MDDE613+Unit+3

Unit 3

Bay, C. (1980). Human needs, wants and politics: Abraham Maslow, meet Karl Marx. Social Praxis, 7 (3-4), 233-252. (read for meaning, Key concepts: Maslow's hierarchy of needs; the relationship between social class and self-actualization; Marx's theory of needs and capitalism; alienation; synthesis of Maslow and Marx)

Maslow's theory of needs thereby attains a peculiarly abstract, Wonderland quality, as if the members of the human species in a given society were all equally capable of developing their individual potentialities, regardless of economic, social, or educational circumstances.
 * MASLOW**

Maslow was quite aware of the fact of cultural relativity: 'We must treat the individual first as a member of a particular cultural group, and only after this can we attempt to treat him as a member of the general human species' BUT he pays no attention to the necessity of considering the problematics of human self-actualization within the context of an analysis of class oppression and ideological domination.


 * existentialism** assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves
 * egalitarianism** is a social and political philosophy asserting the equality of all men, especially in their access to the rights and privileges of their society

Maslow's in his academic work was not preoccupied with problems of socioeconomic oppression or ideological domination as sources of pathologies in human behavior and development; he gradually become less interested in people with pathologies than in people blessed with the best possible mental health--studying healthy personalities and how to facilitate their development; and increasingly Maslow tended to take the present social order for granted.

elitist - the belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favoured treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.

Physiological Needs Safety Needs Needs of Love, Affection and Belongingness Needs for Esteem Needs for Self-Actualization
 * Maslow’s Hierarchy of BASIC Needs**
 * These are biological needs. They consist of needs for oxygen, food, water, and a relatively constant body temperature. They are the strongest needs because if a person were deprived of all needs, the physiological ones would come first in the person's search for satisfaction.
 * When all physiological needs are satisfied and are no longer controlling thoughts and behaviors, the needs for security can become active. Adults have little awareness of their security needs except in times of emergency or periods of disorganization in the social structure. Children often display the signs of insecurity and the need to be safe.
 * When the needs for safety and for physiological well-being are satisfied, the next class of needs for love, affection and belongingness can emerge. Maslow states that people seek to overcome feelings of loneliness and alienation. This involves both giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging.
 * **Maslow does not say this, but his theory accounts for the observation that the ideology of liberal individualism in our class society dooms most North Americans to a profound** **alienation or unhappiness precisely because belongingness and solidarity needs are so widely left unsatisfied**.
 * When the first three classes of needs are satisfied, the needs for esteem can become dominant. These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a person gets from others. Humans have a need for a stable, firmly based, high level of self-respect, and respect from others. When these needs are satisfied, the person feels self-confident and valuable as a person in the world. When these needs are frustrated, the person feels inferior, weak, helpless and worthless.
 * When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are the needs for self-actualization activated. Maslow describes self-actualization as a person's need to be and do that which the person was "born to do." "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write." These needs make themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something, in short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted, or lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless about. It is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-actualization.
 * **He forgets to mention the possibility that they will also differ from class to class; or the likelihood that in underprivileged classes the weight of oppression may preclude many people's self-actualization and growth altogether**.
 * While empirical basis for Maslow's generalizations about self-actualizing individuals is weak, it is a profoundly important contribution to emancipatory thought, in my view,
 * to insist that it is a human need to express one's subjectivity, and
 * to develop one's subjective consciousness as an individual,
 * while at the same time insisting that needs for social belongingness and self-acceptance are prior, even more basic, human needs.

Yet, in fairness to Maslow it must be said that his order of priorities among basic needs makes this last point almost self-evident:
 * if class oppression frustrates nutrition and safety needs on a continuing basis, and
 * a consensual ideology of liberal individualism denies a sense of community roots and belongingness to the less privileged in society, who are most often by way of their socialization programmed to blame themselves, not the social order, for their poverty,
 * then of course the prospects for their self-actualization must be grim.

There are three distinct need concepts that predominate;
 * MARX**

Natural or physical Needs
 * are the essential requirements for staying alive and reproducing. These are the biological needs, directed towards maintenance of the mere conditions of life of needs is common to all living species, while the specific needs of each species have unique features, reflecting heredity as well as physical environment

Species Needs
 * the psychological propensities of the species `man'; the psychological requirements for becoming (more) fully human; the needs that are thwarted in an exploitive, alienating social order.
 * Marx writes that human emancipation 'will only be complete when the real, individual man ... has become a species-being; and when he has recognized and organized his own powers (//forces propres//) as social powers ...'
 * As a liberated species being, according to Marx, each person will spontaneously be caring for others and for the good of the community; it is mainly for this reason that after the end of capitalist alienation the state with its hierarchy of power will wither away.
 * Under capitalism there is always a debilitating conflict between historical needs and species needs: **alienation** is a barrier to humanization. 'The highest object of human (species-) need is the other person,the measure in which man has become the highest object of need for other men determines the level of humanization of human needs.
 * Marx focuses on money as the measure of alienated man: 'Man becomes ever poorer as man; his need for money becomes ever greater if he wants to overpower hostile being; and the power of his money declines exactly in inverse power to the increase in the volume of production: that is, his neediness grows as the power of money increases

Historical Needs
 * those that each culture shapes as it evolves. They reflect the terms of the class struggle and the ideology that supports the interests of the ruling class at each time, in each historical situation.
 * Marx saw the multiplication of needs, in the sense of historical needs, as evidence of progress: 'It is in increasing his wants and needs that man becomes fully human' Or, at any rate—and this was the historical context in which Marx wrote — more fully human than was the drab existence of the proletariat (the class of industrial wage earners who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must earn their living by selling their labour) under capitalism.
 * Capitalism has brought about many new historical needs as well as means of their satisfaction but, above all within the working class, man the producer has been reduced to a tool, of fluctuating utility value only, from the commanding point of view of the owners of capital; every worker is barred from developing his or her own species being.

No hierarchy of needs should be attributed to Marx. He did not set out to develop a systematic theory of needs; rather, each need concept served the convenience of Marx's line of argument, which was most often about economics, in each specific kind of context.


 * Alienation** (Definitions other than Marx's)
 * Kenneth Keniston defines alienation in one context as 'an explicit rejection of what are seen as the dominant values of the surrounding society'
 * other psychologists associate alienation with destructiveness and despair of some kind, as something unhealthy. Whether it is seen as healthy under the circumstances in which they live, or as pathological, alienation is seen by psychologists as being in principle ascertainable empirically, though not readily subject to quantitative measurement.


 * Alienation**
 * Marxist sense alienation refers first of all to the blocking of human possibility. The term points to the difference between actual existence and a more humane existence. (p. 242)
 * An objective concept with no necessary attitudinal or behavioral manifestation. The term refers to a contrast between what is historically possible and what a given social order has brought about; alienation is seen as essentially a historically contingent deficit in human emancipation. (p. 240)
 * The Marxist concept of alienation is the separation of human beings from their human powers, their potentiality. The essence of human beings as species-beings is to realize themselves in activity, to develop their potential as they act on the world and themselves in conjunction with their fellow beings. Alienation describes a condition when human activity (creativity, decision-making, rationality, knowledge, relationships, control of history), far from being expressed and developed as the attributes of living people, is alienated from them to become the attribute of things. In all spheres of activity—cultural, religious, political, economic—these 'things' then become the agents through which people's alienated powers become powers over them and human beings are denied, rather than realized, in their activity. (Angela Miles)
 * Refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. In the concept's most important use, it refers to the social alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature." He believed that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism.
 * According to Karl Marx, alienation is a systemic result of Capitalism. Marx's theory of alienation is founded upon his observation that, within the Capitalist Mode of Production, workers invariably lose determination of their lives and destinies by being deprived of the right (link)
 * to conceive of themselves as the director of their actions,
 * to determine the character of their actions,
 * to define their relationship to other actors,
 * to use or own the value of what is produced by their actions.
 * Workers never become autonomous, self-realized human beings, but are directed and diverted into goals and activities dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production in order to extract from workers the maximal amount of surplus value possible within the current state of competition between industrialists.

If most private troubles are in fact related to flaws in the social order, and if it is politically desirable, conducive to political progress, that they should come to be seen as so related, then much the same point can be made about the actual relationship between most neuroses and the phenomenon of alienation, as understood by Marxists; and about the desirability of pushing for a wider awareness of this relationship.

Marx's concept of alienation overlaps widely with the ordinary concept of neurosis, with the difference that the emphasis is on seeing neurotic symptoms as caused by the dehumanizing system, which—in today's relatively affluent capitalist society—in effect reduces persons to things and frustrates their basic human needs, above all their belongingness and solidarity needs; while in today's state-socialist society, mainly their self-esteem and self-actualization needs, or some of them, are affected. (p. 242)


 * dialectical** - The art or practice of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments.
 * neurosis** - a functional disorder in which feelings of anxiety, obsessional thoughts, compulsive acts, and physical complaints without objective evidence of disease, in various degrees and patterns, dominate the personality. (Marx uses this term)
 * pathologies** - any deviation from a healthy, normal, or efficient condition. (Maslow uses this term)

Maslow rejects behaviorism because only trivial data can be readily measured. behavioralism - is an approach in political science which seeks to provide an objective, quantified approach to explaining and predicting political behavior. It is associated with the rise of the behavioral sciences, modeled after the natural sciences.


 * Alienation** (Definitions other than Marx's)
 * Kenneth Keniston defines alienation in one context as 'an explicit rejection of what are seen as the dominant values of the surrounding society'
 * other psychologists associate alienation with destructiveness and despair of some kind, as something unhealthy. Whether it is seen as healthy under the circumstances in which they live, or as pathological, alienation is seen by psychologists as being in principle ascertainable empirically, though not readily subject to quantitative measurement.

