Adult Education in the U.S.

The purpose of this research is to examine the field of adult education in the United States to see what is needed to achieve increased effectiveness within it. At a time when the trend in adult education is toward increased availability and variety of programs in order to serve a growing and diverse population of adult learners, the need for such research is increasingly apparent. Accordingly, the plan of the research will be to set forth the various ways in which adult education has changed in the twentieth century, and then to discuss controversial issues affecting the direction that such education has taken in the past and ought to take in the future. Reference will be made to the questions regarding the type, administration, and availability of adult education programs, as well as the motivations that adults have for entering these programs. The research of Cross, begun in 1981 and still in print in 1989, will be cited extensively for this purpose. As regards amplification of certain elements of adult education, the increasingly pronounced visibility of women in adult education programs in recent years will be explored, with a view toward showing how women's different ways of learning, knowing, and making decisions about their learning activities can be considered in the process of developing a plan for such programs. The research will also suggest possible guiding criteria for making a system of adult education effective.

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or drug education for traffic or drug offenders. Moreover, there are hints that formal universities and professional societies may come into conflict as disputes over what kinds of institutions are best suited to supervising MCE. The effectiveness of MCE is also problematic. As Cross remarks in an assessment of the system, "Unless some threat or reward can be devised to motivate the individual to learn (Loss of job? . . . professional pride?), mandating continuing education seems likely to fail" (p. 145). The problems associated with MCE in some respects merge with controversial questions surrounding the administration of adult education. The question of where authority over MCE programs should residewith the state or with professional privatesector governance agenciesis only one aspect of this. Cross alludes to conflicts between teachers who believe that the marketoriented approach of many institutions where adult education occurs has a negative effect on the quality of credit instruction, and institutions that seek to offer studentcentered services, as instances of controversy between academic authority and academic subservience. This can occur not only at extension divisions of standard colleges but at supposedly

Category: Psychology - A