Henning Salling OlesenUniv of Tampere 4. June 2014

Adult Education Research Understanding the

Particular in a Time of Global Convergence

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

* What is Adult Education Research?* The Conditions of Globalization* Theoretical and Methodological Challenges * The notion of Competence and its

Subjective Dimensions* The Societal Nature of Subjectivity* A Critical Empirical Social Research

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

How is it constituted? What is its justification?

What is this ”Thing” called Adult Education Research?

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

* Competition and Convergence * Driven by Capital, Enabled by Technology, Mediated in Culture* Peripheral Modernization

Conditions of Globalization

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

* Education Learning – or not* Focus on the Learner Subjects * Understanding the Global and Local/Situated Context * Social Micro-Technology

Theoretical and Methodological Challenges

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

* From Social Psychology to Policy and Management

* Reframing Concepts of Knowledge knowing in social practice

* and Learning: symbolizing and embodying experiences in everyday life

The Notion of Competence

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

*The ability to act successfully *In a complex context*Through the mobilization of psycho-social prerequisites (cognitive and non-cognitive)* With results related to the requirements of a professional role or personal project

…… and its Subjective Dimensions

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

“such scientific plans have often failed in psychology, however. The underlying multilevel models can be logically reconstructed, but not validated psychologically. The different degrees of abstraction mean, therefore, a fundamental asymmetry in competence research - high abstraction: intellectually brilliant, pragmatically hopeless; low abstraction: pragmatically useful, intellectually unsatisfactory”

Contemporary Alchymism

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

……and Particular

Subjectivity is Societal

* Social Interaction* Culture and Institutions* Individual Consciousness and Agency* Unconscious and Embodied Dispositions

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

* Rejecting Uniformity* tracing Contradictions and Ambivalences* Understanding Historical Materiality * Imagining the Non-identical and Potential Futures

A Critical Empirical Social Research

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

A Critical Empirical Social Research

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

* tracing Contradictions and Ambivalences* Understanding Historical Materiality * Imagining the Non-identical and Potential Futures * Rejecting Uniformity

A Critical Empirical Social Research

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

The new Lifelong Learning Agenda:

- knowledge economy -competitiveness- employability - - competence development- recognition of real competences

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

Ref.”Modernization Processes and the Changing Functions of Adult Learning” in International Encyclopedia of Education, Elsevier, 2010

”Adult Education in the Danish and Global Modernization Processes”, in:B. Käpplinger/S. Robak (eds): Changing Configurations in Adult Education – International Perspectives (work title)P.Lang, 2014

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY – Department of Psychology and Educational Studies