Abstract
This book is a revision of Adult Education in Changing Times: Policies, Philosophies and Professionalism, published in 2014 by NAICE, U.K. In both books, Marion Bowl presents a comparative case study of adult education (AE) in England and New Zealand, where she highlights the historical and political contexts for AE and pinpoints neoliberal ideologies in relation to the practices and attitudes of adult educators. In the book, Bowl explores cross-cutting issues and challenges, as a result of neoliberalism, that face adult educators in the field of practice; furthermore, she offers some tactics of accommodation and resistance to manage the shifts in AE policy.
The book falls into two parts. Part I explores the historical and political contexts for AE in both New Zealand and England, while Part II explores policy and practice, through discussing adult educators’ career histories, values, philosophies, and views on practice. In her first two chapters, Bowl sets out her framework through reviewing the landscape of adult educators’ work and AE as a field of practice, highlighting the influences of neoliberalism. Bowl clarifies that the discourse of lifelong learning “has been captured in support of neoliberal aims, re-casting education and training in the richer industrialised countries as an individual responsibility” (p. 28). Accordingly, the second chapter reviews policy discourse in AE, with particular reference to the role of UNESCO, OECD, the European Union, and the World Bank.
The scholarship of this book comprehensively expresses adult educators’ voices. Between 2011 and 2013, Bowl conducted interviews with 62 AE practitioners from England and New Zealand (31 of each). The data from these interviews are the basis for the grounded and comparative career biography approach, which explores practitioners’ careers and views about their practice in the current political and economic settings. To my mind, New Zealand practitioners have often been absent in the literature, and therefore this section of the book is the most valued.
The narratives show a dilemma between the radical beliefs of the practitioners and the main policy discourses present in England and New Zealand. For example, in New Zealand, many schools stopped offering courses that recruited fewer students, while offering other courses that attract higher number of students. As a result, language learning courses and courses around Māori arts will no longer be offered, and it is a typical “logic of the market” (p. 125). Thus, Bowl argues that marketization has forced some adult educators to join the private sector while putting others out of employment. In order to confront this dilemma, she considers the accommodation strategy, which considers practical possibilities as a means of managing external pressures, as a relief, but this strategy does not recognize the global trends of neoliberalism or success beyond the short term. Likewise, the resistances strategy, which is the practice of subverting or opposing external constraints, has limitations, as “the line between passive resistance and collusion is a difficult one to tread” (p. 130).
Comparing AE in England and New Zealand has its advantages. Although they are geographically apart, they share the history of British colonialism and migration that add quality and rationality to the comparative analysis. Moreover, despite the distance, the educators interviewed share views. They value the approaches of the Brazilian literacy educator Paulo Freire, and they consider AE as a tool for promoting and maintaining social justice and democracy.
With 51 females to 11 males of the 62 interviewees, the predominance of women is evident, and Bowl clarifies that “the overwhelming majority of those interviewed reflects the composition of the field of adult and community education” (p. 74). Moreover, she adds, “This is largely a book about women’s working lives” (p. 74). However, Bowl does not critically examine the gendered influences of neoliberalism within this book.
The book has some limitations. Particularly, the book does not include the voices of adult educators new to the field. The interviewees have, at least, a decade of experience. Perhaps adding some fresh voices could make a difference. The similarities between England and New Zealand added to the significance of the case study, but it did not capture the diverse settings of adult learning systems facing neoliberalism. In a future edition of this book, it would be a good idea to present a broader geographic variety of adult learning communities and their strategies to confront neoliberalism. Finally, overviews of the historical development of AE are only briefly mentioned. For example, the Protestant Reformation and Anti- and Post-Colonialism receive only one paragraph each.
Overall, Adult Education in Neoliberal Times is a useful analysis of some adult educators’ voices. It would be particularly helpful for policymakers, scholars, and practitioners. It might be a worthy challenging read for students studying AE.