It is a limitation in the Marxist theory of alienation that there is no concept of its opposite, except by implication. Bertell Oilman supplies the term `unalienation' and describes this condition as 'the life man leads in communism'; and he adds: 'Without some knowledge of the future millennium alienation remains a reproach (criticism) that can never be clarified' (p. 242)

With the end of capitalism; with the end of private appropriation of the products and of the surplus value of other people's labour power, work will no longer be alienated. Work will become voluntary and indeed will be need-satisfying for every person; work will constitute freely chosen activity, in the service of every individual's socially and subjectively selected aims.

1. Basic Physical Needs: sustenance needs and safety needs 2. Community Solidarity Needs: belongingness needs and esteem needs 3. Self-actualization Needs
 * Maslow & Marx**
 * there can be no viable self-esteem unless it is in some way supported, at least in the person's imagination, by meaningful others in his or her community ; and
 * there can be no real sense of community solidarity unless most members have at least a minimum of self-esteem, or a sense of having something worthwhile to contribute to the common good.
 * It is well to avoid a position of having to state that either a sense of belongingness or a sense of self-esteem is a need prior to the other: human beings are social animals as well as individuals or, more precisely, we are social individuals
 * it may also be referred to as the need for developing a subjective consciousness, beyond the consciousness of social belongingness, and yet dependent on that social consciousness.

Suggestions > to decide for the rest of us what we must want and what we must shun. Yet, we must achieve the insight required to detect and outgrow the //wants// that are attributable to our alienation. > and women have subjectivity needs, or individuality needs, as well.
 * 1) First of all, Marxists as well as liberals should be persuaded to draw a clear distinction between needs and wants. 'Want' should be an empirical term, referring to every kind of verbally stated or otherwise manifest wish, preference, demand, desire, interest, etc., that indicates a felt or alleged need; any given want may or may not reflect a human need. 'Need' should be reserved, then, for true or genuine needs — that is, requirements for life, health, and/or basic freedom of the living person. 'Need' is a hypothetical construct.
 * 2) Most Marxists have tended to neglect subjective self-actualization needs in their thought about priorities for the future. The task of separating 'genuine' from 'artificial' historical needs; or said differently, the task of separating high-priority from lower-priority historical needs. The problem is the implied suggestion that it is feasible to classify some categories of //wants// as reflecting genuine //needs// and others as being merely the results of alienating indoctrination. This oversimplification can easily be used by regimes
 * 1) Other Marxists have stuck to the old Marxist theme of historical materialism to the extent of claiming that all needs are historically determined and in that sense equally genuine. This position seems to neglect (a) Marx's natural or physical needs, with their roots in our biological characteristics, as well as (b) Marx's species needs, as if man alone among the animal species were not to have any species specific characteristics, beyond our biological requirements for survival. Maslow's contribution at this point is to state more clearly than Marx does that our social community needs as human beings are prior to our other species needs; and that regardless of what historical needs may evolve, all men
 * 1) All the need categories referred to are hypothetical constructs; discrete needs can never be pinpointed empirically, except in extreme situations where someone's life or health is immediately at stake. Normally, needs come all dressed up in historical and (sub-) cultural garb. Only wants can be readily identified, and even measured, empirically.
 * 2) It should be studies how essential various categories of historical wants are in relation to the kinds of growth in self-expression and self-development that a freedom-aspiring society in the foreseeable future might make possible for all. For example, what categories of property right should be deemed essential to the sense of individual freedom associated with subjective self-expression; as distinct from alleged property rights that involve exercise of power over others; or from alleged rights to accumulate property at the expense of depriving others of resources required for their opportunities of self-expression.
 * 3) While emancipatory politics must be oriented to meeting well established human need priorities, wants must never be ignored; even the wants of members of a deposed ruling class, let alone the actual wants of an alienated working class under capitalism. Political processes must respect and take into account prevailing human wants, if living beings are to be deemed worthy of respect regardless of how wrongheaded their views and preferences may seem to be.

Brookfield, S. (1993). Self-directed learning: Political clarity, and the critical practice of adult education. Adult Education Quarterly 43(4), 227-242. (detailed reading and analysis, make notes. Brookfield is an "important person" in adult ed. Key concepts: social-critical critque of SDL; SDL as a political concept; culture and SDL; implications of SDL for adult ed; illusion of control; relationship of control to Maslow/Marx; distortions of SDL)


 * John Dewey** (1859 – 1952)
 * is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of **pragmatism** and of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA. Although Dewey did not identify himself as a pragmatist per se, but instead referred to his philosophy as "**instrumentalism**".
 * Dewey continually argues that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. In addition, he believed that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning.
 * Dewey makes a strong case for the importance of education not only as a place to gain content knowledge, but also as a place to learn how to live. In his eyes, the purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined set of skills, but rather the realization of one’s full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good. He notes that “to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities.” In addition to helping students realize their full potential, Dewey goes on to acknowledge that education and schooling are instrumental in creating social change and reform.
 * Dewey was alarmed by many of the "child-centered" excesses and noted that the potential flaw in this line of thinking is that it minimizes the importance of the content as well as the role of the teacher. In order to rectify this dilemma, Dewey advocated for an educational structure that strikes a balance between delivering knowledge while also taking into account the interests and experiences of the student.
 * It is through this reasoning that Dewey became one of the most famous proponents of hands-on learning or experiential education, which is related to, but not synonymous with experiential learning.
 * Many researchers even credit him with te influence of Project Based Learning (PBL) which places students in the active role of researchers.
 * Thus the teacher becomes a partner in the learning process, guiding students to independently discover meaning within the subject area.


 * Political Dimensions of Self-Direction**
 * 1) the intellectual heart of self-direction is the issue of control, particularly control over what are conceived as acceptable and appropriate learning activities and processes.
 * 2) exercising self-direction requires that certain conditions be in place regarding access to resources, conditions that are essentially political in nature

Candy, P. (1991). The growth and interest in self-directed learning. In P. Candy, Self-Direction for Lifelong Learning: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice (pp. 24-48). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Candy, P. (1991). What is self-directed learning? In P. Candy, Self-Direction for Lifelong Learning: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice (pp. 5-23). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. detailed reading and analysis, make notes. These are important articles. Key concepts:
 * conceptual confusion and SDL;
 * different methods of SDL;
 * self-managing vs self-determining;
 * relationship between autonomous learning and the democratic ideal;
 * implications of the ideology of individualism and humanistic education.

Why has self-directed learning so captivated the field of adult education?


 * Candy, Chapter 1**

What is self-directed learning? > to call on
 * self-directed learning is a solitary activity, carried out in a library or at least in the privacy of one's own home or office.
 * a number of students individually pursuing inquiry projects and presenting evidence of their learning to be assessed and evaluated.
 * the self-directed learner will be somewhat isolated, perhaps living in a lonely and remote location and learning from radio, television, or materials received through the mail;
 * for others, self-direction can occur amid the bustle and turmoil of a formal course, with the full resources of a major university, college, or training department
 * There are those who believe that s**elf-direction is either the expression of or the route to realize and attain the innermost personhood of the learner**, while others do not attribute to it such profound importance, and u**se the term to refer simply to independent academic or intellectual pursuits**.

Self-direction has been advocated both because it contributes to the development of the "whole person," and on the instrumental grounds that it allows people to be more responsive to the rapidly changing demands of a market-oriented workplace.
 * Similarly, it is supported by those who espouse the "rugged individualism" of the United States,
 * the more conservative and conformist social system of the Soviet Union.
 * It is envisaged by some as a useful adjunct to the traditional education system,
 * by others as a radical alternative to school-based learning

Two types of ...
 * self-direction as an outcome of learning. Self-direction as an outcome further breaks down into
 * psychological characteristic of people and
 * philosophical characteristic of people
 * self-direction as a process of learning. Self-direction as a process needs to distinguish
 * learning in formal instructional settings and
 * learning in natural or everyday contexts

= = =**The "Method" of Self-Directed Learning**=
 * Distinction between self-direction as a goal and as a process.**
 * For many authors, self-direction is seen simply as a method of organizing instruction.
 * For others, self-direction is not so much a method of teaching as a characteristic of learners and they refer to a personal quality or characteristic of learners. In fact, self-direction is increasingly viewed not simply as an attribute that people either have or do not have, but as a quality that may be present in varying degrees
 * there has been a succession of studies based on the questionable notion that self-direction is a measurable attribute, distributed throughout the adult population.
 * In practice, this means that educators can adapt their strategies to different levels of self-directedness that learners exhibit in various situations, and moreover that they might, at the request of the learner, try to help the learner to increase or improve his or her ability to be self-directing.
 * There is a problem, however, where it is implicitly assumed that there is a necessary connection between self-directedness as an activity or as an outcome. In other words, many people seem to believe that participation in "self-directed learning" will inevitably lead to the development of "self-directedness" in some wider sense.
 * Mezirow states explicitly what many adult education theorists seem to believe tacitly: "//It is almost universally recognized, at least in theory, that central to the adult educator'function is a goal and method of self-directed learning. Enhancing the learner's ability for self-direction in learning as a foundation for a distinctive philosophy of adult education has breadth and power. It represents the mode of learning characteristic of adulthood//"
 * Mezirow's quotation embodies an error in thinking to which Hamm alluded to as "//mistaking the means for the end .. . making no distinction between the characteristics of an ideal end product and the characteristics of the process that is supposed to lead to such a product//"
 * Is there only one type of self-direction in learning, or does the "method" itself subdivide?
 * Many people think and write about self-directed learning as if it were a single entity. It is presented as an alternative to other modes of conducting education and, as such, is viewed as "a method" like other methods: An educational experience is either self-directed, or it is directed by someone else, called a teacher.


 * It is perhaps useful to think of teachers and learners as occupying positions on a continuum extending from teacher control at one extreme to learner-control at the other, here the deliberate surrendering of certain prerogatives by the teacher is accompanied by the concomitant (occurring concurrently) acceptance of responsibility by the learner or learners. In the sense that there can be a dynamically changing equilibrium in this arrangement.
 * To describe this continuum, as seen below, the term learner-controlled instruction will be used.
 * Although the term //learner-control// was reasonably commonplace in the 1960s it suffered a decline in usage, presumably because of its unfashionable "behavioristic" connotations.




