Full Description
Peter Jarvis is a towering figure in adult and lifelong education and a leading and original theorist of learning. This book explores the breadth and significance of his work. Sixteen chapters by leading international scholars explain and engage critically with his theorisation of learning, and with his extensive writings on the sociology, politics, ethics and history of adult education, and on professional education, lifelong learning and the learning society. The authors discuss his ideas, their influence and origins. They cover his contribution to learning theory, the recurring ethical themes in his writing, and the implications of his work for areas such as the education of migrants. They explore his global engagement as a scholar not only in different areas of lifelong education, but across the world: much-travelled, Peter Jarvis has supported the growth of adult education as a humane profession - as well as a field of study - in Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Australasia, as well as Europe. They also address the intense humanism of his work, which has been continually informed by theological and ethical concerns: though he taught for three decades at the University of Surrey, where he was Head of the Department of Educational Studies and is now Emeritus Professor, he has been a Minister of the Methodist Church for over half a century.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Lifelong Education.
Contents
Introduction: Local and global in the formation of a learning theorist: Peter Jarvis and adult education Part I: UNDERSTANDING LEARNING 1. Paradoxes of a Long Life Learning: an Exploration of Peter Jarvis's Contribution to Experiential Learning Theory 2.Peter Jarvis and the understanding of adult learning 3.The promise of lifelong learning 4. A critique of Peter Jarvis's conceptualisation of the lifelong learner in the contemporary cultural context Part II: LEARNING & THE MEANING OF LIFE 5. (Critical) learning in/through everyday life in a global consumer culture 6. Learning is an ontological process: Jarvis and theories of Christian Religious Education in dialogue 7. Opening spaces of conversation: citizen education for newcomers as a democratic practice Part III: ADULT EDUCATION, CITIZENSHIP & DEMOCRACY 8. Resisting the enormous condescension of posterity: Richard Henry Tawney, Raymond Williams and the long struggle for a democratic education 9. Decoding the neoliberal subjectivity in self-helping adult learners 10. International organisations and the construction of the learning active citizen: Ananalysis of adult learning policy documents from a Durkheimian perspective Part IV: GLOBAL & LOCAL 11. Wide horizons and blurred boundaries: comparative perspectives on adult and lifelong learning 12. Globalisation in Africa: reflecting on Peter Jarvis's superstructure and substructure model 13. Chinese students speak about their favourite teachers and university reform 14. The rise and fall of life-wide learning for adults in England
