SCUTREA 2019 - 2nd Call for Abstracts

This is the 2nd Call for Abstracts for the SCUTREA Conference 2019 - Adult Education 100: Reflections & Reconstructions - to take place at the University of Nottingham, UK, on Tuesday 2^nd - Thursday 4^th July 2019.

Adult education, said Britain’s Ministry of Reconstruction in 1919, “is an inseparable aspect of citizenship, and therefore should be both universal and lifelong”, adding: “We need to think out educational methods and possibilities from the new point of view, that of the adult learning to be a citizen.”

This was probably the first government report anywhere about adult education to be based on serious empirical research. It shaped the field in Britain, and is recognised as a landmark across the world. In Britain, the centenary is providing an opportunity for new thinking about “the provision for, and possibilities of” adult education – looking at the century ahead.

This conference is an opportunity for adult educators and scholars to join a global reflection on what the field has achieved across the world over the past century, on where we are now, and on how adult education should be “reconstructed” for the century ahead.

Nottingham is an excellent location for such a conversation. It is, of course, renowned for Robin Hood, a source of popular education for 800 years – a metaphor for social welfare, taking from the rich of the city to give to the poor. It was in Nottingham that, in 1798, Samuel Fox and William Singleton set up what is widely regarded as the first Adult School.

The University of Nottingham’s roots can be found in university extension courses for adults. As William Gladstone, the dominant British statesman of his age – four times Prime Minister

proclaimed when laying the University’s foundation stone: “every human being” should make education “a lifelong process”. It reacted quickly to the 1919 Ministry of Reconstruction Report – becoming the first British university to set up a department of adult education. In 1923 it became the first university in the world to establish a Chair in Adult Education.

The historic nature and international influence of the Ministry of Reconstruction Report provides an opportunity to reflect on what adult education has achieved, and on what it is contributing today. At the core of the 1919 Report was the view that a broad, liberal, adult education was essential to citizenship in a democracy. Today, a common narrative suggests that 21st century “lifelong learning” – focussing on skills and the labour market – has lost the wider moral compass of 20th century adult education, not only in Britain but across Europe and the world.

Is this critique valid? If so, what has been lost; or gained? What should adult education involve in the 21st century? Is “reconstruction” – a metaphor drawn from the Ministry’s name – what is needed? Can we learn from 20th century experience? Or do we need to break entirely away from obsolete models and thinking?

We invite proposals for papers and symposia that focus on theory, research, practice and policy in adult education and lifelong learning. We particularly encourage proposals that do so within the approaches and traditions advocated by the 1919 Report, or engage critically with its legacies.

Please see the full Call featured below...