 * has the that it is logically possible to speak of learner-control as "both a dimension along which instructional treatments differ, and a dimension characteristic of individual differences among learners." Thus, "it is perhaps the first instance of an aptitude and treatment variable being potentially definable in common terms"
 * If learner-control is conceived of as a range or continuum (or more likely a series of continuums, for it is possible to exert differing degrees of control over various dimensions), then one end of the range will involve a great degree of learner-control over valued instructional functions. Various instructional strategies could be placed at intervals along this continuum, to imply the differing balance of teacher-control and learner-control
 * At the far left of the continuum might come
 * indoctrination (a), with almost total teacher-control and little room for learner control at all.
 * lectures (b),
 * lessons (c),
 * programmed instruction (d),
 * individualized instruction (e),
 * personalized instruction (f),
 * interactive computer managed learning (g),
 * discovery learning (h),
 * and so on, until finally the point is reached where learners have accepted almost all control over valued instructional functions. This point, at the far right-hand edge of the continuum (i), is called here //independent study.//
 * Like self-directed learning, independent study is a catchall for all manner of educational practices having some bearing on the notion of learner-control. There are at lease four distinct meanings commonly encountered for the term independent study:
 * correspondence courses;
 * individualized, programmed instruction in a school setting;
 * supervised reading programs in schools;
 * and out-of-school, part-time degree programs for adults.
 * In addition to these other applications, the term independent study refers to (1920's)
 * "teaching and learning which focuses on the individual instead of the group, which emphasizes the person-to-person relationship between teacher and student" and
 * "the pursuit of special topics by individual students under the guidance of faculty advisers apart from organized courses"
 * (1973) defined independent study as
 * "the student's self-directed pursuit of academic competence in as autonomous a manner as he is able to exercise at any particular time"
 * this definition also introduced the notion that independent study might be a **situationally variable construct**, depending on the individual student's capability to act "independently" in a particular situation
 * The part of the term that has caused much of the confusion is //independent//, and it was this that prompted Percy and Ramsden (1980) to observe that
 * "talk of student 'independence' needs to begin from the question: of what is the student to be independent?
 * he might be independent of teachers,
 * of fellow students,
 * of prescribed course content or methods of learning,
 * of specialisms and publicly acknowledged categorizations of knowledge,
 * of limitations on sequence or pace of learning,
 * of assessment, even of academic conventions in the use of evidence and sources.
 * When a student simply works on his own on individually set tasks, when he has some control over the pace or mode of learning, or some choice of options, it may be more realistic to talk of 'individualized' study"
 * We need . . . to begin by distinguishing a number of different levels of independence. At one extreme,
 * the student is thought of as, in general, doing no work whatever beyond attending lectures, taking part in practical classes, reading his textbook, preparing for examinations. At this level, he is regarded as doing "independent work" if he so much as opens his mouth in a discussion class, works at a set assignment, or reads any book or periodical except a set text. Thus in some departments the introduction of a "tutorial" of any sort —even a "tutorial" which is basically a class for the working out of exercises— the setting of any sort of assignment, the recommendation of any reading whatsoever, is thought of as the encouragement of independent work.
 * At the opposite end of the scale, "independent" work is defined as consisting in the tackling by the student of problems he has thought up by himself, by methods he chooses to employ, with the teacher acting only as a supervisor. So when departments describe as making provision for independent work or say that they cannot possibly do so, they may be thinking of independent work at different levels
 * independent study is more a function of independence in the form of
 * "freedom in the self-determination of goals and activities" and of
 * "learning programs which are carried on to the greatest extent possible at the convenience of the learner"
 * BEST DEFINITION
 * Independent study is a process, a method and a philosophy of education:
 * 1) in which a student acquires knowledge by his or her own efforts and develops the ability for inquiry and critical evaluation;
 * 2) it includes freedom of choice in determining those objectives, within the limits of a given project or program and with the aid of a faculty adviser;
 * 3) it requires freedom of process to carry out the objectives;
 * 4) it places increased educational responsibility on the student for the achieving of objectives and for the value of the goals"
 * Independent study then, is characterized by
 * a high degree of learner-control over many instructional elements,
 * including the setting of objectives,
 * choices about pacing,
 * content and methodology, and
 * assessment of learning outcomes.
 * Because of this, it bears a strong resemblance to the sort of self-directed learning that takes place outside formal institutional settings, which is referred to as **autodidaxy**, but differs in several important respects from autodidaxy.


 * autodidaxy** - self-directed learning that takes place outside formal institutional settings

Lifelong education should have the following characteristics (Unesco):
 * 1) Last the whole life of each individual
 * 2) Lead to the systematic acquisition, renewal, upgrading and completion of knowledge, skills and attitudes made necessary by the constantly changing conditions in which people now live
 * 3) Have, as its ultimate goal, promotion of the self-fulfillment of each individual
 * 4) //Be dependent for its successful implementation on people's increasing ability and motivation to engage in self-directed learning activities//
 * 5) Acknowledge the contribution of all available educational influences, including formal, non-formal and informal

The relationship between self-directed learning and lifelong education is a reciprocal one. In this sense, self-directed learning is viewed simultaneously as a means and an end of lifelong education.
 * On the one hand, self-directed learning is one of the most common ways in which adults pursue learning throughout their life span, as well as being a way in which people supplement (and at times substitute for) learning received in formal settings.
 * On the other hand, lifelong learning takes, as one of its principal aims, equipping people with skills and competencies required to continue their own "self-education" beyond the end of formal schooling.

Thus, the lifelong project of -development and self-actualization, "the beautiful and arduous task of becoming a person" — is consistent with, and facilitated by, a system of lifelong education, and accordingly there can only be one education. In this view, learner-controlled instruction would be contiguous with self-directed learning outside formal institutional settings (autodidaxy). Indeed the indiscriminate application of the term self-direction to both phenomena has done much to blur the distinction.

The indiscriminate application of the term self-direction to both phenomena has done much to blur the distinction; however, both phenomena share a number of similarities:
 * Autodidaxy versus Learner-Controlled Instruction**
 * stress on the primacy of the learner's purposes;
 * independence of effort on the part of the learner;
 * support or assistance rendered, rather than direct instruction.
 * Moreover, one can see why, even at a subliminal level, educationists might want to stress the similarities.
 * Autodidaxy is taken to be the typical case of autonomy in learning; Autodidacts are known to be single-minded in their commitment to learning tasks, and often achieve high levels of expertise in their chosen areas of inquiry
 * autonomy, in turn, is a central notion within adult education. A.
 * All in all, it is argued, if adult educators were able to encourage learners into autodidaxy, or even to be able to "define" them as autodidacts, then such major instructional issues as motivation, relevance, meaningfulness, independence, and so on would be taken care of, ipso facto. BUT autodidaxy is not a method of instruction that can be called on by an educator.




 * The initiative for a learning project rests firmly and indisputably with the learner, it is possible that the autodidact (a self-taught person) might make extensive use of a "guide" or "helper" (or perhaps even more than one) to assist with a range of factors from emotional encouragement, to the location and utilization of specific resources, to management of the learning process itself.
 * From the point of view of an outside observer, such as a researcher, it might be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish a situation of assisted autodidaxy from one of independent study. It is as the two phenomena (that is, the independent study part of the instructional domain and the assisted autodidaxy part of the autodidactic continuum) were interchangeable.

> of the situation. > small, of teacher-control. Even though the instructor might have all but vanished, "The image of hierarchical power does not automatically disappear from the learner's mind". The "ghost" of the instructor lingers on, subtly influencing the learner's choices, and even the criteria used to make those choices. Whether symbolically or otherwise, the instructor maintains some degree of control (and hence ownership) over the instructional transaction and, in the final analysis, independent study is still a technique of instruction.
 * The area of overlap represents the apparent intersection of domains where, from the point of view of an outside observer, it is impossible to discern whether the primary orientation is one of "instruction" or of "self-instruction" (autodidaxy). However, it is argued here that the notion of a single continuum is misleading. Independent study and assisted autodidaxy, despite their external similarity, are not the same. Even if the difference cannot be detected readily by an outside observer, it is still important to the participants, because the quality of their interaction is partly dependent on their subjective interpretations
 * The difference depends on the notion of "ownership." In the earlier learner-control diagram (Figure 1.2), it can be seen that there is still a residue, albeit




 * In the autodidactic domain, on the other hand, the learner is frequently not conscious of being a learner, much less a student, and hence the image of an instructor is not present to begin with. Both ownership and control are vested in the learner from the outset, and the only question is the amount and type of assistance obtained.
 * Viewed in this way, it can be seen that they are not continuous at all, but are laminated or layered. One part is concerned with who has control, the other with the assistance obtained by the learner. A researcher or other outside observer may be unable to distinguish one situation from the other. Only the participants can be certain about whether "ownership" has been transferred to the learner or not, and even they may be unclear, leading to the potential for mismatched expectations.
 * There are three reasons why it is important to distinguish these two domains from one another:
 * First, confusing autodidaxy with methods of instruction may have serious repercussions for theory building in adult education;
 * second, learners and those assisting them may behave differently in the two situations, and this will influence learning outcomes; and
 * third, if there are qualitative differences between the two, then the transition from one plane or level to the other is a matter of great practical and theoretical significance.

=**Self-Direction as a Goal of Adult Education**=

Process/Method
 * self directed learning is a form of study in which learners have the primary responsibility for planning, carrying out and evaluating their own learning experiences.

