Adult Education in an Era of “Wicked Problems”

“I’ve been asking myself “How are adult educators addressing these complex problems? What should we be doing that we aren’t during this perilous time in human history?”

I’ve been experiencing a growing sense of anxiety about the troubled state of the world, the role our apparent failures as adult educators have played in getting us here, and the lack of coordinated, broad-based, multidimensional strategies to address a growing list of “wicked problems.” I’ve been asking myself “How are adult educators addressing these complex problems? What should we be doing that we aren’t during this perilous time in human history?

I entered the field—and a master’s program—as a novice practitioner in 1970 fresh out of an undergraduate program, convinced by my reading and various mentors that we were on the verge of a glorious learning society. There seemed to be an end in sight to the Vietnam War that had sparked demonstrations, teach-ins, and violence on my campus—although it dragged on until 1975; there appeared to be a great social awakening underway about the importance of our fragile environment—the first Earth Day was in 1970; the successes of the space program had engendered a renewed sense of optimism—the manned moon landing in 1969; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 promised a more just society—but it took the Civil Rights Movement to really get things rolling; the Women’s Movement was gaining traction in the Western world—notwithstanding the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972; and the Watergate scandal—and the growing distrust of political leaders—was still over the horizon—botched burglary in 1972 and Nixon’s resignation in 1974. However, I had learned enough about history to understand that what I understood as “progress” is neither unidirectional nor linear and what I considered “progress” had its origins in the social-economic-cultural context in which I was immersed and the unearned privilege that accrued to me simply because of where, when, and to whom I was born. An awareness of the benefits accruing to me because of my gender, height, first language, sexual orientation, and skin tone grew as well. My career landed me in Canada in 1981, so I have also had the benefit of living, working, and engaging the world through a different social-political-cultural lens. The difference between viewing the world from a location in a large global economic and military superpower versus a much smaller, easy-to-ignore, peace-keeping middle power is striking.

I offer this brief biographical sketch, in part, so readers can assess the basis of my current anxiety and of the reflections that follow on the role of adult education. I argue here that there is an unprecedented need to shift our perspective as adult educators from what has fundamentally been an overly reactive, locally focused, felt-needs-based posture to a more assertive, insistent, globally oriented approach to our work. I fully recognize that many adult educators around the world already approach their work from this more assertive, globally oriented stance—most notably popular, environmental, and activist educators—but I believe that many more of us need to make this transition if there is to be a habitable, relatively peaceful planet in the future.

A concept I’ve found helpful as I have pondered my own complicity in the current state of affairs is “wicked problems,” coined by Rittel and Webber (1973) in the context of planning theory and social policy. These problems are not wicked in the “ethically deplorable” sense but rather because they can be thought of as malignant, vicious, tricky, or aggressive (p. 160). Rittel and Webber present 10 features of wicked problems that help us understand their character as well as the orientation—and some of the capabilities—required to address them:

The maladies currently plaguing the planet are not new but they seem to be converging in alarming ways and reaching—or exceeding—”tipping points,” wherein addressing them becomes even more difficult. Levin, Cashore, Bernstein, and Auld (2012)—in the context of climate change—go further by proposing the concept of “super-wicked problem” that has four additional features to those proposed by Rittel and Webber:

The very features that characterize wicked and super-wicked problems make them difficult to even discuss. If the framing/definition of a problem is in dispute and if possible solutions are dependent on the framing, then how can we explore the role of adult learning and education in addressing the problem?

Whether or not they strictly meet the criteria to be considered wicked, there are certainly major problems confronting humanity that deserve greater attention from educators. Examples include the following:

The United Nations’ (UN) Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015), and the 17 goals it proposes, is one effort to shine a light on many of these issues. The sustainable development goals (SDGs) suggest that much work is needed globally to address pressing issues such as poverty, hunger, inequality, and climate change. But the specific roles that adult education should play in addressing them is not always clear nor are adult educators always at the table to offer their perspectives and talents.

If the SDGs are not compelling enough to animate adult educators, then consider other evidence that we are in the midst of a firestorm of wicked problems. The recent report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2018), the UN Environment Programme’s (2019) Global Environment Outlook, the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 2019), the UN Refugee Agency’s Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2017 (UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 2018), the World Inequality Lab’s (2018) World Inequality Report, and the UN Human Rights Council’s (2019) Climate Change and Poverty are examples.

I don’t want to leave the impression that adult educators have been oblivious to these problems or their implications for our day-to-day practice. Many are deeply engaged in addressing some of these, and our conferences and publications are increasingly taking them up. For example, the book Adult Education and the Planetary Condition (Harju & Heikkinen, 2016) was published following the 2015 Nordic conference on adult education and learning. More recently, Walters (2018) discussed the drought and water crisis in Africa and its implications for adult education.

If wicked problems are difficult to even discuss and if they cannot be “solved” in the conventional sense, what can we do as adult educators to contribute our talents and other resources at our disposal to address them? Here are a few thoughts about how we might approach this individually and collectively.

New versions of Freire’s (1970) critical consciousness or Mezirow’s (1991) perspective transformation may be necessary to provoke the commitments to act required to reverse many of the trends that currently threaten humanity. Are we up to the challenge of sharing the burden to save the planet?