Higher Education 35: 245–249, 1998. 245

Albert C. Tuijnman (ed.) 1996. International Encyclopedia of Adult Edu-cation and Training. 2nd. edn. Oxford: Pergamon (Elsevier Science). xxi +960pp. £100.00 ISBN 0-08-042305-1.

The first edition of this Encyclopedia was published in 1989; its Editor wasColin Titmus. It has been scooped out of an Encyclopedia of Education pub-lished four years earlier and for which Colin Titmus had been the editor ofa section on Adult Education. As one such contributor, I had no constraintsapart from size, definite terms and giving examples. Like most other con-tributors, I discussed one aspect within a conception of adult education aspart of education in general. Most contributors, too, wrote about a distinctivepotential for personal and social change.

The publisher’s editor-in-chief was Barbara Barrett who had, by then, spentnearly a decade sharpening the prose of imprecise scholars. She took overwhen drafts had been accepted in principle. At the press launch CaptainRobert Maxwell was far too busy battling with the Daily Mirror’s printingunions to say a single word. It was the first time that the contributors knewthe overall shape of the book. Since that day I have never met anyone, apartfrom the contributors, who referred to the book, let alone who had bought it.

Yet here, just eight years later, is a second edition which is far more thana modest updating of the original texts. The editor, Albert C. Tuijnman ofO.E.C.D. drew up a schema, a plan for all contributions. Earlier versions werewholly revised and often replaced “as the field itself has also matured” (flyleaf). The 161 entries are classified within one of two levels (‘meta and sub-stantive’ p.xvi). The meta level forms the first section on “Concepts, theoriesand methods”. The substantive level is illustrated by a honeycomb diagramin which all six points interact with each other. These are said to be based onUNESCO’s 1976 definition of adult education as being: “all organised educa-tional processes, whether formal or otherwise, whereby persons regarded asadults by the society to which they belong engage in systematic and sustainedlearning activities” (p. xvi). The major differences are due to this conceptu-alisation, its ‘globalization’ and the change of title from “Lifelong educationfor adults”. In this edition, Training has been given an interchangeability andequivalence with Adult Education.

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The six distinct yet interrelated areas of knowledge of adult education are“policies, costs and finance”, “participation and provision”, “organization”,“evaluation and measurement”, “educational technology”, and “human devel-opment”. Within these areas contributions are in alphabetical order; often alsowithin further subdivisions. Each contribution is fully referenced with a brieflist of further reading and its own set of cross-references to other contributions.The honeycomb image merges into a macrame of meanings.

All this connectivity gives the field a coherence verging on integration. TheEditor’s labours remove all vestiges of adult education being a list of indi-vidual specialists with nodes of like-minded scholars in their respective sub-fields and sub-continents. Deep undercurrents such as the European tendencytowards sociology and the American counter-tendency towards psychologyare kept largely beneath the surface.

Tuijnman is naturally also the best informed critic of this volume. He seesthe constraints on the breadth and diversity as coming from limitations onthe size of contributions; the editorial choice of neither focusing on specific“audiences”, e.g. older adults or rural workers nor upon regional and nationaloverviews; the bias of scholarship towards the Industrialised North, the useof English and “the persistent confusion over definitions and the meanings ofimportant terms”, (p. xx) variations which “were too large and important forconsistency to be imposed by the Editor” (p. xx).

Thus far there should be a clear impression of a modernism, albeit thatsome meanings are particularly prone to muddle (e.g. non-formal, teach-ing and development). This modernism also shows in the choice of issueswithin areas. Ralph Ruddock’s humanistic critique of Evaluation in the firstedition has become a sub-area in which there are three contributions on cost-effectiveness: Orivel on Distance Education, Mulder on Industry Training,Boot and Drewes on Public Training. The sub area of Participation is a par-ticularly good example of Tuijnman reaching into the hot issues of equityand effectiveness (Van der Kamp on Participation’s Antecedents; Deshler onMotivation; Potter on Student Counselling; Garrison on Student Dropout;Osborn on Student Outreach; Healy and Martin on Student Support Systems;Hore on Third Age Students, Goodale on Women and Access to VocationalTraining and Oglesby on Women in Adult Education).

This modernism includes radicalism. There is Evans on Popular Educationand Conscientization, Hall on Participatory Research and Cunningham onCommunity Education and Community Development. But I was surprisedto find that there was no reference to Michael Newman and only slightreferencing of Gaventa and Fals-Borda.

So far so good, but as Rubenson stoically observes “the general moodamong departments of adult education has moved from guarded optimism

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and growth during the 1970’s to increased self-criticism and decline in thelate 1980’s” (p. 112). They have been pulled and pushed in many and conflict-ing directions: towards academicism; towards professional relevance; towardsserving the market economy; towards critical engagement and towards dis-ciplinary specialisation. All these strains, and more, can be seen within thespecific contributions.

I followed the Editor’s advice on How to use the Encyclopedia (p. xx):examine the sections of the Preface concerned with the conceptual framework,turn to the Introductions to each of the Sections, look for individual entries,use the keyboards which the authors identify and work back through SubjectIndex, Author Index to bibliographies and the list of contributors.