Product/Goal/Outcome
 * the aim is to make the subject a continuing "inner-directed", self-operating learner

Self-direction can be of as a //process or method// of education or as a //goal or outcome//.
 * From the practitioner's point of view, it is necessary to decide whether the **aim is to produce self-managing learners or self-determining people** and, in either case, to question whether the best way to achieve it is by giving learners more of a say in the learning situation.
 * Given the widespread acceptance of autonomy as a valued social and cultural ideal, combined with a concept of adulthood as being largely defined in terms of autonomous thought and action, it is not surprising that the enhancement and development of self-directedness has been adopted as a major goal of adult education
 * It is surprising the way that the broad goal of autonomy is often superseded by the narrower objective of producing self-directed learners.

self-determination (personal autonomy)
 * the variable quality of being self-directing to the extent that one is in control of one's destiny
 * to be the quality which is being advocated and but see point 2 of self-management.

self-management


 * the variable quality of being self-directing within one's field of constraints to free actions
 * it is arguably self-management which, in many cases, is articulated, elaborated and (proudly) attained




 * Intuitively, it would seem logical that self-management is a subset of the broader domain of self-determination. This means that a person who is autonomous would be both willing and able to exert a degree of control over aspects of his or her learning situation, and likewise that the acceptance and exercise of such responsibility would be taken to indicate high levels of personal autonomy. BUT "A highly self-determining learner may—through the well informed delegation of control to others— be minimally self-managing"
 * **Simply because a learner exercises control over dimensions of the teaching/ learning situation does not mean that he or she is capable of exercising personal autonomy (self-determination) in the broader sense, and indeed the extent to which people are, or can be, self-determining is itself largely situation specific.**
 * **Conversely, the fact that a learner does not choose to exercise control in a particular educational setting cannot be taken as evidence that he or she lacks personal autonomy** **(self-determination)** **in the broader sense.**


 * autonomy**: to describe situations in which the learner is able "to choose between dependence and independence as one perceives the need

Observation: "anyone who is unfamiliar with a subject or topic may well choose to submit to being taught, at least at the beginning. This does not necessarily imply any pathological lack of [personal autonomy], but rather an acknowledgement that the best way to master the rudiments of a new area is to be taught by an expert (Candy, 1987)

Why has self-directed learning so captivated the field of adult education? > This shift in emphasis, which is still very recent indeed as a marked phenomenon, is connected with wider social changes.
 * Candy, Chapter 2**

Several generalizations about self-directed learning are clear
 * 1) Autodidactic learning is ancient; in fact it predates learning from teachers, for the very first teachers had, of necessity, to learn things for themselves.
 * 2) Autodidactic learning is an extremely diverse phenomenon, occurring in a range of settings and for a multiplicity of reasons. Of these, however, two categories stand out.
 * 3) Some independent learning is a **supplement** to formal education, and those who use such self-directed inquiry are often well educated, utilizing their knowledge and powers of discernment to further enhance their educational advantage. ("autodidacts as the aristocrats of culture")
 * 4) Other independent learning is a substitute for regular formal education, and thus traditionalists look down on it as an inferior form of education. ( "autodidacts as the orphans of culture," ) and this ambivalence toward self-directed learners is still evident today in the mixed response to the notion of the "self-taught" expert
 * 5) Although the capability for autodidactic learning is present in everyone to some degree, it can be enhanced through certain approaches to education and, until relatively recent times, this was taken to be the primary objective of teaching. However, "as passionate causes wracked human affairs, . . . people found it hard to maintain restraint, they ceased to be willing merely to help in the self development of their fellows; they discovered themselves burdened, alas, with paternal responsibility for ensuring that their wards would not falter and miss the mark. . . . Pressures— religious, political, social, economic, humanitarian pressures— began to mount upon the schools, and it soon became a mere matter of time before schools would be held accountable for the people they produced"

