Concerns of Adults in Modern Life Histories: Philosophical Implications for Continuing Education.

Abstract

The literature of continuing education reveals that adult educators have generally circumvented questions of theory on the grounds that they and their profession are service-oriented. As the result, the literature of the field has been largely dominated by discussions of technical means. Where theoretical considerations have been dealt with, it has been exclusively from a psychological perspective. Little has been done to identify the concerns that emerge from individuals' interaction with their social environment, or to examine the implications of these for continuing education. In this study, a life history approach was adopted, and a comparative analysis of twelve autobiographies was undertaken in order to identify and examine the concerns that emerge from individuals' interaction with their social environment. Two questions served to focus the analysis: How have men and women interpreted their experiences within twentieth century American society? What personal ends do these interpretations reveal that individuals have valued and striven to realize within society over the course of their lives? The purpose of the study was to use these questions to generate theoretical insights that could assist adult educators in clarifying their own value commitments, and which could be applied toward developing clear and defensible objectives for continuing education. What was sought was not objective data regarding social forces, activities and institutions, but information as to how men and women have subjectively perceived and felt about their social experiences. The results of the analysis are presented within the framework of three conceptual categories which were derived from the data in the course of the research. These enabled the concerns of the individuals in this study to be understood in terms of a desire to realize a sense of identity, a sense of autonomy and a sense of integrity. These three concepts are treated in separate chapters and are illustrated by characteristic examples from the data which generated them. Subsequent chapters discuss these findings both in terms of their ability to reaffirm and empirically ground in human experience the social and educational insights of number of modern theorists, and in terms of their theoretical implications for continuing education.