There are 33 diverse references to Freire, 19 to Knowles, 18 to Merriamand 17 to Baltes. These citations in themselves do not prove anything, but itis interesting that none are contributors in their own right. Perhaps contrib-utors are lesser and more modest mortals, the chorus to the Gods of AdultEducation’s drama? Some modesty may be made by the production processitself. The name index does have at least one error; (Wickert on p. 757 doesnot appear in the Name Index).

The most extensive revision is probably within the sub-field of comparativeand international organisation – appropriately introduced by Colin Titmus:

Adult education is still largely unstructured throughout the world, oralternatively the structure is complex and the patterns have yet to beidentified with confidence: : : The fragmentation, lack of organization andephemeral nature of a considerable portion of adult education and a tra-ditional reluctance to attribute much importance to quantification havemeant that statistics have either not been compiled or have not been pre-sented in usable forms (p. 686).

Nevertheless the sections on world regions show the most recent haltingsteps, backwards or forwards, taken by national governments with respect toadult education. “Perestroika” and then independence for states previouslyoccupied by Soviet Russia; Major Community programmes such as Eurotech-net in Europe; Popular Education and Literacy in Ecuador since 1989 (p. 814)and so on. There has been a growth in training agencies, in N.G.O.s nationallyand internationally. Above all there has been educational technology in all itsdemagogic to democratic forms.

Each field and sub-field also has an introduction by Tuijnman for whom“educational technology is among the most innovative and therefore, excitingareas in the theory and practice of adult education” (p. 453). Thus Tuijn-man heads into controversy putting aside the dominant ethos of open andself-directed learning because: “Many – if not most – education and train-

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ing programmes for adults are designed to serve explicit learning objectivesand they involve the purposeful creation of active learning environments forthe facilitation of effective instruction” (p. 453). Fortunately, it is Eraut whodefines Concepts of Educational Technology (pp. 456–472) and interestinglyit is one of those contributions which is even handed about ‘schools’ and‘adults’ when “the field of educational technology is scarcely recognised inEurope outside the United Kingdom (Pomp and Pals 1989) or even in Japan(Sakamoto 1989)” (p. 456). This section or field has to be Tuijnman’s TrojanHorse out from which emerges contributions on curriculum (Steumer and Tui-jnman), Curriculum in Adult Literacy (Kamper), Distance Education (Bates),Vocational Training (Roth), Instructional Design: Theories (Reigeluth) andInstructional Design: Models (Gustafson).

The ground is prepared for Modularization (Howieson); Program DesignEffectiveness (Mulder); A Taxonomy of Competence (Marsicke and Smith)which then link in with revised contributions on Teaching Styles (Brookfield,Stephens, Jarvis and Chadwick). In this way Tuijnman proves his point byshuffling the joker cards of educational technology in with the high face valuecards of teaching.

It brings to mind the thought that probably every contributor has theirown special sentiment, their most carefully chosen sentence. Brookfield hasa particularly good chance of being pleased to read his favourite phrasing. Hehas 22 Index references and 3 separate contributions including the PostScript.He concludes:

This Encyclopedia marks the end of the study of adult education andtraining as a wholly separate, discrete domain of theory and practice.From now on adult education will be understood within the context oflifelong education and lifelong learning (p. 895).

But I am one reader who is not convinced that such a case has been madewithin the contributions. In this storehouse of a thousand pages there aretwo major tensions: those of author vs. schema and evolution vs. prophecy.Some contributions elaborate the concepts with extreme care and concludewith a succinct summary of what is known (for example, Entwistle on “Studyand Learning Strategies”, Bowman on “Training on the Job”). Other con-tributions (particularly those fresh to the task) work into the schema andconclude with projections for the future; for example, Wilms and Hardcastleon “Performance Contracting”, Duke on “International Adult Education”.

The state of play in the respective fields could well be directly represented bythe contributor’s choices of emphases. I did not find one piece too difficult ortoo abstruse and there is a consistent clarity to the English expressions which

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is most welcome. After all Barbara Barrett was again the commissioningeditor.

I will heartily recommend this book to practitioners and students alike. Myrecommendation for usage will differ from the Editors. The heart of the book,I will suggest, is the section on Adult Learning (pp. 375–450). Brookfield setsout four major research areas “self-directed learning, critical reflection, expe-riential learning and learning to learn” (p. 375). The subsequent contributionsare like criss-crossing paths through ageing, through experience and throughindividuality. For the most part adults are equally men and women. Thereare only two contributions specific to women which may cause frustrationand disappointment. In fact Goodale on “Women and Access to Vocation-al Training” (pp. 598–602) and Oglesby on “Women and Adult Education”(pp. 603–610) open a debate which needs more discussion space in othercontributions.

“The two major premises: : : are that economic growth and development aresufficient conditions for the advancement of women and that improvementsmade in women’s standing in education and employment terms will havea spin-off in political and social terms which will enable women to effectpermanent improvements to their lives and standing in society” (Oglesby,p. 609). These two remain the two questions for the twenty-first century toask of the twentieth century with respect to women, youth, illiterates, ruralworkers and all other groups excluded from progress.

This is a worthy replacement for the first edition, with all its problemsof modernism and post-modernism, it has the best available scholarship andfreedom of expression on both Adult Education and Adult Training.

COLIN FLETCHERUniversity of Wolverhampton