1. The first is that "self-direction" in the broadest sense seems to have captured the spirit the times— that is, to embody a number of contemporary issues that have flowed together. These include the >>>> teachers to the taught. >>>> not have the opportunity to influence the circumstances of their lives as presumed. >> countries, and this in turn may have implications for the qualities that are valued in the autonomous learner and for how such qualities are developed, in collaborative or competitive settings. >>> and //teacher// in much of the adult education literature. >>>> yet "autonomy can be defined as one's ability to be free in regard to established rules or norms, to set the goals of one's own action and to judge its value" Many domains of knowledge carry with them standards "which, at least at the beginning of the learning process [are] outside of the self," and hence "we find it difficult to say that learners have autonomy in regard to what they are learning if they have not already learned it." This objection depends on a very narrow and technical definition of autonomy, however, and does not seriously threaten the commonsense interpretation of the phrase "autonomous (or self-directed) learning >> in the structure of society
 * **democratic ideal,**
 * "Autonomy . . . is part of an individualistic, anti-authoritarian ideology which is very deep rooted in Western capitalist democracies . . . and it is naturally the conception usually proposed and expounded by our philosophers"
 * there are three distinct components in the relationship between the democratic ideal and autonomous learning:
 * the democracy of the soul,
 * Gibbs (1979) defines the essential characteristics of autonomy as intellectual self-determination, fortitude, and temperance.
 * These personal qualities, he argues, are precisely the cardinal virtues that Plato delineated in The Republic. Gibbs goes on to demonstrate the parallels that Plato drew between the individual soul and the city, where the proper task of education was to establish within the **soul something analogous to the constitutional government of the city**. Thus, as the city was to be self-regulating, so the individual learner should likewise be autonomous in the conduct of his or her affairs— including learning. This trend toward participatory democracy is clearly one of the "wider social changes" contributing to increased interest in autonomy.
 * democracy of the teaching/learning transaction,
 * there is (at least in America) a trend from representative to **participatory democracy,** brought about by the increasingly widespread belief that "people whose lives are affected by a decision must be a part of the process of arriving at that decision"
 * As people become more accustomed to, and skilled at, informed participation and "choosing" in these aspects of their lives, they have made increasing demands for similar power sharing in relation to their education. Thus the democratic ideal has influenced the conduct of education —especially the education of adults—and both teachers and learners alike have felt obliged to shift the locus of responsibility for certain instructional functions from the
 * preparing for democratic responsibilities.
 * education should enhance people's ability to participate fully in the democratic processes in society at large. Garforth (1980) writes: "Without an educated electorate democracy is impossible, for it requires of its citizens an alert, informed, critical interest and, as far as possible, participation in the processes of government"
 * If the society were fully and genuinely democratic, and people were able to assert their democratic rights, then there would be a congruence between the educational ideal and the social reality. However, the democratic ideal is just that, an ideal, and it is often the case that, in their everyday lives, people do
 * Should adult educators adopt an ideological stance, and encourage the development of autonomous learners in the full knowledge that many people will be denied the opportunity to exert their autonomy fully outside the classroom or meeting? Or should they adopt a pragmatic approach and concentrate on the development of "coping mechanisms?"
 * **the ideology of individualism,**
 * At present, individualism represents a dominant value; thus one of the key principles for the conduct of education worldwide: "The new educational ethos makes the individual the master and creator of his own cultural progress. Self-learning, especially assisted self-learning, has irreplaceable value in any educational system"
 * Keddie points out that "the notion of individuality as a desirable personality goal is not universal, but is cultural specific and tends to be found in those cultures [such as ours] where high status is obtained by competitive individual achievement . . . "
 * However, even among those cultures that value "competitive individual achievement," there are differences in the meaning ascribed to individualism.
 * In the United Kingdom, for instance, individualism tends to wear a mask of "genteel anarchy" that is related, very often, to a "sincere wish to revise and purify democratic ideals, not to challenge and overturn them completely"
 * In the United States, on the other hand (which has spawned by far the lion's share of literature pertaining to self-direction in adult education), the ideology of individualism is much more strident and provocative
 * there is even a class dimension to individualism;
 * working class cultures has stressed that while the middle class . . . are oriented towards the value of individual achievement,
 * working class culture places emphasis on collective values
 * Brookfield laments both the middle-class bias of most studies and their failure to deal adequately with the social setting and support mechanisms, particularly of working-class learners and those of low educational attainment.
 * Thus, although the notion of individualism is cited in support of the development of autonomy, it means rather different things even as between major English-speaking
 * **the concept of egalitarianism,**
 * There are two broad categories of reasons why adult educators might choose to treat learners as equals.
 * the adult learner is seen to be as autonomous as the teacher, capable of making informed choices, and both the content of the curriculum and the instructional process itself are shaped by the needs and preferences of the learners. The adoption of egalitarianism leads to the educator's accepting and respecting the learners as absolute equals and to the conclusion that there is "no relevant difference between those qualified to teach and those still under instruction"
 * based on the pragmatic threat that "adult students can vote with their feet," leads to "the belief by organisers and teachers that they ought not to impose their own educational and curricular values if they can avoid doing so"
 * if a learner adopts egalitarianism as a goal rather than as a presupposition, then one is committed to one of two positions:
 * either equality of opportunity for access to education--there are certain subtle limitations on people's ability to learn things for themselves if they lack the required formal background and/or access to particular facilities and resources.
 * equality of educational outcomes— in this case, the attainment of autonomy. Many authors have pointed out the virtual impossibility of all people attaining comparable levels of autonomy. Thus, the committed egalitarian must encourage the opportunity for the development of autonomy in education, but at the same time is confronted with the paradox that the less accustomed learners are to thinking and acting autonomously, the more encouragement, direction, and support they are likely to require in their first tentative steps toward autonomy. Accordingly, the development of autonomy as a goal is not necessarily best achieved by the use of autonomy as a method, and adult educators may find that equality is not inconsistent with direct instruction in some subject areas.
 * **the subjective or relativistic epistemology,**
 * this trend is "reacting to the excesses of the mechanistic, positivist account of knowledge" and is in turn part of a larger backlash against positivism generally
 * In opposition to the so-called "received view" of objective knowledge there are two alternative paradigms.
 * //radical subjectivism//, which holds that each person is entirely the author of his or her own knowledge and worldview. This position, however, leads to a denial of the influence of socializing variables in people's lives and of the intersubjectively validated nature of such knowledge, and, as Crittenden (1978) points out, "There are probably very few serious defenders of the complete subjectivism that intellectual autonomy in the strict sense entails"
 * //open education//. Among their tenets are the following:
 * knowledge is idiosyncratically (a tendency, type of behaviour, mannerism, etc., of a specific person) formed, individually conceived, fundamentally individualistic. Theoretically, no two people's knowledge can be the same, unless their experience is identical.
 * Because knowledge is basically idiosyncratic, it is most difficult to judge whether one person's knowledge is "better" than another's.
 * Knowledge does not exist outside of individual knowers; it is not a thing apart. . ..
 * Knowledge is not inherently ordered or structured, nor does it automatically subdivide into academic "disciplines." These categories are artificial, not natural. ..
 * People do not make their cognitive way up any universal ladder; ladders are linear, restricting, and conforming. On the contrary, the learner envisioned by
 * open education faces a world of potential but unpredeterinined knowledge that will admit to a plurality of interpretations
 * Given these beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the autonomy of the person as learner.and•moral agent, it is not surprising that the ideal teacher-student relationship bears no resemblance to that of master and apprentice. Terms like //facilitator//, //resource person//, and //animateur// have replaced //trainer//, //instructor//,
 * There are, however, two paradoxes confronted by the supporters of a relativistic epistemology.
 * The first is that they cannot simultaneously hold the view that all knowledge claims are equally valid, and that alternative interpretations to their own arc wrong. Hence, in advocating (as they are bound to do) the value of autonomous learning, they are also obliged to recognize that nonautonomous learning is equally legitimate (for, after all, there are no absolute tests of truth, goodness, or appropriateness). Thus, the very values for which they are striving in education are seen to be no more than a matter of private taste.
 * In order for someone to claim to have learned something of social value or to have acquired some skill, he or she must, sooner or later, subject this newly acquired insight or behavior to the critical scrutiny of others. As soon as this occurs, the learner is acknowledging the essential importance of norms, and
 * **the principles of humanistic education,**
 * self-directed learning has been embraced wholeheartedly in North America because it seems to lie in its congruence with the aims of humanistic education, which has also taken root very firmly particularly in the United States.
 * modern-day educational humanism owes its origins to psychology rather than to philosophy. Humanistic psychologists, in a reaction to the psychoanalytic preoccupation with studying the mentally ill, chose instead to focus on normal healthy, even exceptional people. Instead of dealing with disease, disorder, and disintegration, humanistic psychologists tried to understand what it means to be fully human, in all its richness and complexity. In doing so, they adopted a predominantly positive and optimistic view of people, seeing them as basically good. Moreover, unlike psychoanalytic researchers who studied people in laboratories, asylums, and clinics, humanistic psychologists undertook their research in real-life settings. As a result, they formulated a more complete, comprehensive, and compassionate view of individual human performance.
 * best-known proponent of humanistic psychology in the United States is Abraham Maslow
 * he mapped out a comprehensive and compelling vision of people as self-actualizing beings, striving toward health, individual identity and integrity, and autonomy.
 * Maslow based his early study on a survey of people whom he deemed to be "self-actualizers," and he identified a number of characteristics that they all seemed to possess. These attributes include
 * acceptance of self and others;
 * spontaneity and naturalness;
 * autonomy and independence;
 * freshness of perception;
 * genuineness in relationships with others;
 * creativity; positive self-concept; and
 * "without one single exception, involvement in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside of themselves"
 * Carl Rogers, a contemporary of Maslow, concentrated on the role of the therapist or, in the teaching situation, of the educator.
 * the optimal relationship would be a client-centered one, with the educator or therapist adopting a nonjudgmental, facilitative role to help the client or learner achieve self-fulfillment or self-actualization. Like Maslow, Rogers believed that people are born with a natural tendency toward exploration, growth, and higher achievement.
 * The corollary of this is that educators need to intervene as little as possible in the natural development of the person.
 * Principles from humanistic philosophy and psychology have permeated the field of adult education. (self-directed learning draws a lot of its popular support from the same philosophical heartland as humanistic education, and moreover that it is based at least partly on similar tenets) It is popular because
 * humanism's compatibility with democratic values. . ..
 * unlike other levels of education, nearly all adult education is voluntary. Educational activities must meet the needs of adult learners in order to survive.
 * humanistic adult education takes into account adult development. . . . The notion of growth, development and change is integral to much of the psychological literature on adult development"
 * the most significant similarity between humanism and self-direction is their respective emphasis on the essential aloneness of the individual
 * The corollary of this in the field of self-direction has been that many adult educators have lost sight of the interdependent and socially determined nature of much adult learning. By placing emphasis on the uniqueness and individuality of each person, and stressing subjective experience as the primary or even the only meaningful criterion of truth, they have inadvertently caused people to "become more detached from the need to fulfil the expectations of their culture, and [to] become less involved
 * **the construct of adulthood**
 * Several features are commonly mentioned that supposedly differentiate adult education from other sectors of education:
 * It has an extremely diffuse and nebulous mandate;
 * it is distinguished by an ethos of voluntarism among both teachers and learners;
 * it is often treated as peripheral or marginal to mainstream educational efforts ("nocturnal ritual");
 * it has something of a social activist tradition, which places it somewhere "between a social movement and a profession"
 * it claims to place a higher emphasis on meeting the "needs" of learners than other sectors of education do;
 * many of its activities are characterized by what Bernstein has called weak classification and weak framing
 * Although there is clearly more than a grain of truth to these self-characterizations, many of these claims are ideological rather than empirical, part of the folklore that adult education has developed to justify and distinguish itself.
 * According to Welton (1987), various attempts to provide a theoretical framework for adult education have been based on a "shaky and porous foundation," namely, that of seeking to develop its own epistemological basis from within itself. Welton goes on to examine critically the three "modalities" within this episteme:
 * first, the claim that adult education is distinctive because there are forms of knowledge that are "adult" (the "adult knowledge" modality);
 * second, because adult educators seek to meet the needs of their clients through flexible and responsive provision and open access (the "needs, access, and provision" modality); and
 * third, because of something special and unique about the methods of teaching that are employed with adults (the "methodological" modality).
 * notion of adulthood
 * Verner wrote that " . . . the precise meaning of the term adult is actually quite vague — particularly when it is used to identify the clientele of adult education. The notions of who is an adult vary from 'those past school age' through 'grownups' to 'mature individuals' — perceptions so indefinite as to be all but meaningless. Attempts to arrive at a precise identification of an adult tend to fall into the categories of age, psychological maturity, and social role"
 * Subsequent research has tended to emphasize one or other of these same three categories: age, social role, or psychological maturity. However, despite more than two decades of further research and inquiry there are still few, if any, satisfactory and comprehensive conceptualizations of adulthood. Perhaps this is because adulthood is a residual concept, what is left after defining other stages in the human life cycle. Perhaps it is simply because adulthood is such a broad, amorphous, and diffuse phenomenon.
 * "Adulthood, even if determinate biologically, is culturally a variable" (p. 38). In our society, it is true that our ability to recognize ourselves and others as adult is based, at least in part, on developing independence, along with the adoption of responsibilities (such as worker, spouse, parent, citizen and so on). However, definitions of adulthood based on social roles have a disconcerting tendency toward circularity: "The adult . . . can be distinguished from a child or adolescent by his or her acceptance of the social roles and functions that define adulthood"
 * The third class of definitions, namely, those concerned with psychological maturity, are potentially the most promising for the present purpose. Some of these definitions portray adulthood as the development or acquisition of an interrelated set of psychological characteristics, usually including independence, autonomy, or freedom from the influence of others. Other definitions, such as those of Maslow or Rogers, "stress the idea that adulthood is a process rather than a condition, a process in which men and women continually strive toward self-actualization and self-fulfillment" Whether viewed as a process or a condition, however, the common element is the achievement of autonomy
 * This fact has profound significance for adult education. Darkenwald and Merriam (1982) claim that the mission of adult education "is not preparatory, so much as it is one of assistance— helping adults to realize their potential, make good decisions and in general, better carry out the duties and responsibilities inherent in the adult role" (p. 77). Thus, it would appear that one of the primary tasks of adult education is to develop and to permit the exercise both of individuality (Hostler, 1981) and autonomy: "While the fostering of mental autonomy is an important objective in the education of children, it is of special importance in the education of adults. In deeming someone to be an 'adult,' we are ascribing to him various rights and responsibilities in virtue of certain distinctive moral and personal qualities which we presume him to have . . . the qualities of impartiality, objectivity and balance, at least in some minimum degree, and the ability to draw on his experience with some measure of sense and skill . . . The project of fostering mental autonomy is the project of helping adults to be adult"
 * Thus it appears that autonomy, and the ability to think and act autonomously, are central to our conception of adulthood. Adulthood, in turn, occupies a place of honor as a unique distinctive foundation for the work of adult educators. Accordingly, any educational approach such as self-directed learning— either autodidaxy or learner-control — that exemplifies and builds on autonomy in learning is held to be uniquely relevant to the education of adults.

all within a turbulent time of rapid and pervasive changes that has resulted in an unprecedented questioning of the forms and functions of conventional educational approaches: > "The world we live in demands self-starting, self-directing citizens capable of independent action. The world is changing so fast we cannot hope to teach each person what he/she will need to know in twenty years. Our only hope to meet the demands of the future is the production of intelligent, independent people"

2. There is a good deal of "slippage" in the literature between the concepts of Implicitly, there is held to be a connection between It appears however that **little empirical connection has yet been established between these various aspects of "self-direction**," and that greater circumspection is therefore required.
 * autodidaxy,
 * learner-control,
 * self-management, and
 * self-determination.
 * the way formal education is arranged and conducted,
 * the propensity of people to indulge in learning activities in everyday settings,
 * the ability and willingness to accept responsibility for certain functions in the instructional setting, and
 * the development of autonomous and "fully functioning" adult citizens.

