically as a pragmatic way which met educational requirements specified by cultural, social, economic and political change forces, the higher adult education as an extension had to counter the image as less formally established reactive education that countered to the tides and time.

The higher adult education’s community-service education had to be paid for even in the times of best moments when it was expected to be self-supporting. When it was not so, the extension was often perceived to be economic and cultural millstone particularly in the times of fiscal constraint. Bergvin (1967) said the devaluing of its service function consigned the extension to survivalist stance as on one had it was motivated by the loftiest of ideals, yet upon the sober reflection, that was not the case. The higher education as an extension acknowledges usually without regret budgetary objectives and public relations which permeate its activities. The lesser allocation for higher education is in the keeping with academy’s historical predisposition to refute the service significant currency as an academic function. In contrast to teaching and certainly in contrast to research, majority of academics positioned the service outside significant and primary purposes of the university (Miliband, 1974).

They characterized the extension as auxiliary and the night operation designed to cater for professional and vocational needs of adults leading busy lives and they queried the credibility of higher adult education programs. The academics considered the evening faculty invariably the part-time workers who were the underpaid associate to the day faculty, to be the lower-class educators. The undervalued status of extension faculty persevered in academia even as urban institutions increased in number and size; the higher adult education enjoyed the tremendous enhancement.

The Conspectus Struggle of Academic Adult Education for Place and Space in UniversityMost of academic adult education encountered essential growth and development from 1917-1970 and this evolvement was mostly pronounced after the World War II when there existed most of the institutions, experimentations, students, and courses dealing in the higher adult education than ever before. The academic adult education tried to gain place and space in the postwar academia, which was bolstered by both opportunity and need for adult education and the emerging later capitalist diversification of culture. The enhanced efforts to techno-scientize and professionalize novel practice marked the postwar period in Canada (Fenwick, et al 2006).

Majority of academic adult educators contributed essentially to those efforts and promoted the need to develop more disciplined practices. Those were driven by the desire to secure larger cultural place and space for adult education in the world marked by all-pervasive economic and cultural transformations, although the conflicts inundated their initiatives. The adult education was captured in the pressure of up-coming modern practices between the line of competing identifications as the study of field and the field of practice. The tensions pitted academic adult education post-war yearning to belong to an extending techno-scientized university culture which reflected the dominant culture values and its growing military-industrial complexity of the day (Miliband, 1974).

Bergvin (1967) postulated that the postwar struggle towards place and space of academic adult education happened as the university itself encountered crises which became quite pronounced in the middle of cultural, social and upheavals that were witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s. As universities transformed in the 1960’s, they utilized the term multiversity to get its pluralistic nature in the altering cultural and economic milieu. The university had become the institution with various purposes with many centers of power and most clienteles which constituted not a single unified community. The techno-science was the basic economic and cultural ruptures which altered the life world. Thus, the research university came to offer the infrastructure in support of military-industrial complex and the knowledge economy that appeared in response towards the Cold War and the Soviet scientific gains.

The increasing prominence on techno-scientific research altered the academic field highly. It speeded up the professionalization of academics and decreased the value of their educational duty. Thus, science transformed the academic culture of the academia world. Scott & Thomas further argue that science was no longer the knowledge model but the cultural model and set of social directives for utilization of accumulated resources. A society establishes the research universities and centers as another builds palaces and cathedrals. To have its place and space in academic adult education, milieu and the bigger field had to enlarge operations in the realm of techno-scientific. Within this realm, training in techniques became training in ideology, interests and values of the dominant culture.

The hope was that intensification would take the adult education beyond reactive survivalist mode to the place and space as culturally valued education for adults in the times of sweeping change forces. Some of the questions about the university’s role in World War II altered the culture of challenge and crisis. These include: the university’s responsibility towards the society and particularly to variously powerless and disadvantaged. Other questions which rose include the community’s rights with respect to university and how the university ought to relate towards the surrounding community. The debates often ended in the call for increased university involvement to address the daily life, work and learning issues which influenced citizen learners and workers (Welton, 1987).

The pervasive change forces confronted the University to find its novel and effective ways to negotiate the social in its surrounding community when the social seemed in unending turmoil in the face of unsimilar late capitalist reconfigurations of cultural and economic circumstances. By the end of 1960s, Davis (1970) summarized that there could be no second-hand approach to societal ills, as an epitaph could be considered in the advance for discipline or institution that looked upon its community as irrelevant or incidental.

“The University enters into the challenge of urban era period divided and unclear as to its functions and duty. It is not an integrated community with the single purpose and universal language. It is not at all an integrated community with the sole purpose and common language. At its center are the graduate schools with their emphasis on research or specialized graduate training (Davies 1970).