3. Third, it is apparent that self-direction in learning is not a single undifferentiated phenomenon, and likewise that its rise to prominence has been promoted by a coalition of different—at times even contradictory—forces. In many cases, people of quite radically opposed ideological positions have been advocating the need for self-direction in learning. This diversity is reflected in the **range of different meanings attributed to the term self-direction** and in the **range of different factors that have contributed to supporting the development of self-directed learning.**

Collins, M. (1995). Critical on the role of the adult educator: From self-directed learning to postmodernist sensibilities. In M. Welton (Ed.) In defense of the lifeworld: Critical perspectives on adult learning (pp. 71-97). Albany: SUNY Press. detailed reading and analysis, make notes. Collins is another really important thinker in aded, and this is an important article. Key concepts:
 * critique of the individualized learner perspective;
 * 'what is at stake' when andragogy defines adult education;
 * CBE and critique of; adult education 'in whose interest' and what role ad educators should take;
 * TCA and critical adult education

Commentary from Course notes Finished.
 * Commentary from Course notes**
 * The other theme that is still playing itself out was the way adult educators began to think of themselves, less as teachers, more as facilitators**. To facilitate** appears, on the surface, **to be less authoritarian than being a teacher**. But this idea, as Collins (1995) argues, **may indicate a loss of courage and confidence** in our ability to develop systematic, rigorous analyzes of social, economic, political and cultural reality.
 * Candy acknowledges that many adult educators were comfortable with the task of “helping people to grow and to reach their full potential” (p. 40). However, the “corollary of this in the field of SDL has been that many adult educators have lost sight of the interdependent and socially determined nature of much adult learning” (p. 42). This criticism bridges well to the texts of Collins (1995) and Brookfield (1993). Collins reiterates the argument that **SDL is andragogy’s linch-pin**. It functions as “andragogy’s primary methodological device to distinguish adult education from conventional schooling” and “holds together a notion that has been studiously developed into a complex structure” (p. 81). This now familiar argument, however, is developed in a rather sophisticated direction. Michael Collins, one of the international field’s most fearless critics of the professionalization of adult education and its adherence to a “cult of efficiency”, makes the provocative argument that **SDL–in a high intensity commodity culture–ends up being controlled by “experts who serve predominantly institutionalized interests**” (p. 83). Thus, **the de-skilling inherent in SDL opens the door for pre-packaged, teacher-free, curriculum materials (manifest, he argues, in competency-based programs and human resource development planning)**.
 * Collins thinks adult educators have a “vocational obligation” to identify the “systematic impediments to transformative learning” (p. 89). He urges adult educators to foster the “collective capacity of ordinary men and women to organize industrial production, distribution, and the delivery of services” (p. 87). But Collins now confronts a new conceptual task of specifying how individual persons combine with others to demonstrate this collective capacity. How does this actually happen?
 * Stephen Brookfield (1993), one of adult education’s most prolific and insightful theorists, thinks that Collins does not grasp the emancipatory potential contained in the notion of self-direction.


 * "The proponents of capitalism in its extreme forms tend to overlook the good things achieved by communism: the efforts to overcome unemployment, the concern for the poor.... In communism there was a concern for the community, whereas capitalism is rather individualistic." (Manchester Guardian Weekly, 1993, p. 1)
 * the intent is to stress that for the modern practice of adult education to realize any level of relevance in today's society it must incorporate a critical engagement with issues
 * If modern adult education practice is to sustain itself as a distinctive field of practice and research, it should embrace forms of teaching and learning, curriculum design and program planning, in which pressing global circumstances are //deliberately// taken into account.

> (client) for professionalized practice, glosses over the failure to deal actively with those circumstances which frustrate genuine "selfdirected > learning."
 * How to keep alive the study of adult education in the contemporary academic milieu?**
 * At a very basic level, the immediate task for adult educators of the critical persuasion entails learning how to sustain a field of practice in which critical perspectives can emerge despite on-going roll-backs in publicly funded education.
 * There is clearly something at stake in retaining andragogy as a category for defining adult education practice.
 * Under andragogy, however, the individual learner as client becomes the object of an emerging field of professionalized practice.
 * The tendency towards professionalization, and away from the conception of adult education as a social movement exemplified in the works of Moses Coady (1939, 1971), Eduard Lindeman (1961), and Richard Tawney (1964), was already discernible by the 1950s within mainstream discourse on adult education in the United States.
 * It is usually argued from a standpoint that professionalization provides assurance to adult learners (increasingly referred to as "clients") about the competence of those from whom they rely on for pedagogical guidance.
 * At the same time it is anticipated that professionalization will bring with it greater job security and a more dependable income for practitioners
 * Ronald Cervero discerns a clear-cut and irresistible trend towards professionalization which adult educators ought to accept.
 * BUT
 * Collins (1992) raises questions along moral and political lines, adding that, in any case, the professionalizing tendency has failed to provide jobs, job security, and dependable incomes for adult educators.
 * Further, it is argued from this critical perspective that a misguided preoccupation with professionalization has diverted adult educators from other forms of organization that could be more empowering for themselves and for their students.
 * A prevalent argument in favour of professionalization initiatives centres around the need for practitioners to keep abreast of new developments in their field.
 * "The basic need for continuing education results from the danger of two kinds of obsolescence:
 * rustiness resulting from the lack of proper use of professional knowledge and
 * failure to keep up with new developments
 * What does professionalization mean in the field?
 * "By professionalization of the field is meant those elements which have placed emphasis on providing adult education with a sound theoretical base, have emphasized research and the application of scientific standards to methods, materials and the organization of the field and have promoted the need for professional training and staffing"
 * historical commentary on adult education practice is pervaded by a taken-for-granted acceptance of a technocratic ideology in which system imperatives must inevitably engulf lifeworld interests. Significantly absent from the non-critical perspective on professionalization taken by Selman and Kulich are prospects for informed resistance to a significant de-skilling of work, the undermining of competent performance (Collins, 1987), that is occuring in lifeworld contexts. Accordingly, a professionalized modern practice of adult education abandons its connections to social movements and lends its weight to the world of specialization—the system.
 * Andragogy, shaped by //system imperatives// from the outset and steered by a dubious need to professionalize, leads us all back along tracks forged by //system// imperatives.
 * **If the lifeworld/system differentiation Jurgen Habermas (1987b) makes is taken seriously by adult educators, it is clear that the preservation of what is vital in our everyday life, especially the capacities for self-direction, depends upon the will to defend its autonomy against further encroachments by disabling system imperatives. Such a commitment** **could well be supported by appropriate initiatives for the reclamation of valuable community-oriented aspects of everyday life.**
 * Prevent the further erosion of the "commons." The commons draws attention to those constantly threatened, yet still non-commodified, customs, practical activities, and generative locations in our everyday lives which are so essential to our well-being.
 * An unwillingness to recognize the steering effects of entrepreneurial activity serves to mask the contradictions between what is espoused on behalf of independent learning and what is actually embraced in the name of professionalization. The professionalization tendency in adult education, with its identification of the individualized learner as object

> andragogical consensus and, thus reinforced, adopts the popular labels of the self-directed learning discourse—"individualized," "learner-centered," and "self-paced."
 * Self-Directed Learning: Andragogy's Linch-Pin**
 * Functioning as andragogy's primary methodological device to distinguish adult education from conventional schooling, self-directed learning holds together a notion that has been studiously developed into a complex structure.
 * The methodological basis of the distinction between andragogy and conventional schooling practices resides in the fact that with self-directed learning
 * the needs and activities of the learner assume greater significance, and are subject to closer scrutiny, than those of the teacher.
 * The teacher becomes a mere facilitator of the learning process.
 * In this regard, self-directed learning refers to educational contexts where the experience of adult learners, their relevant ways of knowing (cognitive styles) and their interest in undertaking relevant learning projects on their own initiative are taken into account.
 * In recent years self-directed learning has exerted its influence on a wide range of adult education settings within modern adult education practice. As an authoritative pedagogical technique it provides legitimation for adult basic education, continuing professional education, the preparation of nurses and medical doctors, and even Ph.D. students. Usually, the approach adopted entails the negotiation of a formalized learning contract whereby a student (client) identifies a learning project and specifies learning objectives, learning resources, and evidence of accomplishment (Knowles, 1980, 1986). In determining criteria for formal evaluation, the student as client is often invited to negotiate, well in advance, the level of grade to be assigned in return for work accomplished. Under these circumstances, the adult educator assumes a professional role in mediating institutional interests with a student client's expectations of what the institution will provide. The educational experience is nicely commodified. There is even an instrument on the market— a learning readiness scale—that will measure to what extent an adult is ready for self-directed learning (Guglielmino, 1982).
 * It is not difficult to understand how, within the discourse on andragogy, the role of the adult educator has been transformed from that of teacher to facilitator or broker. In facilitating the pedagogical process through contractual terms, adult educator as facilitator or broker treats the student, albeit with respect, as the consumer. The felt (consumer) needs of learner as client (customer) are systematically addressed and, with the nature of the exchange relationship thus defined, commodification of the educational encounter is substantially achieved.
 * Within the self-directed learning motif, adult learners experience the same kind of freedom they enjoy in shopping malls. This marketplace analogy is indicative of how self-directed learning appeals to business management interests, professional organizations, and large scale institutions.
 * Individuals are viewed as attending to their own choices via formal learning contracts within an overall context determined by institutional interests.
 * As well as being prospective customers for educational services, adult learners are designated as human resources.
 * This objectifying move from one of //relating to human beings// to //dealing with human resources// is revealing. While holding together a scenario of adult men and women autonomously shaping their own educational experiences, self-directed learning effectively delivers their learning to experts who serve predominantly institutionalized interests.
 * Ironically, these experts of modern adult education practice (human resource developers), despite aspirations towards professionalization, become increasingly de-skilled as they surrender their agency as teacher for the less pro-active role as broker of commodified educational services.
 * privatizing effects of self-directed learning on individual learners, and the instrumental rationality on which it is forged, have set a course for the further development of pre-packaged learning formats. The growing tendency towards standardizing prepackaged curriculum development for adults draws legitimacy from the


 * Corporate Pedagogy: Competency-Based Education and Human Resource Development**

CBE and critique of; adult education 'in whose interest' and what role adult educators should take; TCA and critical adult education
 * From a critical perspective, the highly reductionist intent of CBAE curriculum formats serves to deskill the role of the adult educator while focusing on the guided responses of the individual adult learner.
 * The epistemological assumption here is that a correct reiteration of the behaviour in each component confirms acquisition of the necessary degree of competence.
 * CBE has yet to match claims of its proponents that their curriculum model is causally connected to the actual achievement of competent performance.
 * CBE diverts learners away from careful reflection on their work. They are immersed, instead, in a busyness syndrome which saps energy while allowing for pedestrian, frequently achieved, minor satisfactions
 * CBE attests to the enduring influence of Taylorism on educational curriculum and program development.
 * Following a behavioristic rationale, educational policy-makers and administrators during the 1920s were attracted to Frederick Taylor's formulations for breaking down work in factories and offices into standardized, measurable units. Taylor's notion of task analysis, reducing work on the factory floor and in offices to a series of repetitive mechanical operations, was promoted within the context of a growing preoccupation with efficiency. This cult of efficiency, epitomized by the shop-floor productionline and invoking Taylor's notion of scientific management, provided impetus to the aspirations of experts in education who were seeking to rationalize curriculum and the day-to-day administration of schools.
 * Competency-based education and outcomes-based education, belongs to a continuing legacy of **technocratic deployments** within the sphere of public education.
 * CBE curriculum effects a restructuring of the educational process, reducing it to a series of simplistic tasks virtually denuded of any creative impulse.
 * Educator--progressively de-skilled, becoming more readily replaceable.
 * Learner--imbued with narrow expectations about education, and about the world of work, which stem from the ideology of technique underlying CBE.
 * Thus CBEs technocratic curriculum designs play a significant role in the construction of social control mechanisms (adult education tied to welfare initiatives, for example).
 * The CBE approach lends itself to the development of a flexible surplus labour force with reduced expectations about the quality of work available to it.
 * An exposition of the excessive reductionism inherent in CBE, the prescriptive strategies entailed in its deployment, and its failure to establish a proven connection with the actual achievement of competent performance, has not been sufficient to check its impetus.
 * CBE does lend itself readily to self-directed learning; CBE is individualized and allows for self-pacing. Yet the selfdirectedness is confined within very restricted, and restricting, parameters.
 * Whose interest?
 * Where HRD is deployed to support popular notions emerging from business and industry—notions such as "team management," "partnerships," and "quality circles"—its primary purpose is consensus formation around agendas clearly understood by the chief executive officers (CEOs). Consequently, strategies that emerge from the process tend to confirm predetermined institutional interests. HRD is a workplace pedagogy in the service of the CEOs.
 * "Human resource development is the career within an organization that focuses on changing and improving the capacities of human beings to contribute to the success of the organization"
 * Nadler is unequivocal in describing HRD as "a management tool."


 * Meaning in Context and the Critical Term**
 * The adult educator is, in effect, being asked to put aside the certainties of functionalist curriculum and programmatic blue-prints. The alternative, however, is far more demanding. It calls for the creation of learning strategies which are contextually relevant
 * There is transformative potential for the individual adult learner and a significant mediating role for the educator in the renewed emphasis on critical reflection which Brookfield's work evokes.
 * In terms of the sharper perspective on practice defined by the critical turn it becomes incumbent (obligatory) on adult educators, as "reflective practitioners," to address these systematic impediments to transformative learning. This vocational obligation entails, at the very least, a frank acknowledgement of the contradictions between what is espoused and what is actually put into practice. Yet critical adult education, even as it has emerged within the andragogical consensus, implies that ethical and political choices have to be made by adult educators about whose interests they should serve. As the choices are made, **the contradictions become even more apparent and have to be addressed.** Herein lies an important difference between critical thinking informed by an individualistic humanistic psychology (Rogers, 1969) and educational practice which draws on critical theory. From a critical theory perspective, the "freedom to learn" Carl Rogers so treasured can only be realized for ordinary men and women through counter-hegemonic pedagogical strategies.


 * The critical turn in modern adult education practice is largely inspired by Frankfurt School critical theory. In particular, the research project of Jurgen Habermas, the Frankfurt School's leading contemporary exponent, featured prominently in the development of critical adult education.
 * The founding figures of the Frank fort School are viewed from a classical Marxist standpoint, as having failed to understand the nature and transformative potential of working class interests and of giving in to bourgeois intellectual despair.
 * Critical theory in this vein provides important insights into the way conditions under modern capitalism—that is, under both corporate capitalism and the state bureaucratic capitalist formations under socialism as it has already been experienced—distort learning processes (human experience) in all aspects of everyday life.
 * It is around a theory of communicative action, then, that Habermas' work informs the emerging critical discourse within the modern practice of adult education
 * Rather, from the Habermasian project can be derived an explanation of how coercive aspects of modern life prevent people from coming to //reasonably// agreed upon "understandings in common" of what is at stake in making decisions about how we should be and act in the world. Hence modern life is viewed as being largely shaped by the imperatives of strategic action stemming from a technical rational which runs counter to the practical and emancipatory interests of ordinary men and women.


 * Role of the Adult Educator in Today`s Society**
 * "'//Vivisecting the Nightingale': Reflections on Adult Education as an Object of Study//," Michael Welton (1987) graphically describes how the professionalizing tendency "neglects social, cultural and political dimensions of adult education" (p. 54). With the emergence of a more critical discourse, the question is whether modern adult education practice can make up, in these times, for the flawed professionalization agenda and capture a sense of relevance that resides in the notion of adult education as a social movement with an emancipatory intent.
 * Brookfield argues for the reconceptualization of self-directed learning in a way that takes into account political considerations and the relevance of social contexts. While recognizing the validity of their analytical insights, Brookfield suggests that critical theorists within adult education are remiss in failing to recognize the empowering potentiality of self-directed learning. He offers some interesting examples of how a pedagogical discourse, ostensibly empowering for the individual learner, can be mustered around the notion of self-directed learning. The examples highlight a far **more reflective practice**, incorporating a **greater awareness of social contexts and political contingencies**, than is evident in the typical texts on self-directed learning.
 * The problem for the critical practice of adult education is the way self-directed learning is reified in support of professionalizing aspirations within modern adult education practice. Careful reflection on relevant political issues within the context of modern adult education practice can occur without making self-directed learning into a commodity. It is the commodification of adult education (Briton and Plumb, 1993), and the part played by the discourse on self-directed learning, that is of concern to a critical practice of adult education.
 * A renewed emphasis on the agency of the adult educator also calls for the //**courage to teach**// (Palmer, 1991). To what extent this commitment to teaching has been undermined in the wake of the self-directed learning phenomenon is open to question. However, the role of the teacher carries with it a **moral force** and a **sense of engagement lacking in the concept of "facilitator."** The term "facilitator," which emerged under andragogy alongside self-directed learning, belongs more to the argot (a characteristic language of a particular group) of management than to a discourse on education. In quoting Myles Horton verbatim, Brookfield (1993) makes it clear that for the celebrated founder of Highlander Folk School "facilitator" is, at best, a weasel definition:
 * "There's no such thing as just being a coordinator or facilitator, as if you don't know anything. What the hell are you around for, if you don't know anything. Just get out of the way and let somebody have the space that knows something, believes something"
 * it is around the agency of the adult educator that a case for adult education as a distinctive field of practice can be advanced. In this regard, the preparation of adult educators becomes relevant. From the perspective of a critical pedagogy, the task can be viewed as one of identifying contexts appropriate for the development of adult educators as teachers and intellectuals. Any notion that the preparation of adult educators should be confined to one institutional context is undoubtedly antithetical to what critical adult education is about.

Leach, L. (2005). Self-directed learning. In L. English, (Ed.) International Encyclopedia of Adult Education (pp. 565-569). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (read for meaning. Key concepts: critique of SDL) What are the fundamental arguments (or concerns) raised against self-directed learning? Do Brookfield and Pearson/Podeschi provide convincing arguments for preserving the ideal of self-direction as part of adult education’s basic conceptual repertoire?

The best-known definition of self-directed learning (SDL) is that of Knowles (1975): > a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes. (p. 18)

Related to these goals and processes are discussions of the internal and external dimensions of SDL.
 * The external dimension concerns the extent to which adult learners take control of, and responsibility for, their learning processes.
 * The internal dimension focuses on the personal attributes individual adult learners require to be self-directed learners. This Internal dimension is also understood as an internal change in consciousness and as responsibility for constructing meaning.

Merriam and Caffarella (1999) identify three goals of SDL: and three types of process:
 * 1) personal growth;
 * 2) transformational learning; and
 * 3) emancipatory learning and social action -
 * 1) linear,
 * 2) interactive and
 * 3) instructional.

Tough and Knowles
 * Models**
 * identified a series of stages in SDL, but interactive models deny this linearity and argue that a range of factors impacts on what and how adults learn; for example, learning opportunities adults find in their own environments, the context of their learning, their personality characteristics, and their cognitive suitability for SDL.

Pratt and Delahaye
 * allow for an individual learner to have different levels of self-direction in different contexts.

Spear and Mocker, and Brockett and Hiemstra,
 * take into account factors within the social context and described this as four categories of "organizing circumstances."

Brockett and Hiemstra (1991)
 * In their PRO (personal responsibility orientation) model refer to the two dimensions as instructional method (SDL) and personality characteristics (learner self-direction). Integrating the two dimensions results in self-direction in learning.

Grow (1991)
 * developed a Staged Self-Directed Learning (SSDL) model, that identifies four stages:
 * dependence, i
 * interested,
 * involved and
 * self-directed,
 * and proposes matched teaching approaches: authority/ coach, motivator/guide, facilitator and consultant.