Bergvin (1967) said the center attempted to pull the undergraduate programs and professional schools into its vortex. Similarly, the nature of urban conditions and the challenges of society in usual are tagging all the groups in opposite directions. The dynamics showed that adult education with its history as the community-based field of practice fought to secure a place and space in academia at the moment when the university itself got challenged to get proactive place and space in the community. Possibly, the academic adult education could have come out as the university’s basic connection towards the community. Nevertheless, it remained on academic margins for the exact reason that it could have been received as the university’s liaison towards the community, with its history as the extension. As stated earlier, the higher adult education as an extension historically had offered the basic link amidst the community and university it served.

Considering this history, the academic adult education might have mediated the trials to strengthen and establish the university-community connection in the manner conducive to cater for the problems to bring about the changing community requirements in the late capitalist society. It was though hard in vogue in techno-scientific times to turn towards the field’s history as addition education delivered by the changing amateurs who offered the social-education services. So, the academic adult educators were left struggling to secure a place and space in university as the reasonable location not only to involve in professional and research development, but also to involve in community development, materials development, curriculum, and career counseling. Majority of them responded by establishing the increasingly instrumentalized and professionalized practice to improve place and space in the light of the growing pattern in university to give enhanced prominence to technology and science.

The program Development in the Postwar Academic Adult EducationThe academic adult educator’s tool is the main question in their expedition to establish university programs that enabled for advancement of the novel practice. There arose the question of what practices and knowledge ought to guide the establishment of academic adult education. In spite of the enhancement of demands of emerging techno-scientized culture which put pressure, the skills, training and the answers frequently transcended concerns that were instrumental in adult education programmes. Bergvin (1967) said the underscoring usual concerns in academic adult education between 1950s and 1960s accentuated the significant of establishing theory and focusing on the foundations of practice.

Bergevin (1967) believed that the programs ought to put emphasize on both specific and wide training in relationship skills with others in communication, philosophical, social and historical concepts which influenced the human conduct. Thomas (1963) similarly located himself when he described the establishment of graduate adult education program at Canadian Universities. He indicated that the program gave the preference to economic, social and political implications of adult education and the challenges of responsibity and power that came along. Thomas came into conclusion that the two requirements had to be catered to establish the programs in the graduate adult education.

At first, there was the need to address imposition of habitual format of University on the material which in its nature challenged the organization of knowledge. Secondly, there was the need to regard students’ clientele and the community as the main elements during program establishment. His initial point suggested that the individual and the social were complementary prominence in the adult education. Thomas realized that the adult education had different clientele who needed the worldly education. The adult learners needed programs which integrated research, theory, and practice and which were engaged to cater for group and individual requirements in the local community and beyond.

Liveright (1964) concurred with Thomas and Bergevin with the concern towards the significance of those program elements design in the academic adult education. Even though, he cautioned that it was neither possible nor desirable to set, particularly the organization or the content of graduate adult education in some encompassing and fixed sense. He believed the diverse nature of adult education was the main factor which inhibited the setting of the usual objectives and aims that would identify competencies for graduate entrance and programs. Verner (1969) considered another major factor inhibiting the unambiguous delineation of the duty of adult education in university as the lack of comprehension of adult education as the component of all education.

The growth in the graduate professional programs in adult education has not been constructive or logical as it tended to happen gradually within the Schools of Education where it has been considered basically as the extension of pedagogy instead of a distinct subject with its own exceptional knowledge and practice. Despite these challenges, Liveright (1964) felt it was not possible to give in any case the usual depiction of what the constituted graduate studies in that field. Verner (1964) offered such depiction in the summary of duty courses undergirding most of the established graduate programs in academic adult education in Canada.

Concluding PerspectiveAs universities tended to give small place and space to it and alongside the program development in the graduate of adult education, the programme was still in metamorphosis and academic adult education made importance inroads into university from 1917 to 1970. That expansion was linked inextricably towards the growth of higher adult education. Liveright (1960) maintained he had become the field’s most pervasive characteristic. He associated the higher adult education in universities and colleges pursued two major goals as it worked to ensconce the learning as the lifeling process. This entailed conducting vocational training and engaging in continuing education for civic responsibility and personal development and growth.

The academic adult education had the significance task of educating through educators who worked to achieve those goals. Liveright (1960) gave the four challenges towards academic adult educators toiling to professionalize and techno-scientize novel practices. That is to measure their progress during the training of other adult educators and establishing further techniques and methods. This also involved continuing establishment of the knowledge base for the field and conducting of research focused basically on that practice. He hoped to cater for the challenges which enhanced academic adult education to boost its place and space in the university.

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