Garrison (1997)
 * argued for a different view of the internal dimension. He saw it as a meaning construction process and developed a model that incorporated self-management (contextual control), self-monitoring (of cognitive and metacognitive processes) and motivation (both entering and task) as aspects of SDL.

Hammond and Collins (1991)
 * The only model that explicitly addresses the emancipatory intention of SDL
 * social, political and environmental contexts and both personal and social learning goals

Livingstone, D. (Nov/Dec. 1999). Exploring the icebergs of adult learning: Findings of the first Canadian survey of informal learning activities. The Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 13/2, 49. (scan for meaning (thank goodness!) Key concepts: individualistic bias; dominant class bias) What are the implications of Livingstone’s survey for government and business policies pertaining to the lifelong learning of Canadians?

Norman, R. (2004). Introduction. In R. Norman, On humanism thinking in action (pp. 1-25). New York: Taylor & Francis. (scan for meaning Key concepts: different conceptions of humanism; critiques of humanism) What are the central tenets of humanism? How is this philosophy manifest in adult education thought and practice?

Pearson, E. & Podeschi, R. (1999). Humanism and individualism: Maslow and his critics. In Adult Education Quarterly 50(1), 41-55. Detailed reading and analysis, make notes. Key concepts: human freedom (for Maslow) = a combination of uncovering one's real self + deciding what one will become
 * the individual-society dilemma;
 * theory-practice conflict in ad ed;
 * culture and Maslow;
 * critique of Maslow (Marxist, post-modernist);
 * individualism and individuality

This capacity for self-knowledge and willed self-renewal leads to growth (the self-actualizing process), moving the self from one state of consciousness to a more advanced state (e.g., basic needs of safety and belongingness to meta needs of wholeness and justice).


 * Criticism**

Maslow is unconsciously naive about elitist elements in his theories. 1. "//What// real individuals, living in //what// real societies, working at //what// real jobs, and earning //what// real income have any chance at all of becoming self-actualizers?" 2. Others view his psychology as a "new and seductive Social Darwinism" that's used to justify a capitalistic system with its privileges and practices for its powerful elite
 * For some critics, Maslow's "elite" self-actualizers are seen as the psychological embodiment of the social elites who are the decision makers of his society, and they assert that he remains unaware of the value-laden nature of his theory
 * Such critics contend that the nature of excessive individualism contained in the doctrine of self-actualization, with its emphasis on self and responsibility, serves to mask the larger questions surrounding societal structure: "A theory that predisposes one to focus more on individual freedom and development rather than the larger social reality, works in favour of that reality"


 * The resulting problem these critics see is,
 * Those who fail to reach the heights described by Maslow may feel that they are personally to blame for their discontent.... The individualization of success and failure can also result in blaming those who suffer from social injustice for the hardships they face.


 * The critics base their arguments on a set of assumptions opposed to the dominant humanistic view of the nature of the individual. They particularly reject any notion of an autonomous self, instead emphasizing the determination of macro socioeconomic forces on the shaping of any individual. In this set of assumptions, human nature is human only by virtue of the society; it is historically developed and not in any sense inherent in any particular individual.

Post-Modernism Criticisms
 * the humanistic individual is potentially capable of making himself or herself a better person, of fulfilling the highest possibilities of an intrinsic inner nature, of choosing the highest human values. Whereas, a postmodernist, such as Michel Foucault, denies that there can be any foundational, universal, or normative assumptions about human nature and rejects any notion of a self or of self-actualization.
 * Foucault discusses truth in terms of "societal regimes of truth" explaining that truths are made up by societies through selecting “the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true” as well as creating and controlling “the mechanisms that enable us to distinguish between true and false statements” (which function to legitimize what can be said, who has the authority to speak and be heard, and what is authorized as true or as the truth). He goes on to talk about the relationship between truth and systems of power and how the powers that be produce and maintain such regimes of truth.
 * In much of postmodernism, then, the notion of Maslow's //self// is flatly rejected. Change occurs, but notions of growth and progress are rendered meaningless. //Responsibility// in its humanistic sense drops from the vocabulary, being one of the practices of power that creates individuals and humanistic truth—dangerous illusions.
 * denial of any individual freedom to effect meaningful change.
 * Foucault
 * human agency as truth is an illusion because in the regime of truth that creates the modern era, all we have are endless interpretations rather than truth(s). Freedom is another of those illusions. There cannot be freedom from domination, because in every interaction, we are subjects and objects of power, and any freedom from practices of power is an illusion as the idea of freedom itself becomes one of the practices of power.
 * Understanding how many of our assumptions about ourselves and our world have come down to us through the tacit knowledge that very few of us question cannot only open our eyes to that social construction, but such understanding can free us for the important follow-up stage that Taylor (1986) calls "self-making."
 * Many scholars have noted the pessimism of postmodern voices on freedom and truth. Yet, one comes away from reading many of the postmodern writers with a sense that although explicitly denying the possibilities, nevertheless they seem to be holding implicitly to the ideals of freedom and truth and urging their contemporaries to action in the service of truth and freedom
 * Problem arising from the view of 'history's cumulative imprint on human nature' and the 'consequential belief that our selves are totally constructed by practices of power'. If our "selves" are totally constructed, postmodern voices are impossible in their own terms. Our explanation is that there must be something in addition to power relationships and practices, because individuals who think against the grain of, or at oblique angles to, these totalizing practices do indeed exist. We

Individualism
 * Individualism and Individuality**
 * is not the opposite of conformity, but the opposite of socialism (interdependence)
 * three defining characteristics of individualism
 * the metaphysical position that the individual may exist apart from any social arrangement, that is, independent of society
 * the attitude that the individual person and his or her rights and needs take precedence over all collectives, spanning all moral and political decision making
 * the attempt to study society by exploring the actions and intentions of individuals rather than analyzing societal institutions and macro forces.

Individuality
 * the opposite of conformity
 * defining individuals in terms of their uniquenesses (unique individual)
 * defining individuals in terms of their particular embedment within the social matrix (his or her indivisible membership in a group) (incapable of being separated from society) (socially embedded)


 * Maslow's developmental is goal individuality, whilst the postmodernism critics criticize individualism.
 * Maslow recognizes cultural forces, but he focuses on individual acts and intentions and individual efforts to resist these forces.
 * Synergy = the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
 * If we can see ourselves on more than one continuum simultaneously, we become able to see how we can strive for and maintain our own unique individuality **and** also see ourselves as embedded in a society in the sense of a matrix of roles, needs, and responsibilities. It is only from such a perspective that
 * we can cease to see our embedments (the things that hold us) and its resulting responsibilities as control, as not taking away from our individual freedom, and even seeing ourselves being potentially strong on both continua.
 * Maslow had a vision of a world in which synergy is not a zero-sum game but a way of interacting with the world, such that the social, political, and cultural world becomes enhanced simultaneously with the enhancement of the individual. What is good for you is also good for me. When my needs are met, it need not take away from you but, indeed, can meet your needs as well; that which is good for one is (or can be) good for all, and vice versa. Being able to view myself as at the high end of both continua, that is, in individuality and in being embedded, makes such an enriching view of synergy possible. This is the kind of world that Maslow contrasts with the "jungle world."





Postmodernism: all is power relationships. Maslowargues against the ALL, insisting for some intrinsic human attributes and a need for growth.
 * For Maslow, despite the impact of social forces, we as individuals have a responsibility to contribute to the possibilities of intrinsic human attributes, with the human need for growth providing a generating force for engaging in a lifetime enterprise of self-creation that has consequences on others.
 * What Maslow posits is that growth possibility within each of us that is being betrayed whenever we diminish each other.
 * Had Maslow lived longer, we think the trajectory of his later thinking shows that he might have continued his growth in
 * seeing the dangers of individualism while providing space for individuality and for responsibility to (not for) others.
 * But to do so, Maslow would have had to do more than glide over dimensions of power, and so will those who see themselves as having humanistic leanings in adult education.
 * But to do so, Maslow would have had to do more than glide over dimensions of power, and so will those who see themselves as having humanistic leanings in adult education.

Three subthemes that seem particularly pertinent for assessing humanistic possibilities for adult education:
 * Implications**
 * 1) confronting an overfocus on the self and reconnecting it to social contexts,
 * 2) recognizing the realities of power and conflict but without losing the concepts of individuality and interdependence, and
 * 3) being aware of existential dilemmas that may arise when putting theory into practice.

Critiques of self-actualization, say that self-actualization is a contemporary myth that is anchored in a global privatization of identity
 * The self is now disconnected from the public domain and concern for others in a world in which social moral frames of reference are eroded, and although there is increased freedom of lifestyles and values in this postmodern world, there is a troubling rootlessness.


 * Small victories can come (as we sometimes experience in classrooms) when adult educators create an ethos of individuality and interdependence rather than of individualism, an ethos of pluralism rather than of consensus. **

and I must be humble and remember, It is the dilemma of each of us having an authentic position about human freedom on which to stand and act and realizing that it is our position, not the position

Assignment #2

Option 1
Development of a position paper on self-directed learning > Self-directed learning is arguably the single most identifiable normative value in the modern practice of adult education. Present a position paper to the Ministry of Lifelong Learning making the case for self-directed learning as the predominant mode of learning in formal and non-formal settings. There are sceptics and some really old-fashioned educators in the Ministry. Length: 8-10 pages.

Option 2
Development of position paper on humanist education as a vital necessity in our world > Viewed philosophically, humanism is arguably the most important philosophical world view shaping adult educators’ imagination and practice. You have the challenging task of presenting your position paper on humanist education to a group of mainly behavioural psychologists at a leading international conference. Length: 8-10 pages.

Option 3
> In recent years the discourse of the learning society, learning organization and learning city have gained widespread prominence. Drawing on Welton's Designing the just learning society: A critical inquiry, take your reader on a tour through the "learning city". Your paper should use vivid examples. Length: 10-12 pages.