BOOK REVIEW

Teachers and trainers in adult and lifelong learning:Asian and European perspectives

By Regina Egetenmeyer and Ekkehard Nuissl (eds.). Peter Lang, Frankfurt,2010, 223 pp. ISBN 978-3-631-61298-9 (hbk),ISBN 978-3-653-00320-8 (e-book)

Alan Rogers

Published online: 14 October 2011

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

This is an important and useful book but at the same time frustrating. Let me

explain.

The book consists of a series of short (and all the better for that) papers which

came from an international workshop bringing together practitioners and policy

makers from Europe and Asia under the auspices of the relatively new co-ordinating

body ASEM (Asia Europe Meetings, which brings together the European Union

[EU] and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] and has set up under

its Education and Research Hub a Lifelong Learning Hub). It compares the

professionalisation of adult educators in both regions (the European side is mainly

Germany).

These essays are important and useful because they deal with the growing

demand for the professionalisation of adult and continuing education (ACE) today.

But it does not explain why this matter is of current concern. One explanation may

be that – unlike the earlier demand for professionalisation made in the 1980s which

came very largely from practitioners out of a sense of marginalisation, a feeling that

professionalisation would mainstream the field of adult learning – the current

concern comes largely from outside bodies like governments and the EU and

springs from a desire to control ACE which is now seen as having major

implications for increasing workforce capabilities. It can be argued that neither was

primarily concerned with enhancing the effectiveness of ACE. At any rate, the

politics of professionalisation needs to be explored more than is done here.

Most of the main issues relating to the professionalisation of adult educators

(under many different titles) in both regions are raised somewhere in its pages. For

example, what is meant by a profession and professionalisation is discussed several

times (the chapter by Milana and Skrypnyk, pp. 85–94, is excellent on this but there

are other very good sections); the balancing of responsibility with accountability

A. Rogers (&)

University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

e-mail: alan.rogers14@btinternet.com

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Int Rev Educ (2011) 57:523–525

DOI 10.1007/s11159-011-9233-9

(pp. 13, 137: please note that page references given in this review are only some of

the many that could be cited); the public recognition of autonomy (p. 34); the

control of entry to the profession, training and self-improvement (e.g. p. 51 etc.), are

all discussed with many good points made. How a single profession can deal with

such a wide range of activities that come under the umbrella title of ACE, from self-

development and social learning to workplace learning, is raised. The point is made

that at the moment practitioners of ACE form only a ‘‘semi-profession’’ – a term

used by Etzioni in the 1960s (pp. 86, 90) but taken up by adult educators (p. 60) in

the failed 1980s attempt at professionalisation in Europe.

It is pointed out several times that – in both regions – adult educators have a very

wide range of roles (pp. 35, 85) – indeed, the contrast between ACE and lifelong

learning in both regions, with both formal and non-formal activities within that

designation (p. 23), is laid out in several sections (e.g. p. 34 etc.). Most of the

authors from both regions concentrate on higher education (HE) seen as part of

continuing education, but there are those who see adult education as a ‘‘mission’’

(p. 35) or as ‘‘popular education’’ (p. 22) rather than a sector of formal education

(p. 40). The wide range of agencies, both governmental and non-governmental,

involved which distinguish ACE from schooling and HE (for example, agricultural

extension, and general health education including HIV/AIDS etc.) and the presence

of ‘‘people who practise AE both as paid work and voluntarily and may not

necessarily identify themselves, or be identified by others, as adult educators’’

(p. 85) make the whole issue of professionalisation difficult. And the wide range of

roles played by the personnel involved – course organiser, course manager, course

designer and teacher (p. 90, see also pp. 99–101 etc.) – again makes it hard to see

ACE as ‘‘one’’ profession – perhaps several linked professions. But the fact that in

ACE, the teacher is often called on to fulfil several of these roles at one and the

same time, in organising, managing and designing, as well as teaching, makes this

even harder.

Several of the authors see training as the key to professionalisation – and in this

respect they turn to (school) teacher training models in HE institutions for their

discourse, although the application of that to workplace adult learning is not clear.

Both initial and in-service training are discussed (e.g. p. 72). Several examples of

such training are given here, some at greater length than others. The issue of control

of training by members of the profession is not however discussed in depth. The

part-time nature of many teachers of adults is mentioned (p. 96), as is their low pay

(p. 25), but not their career prospects (which in many cases do not exist); how can

one be a member of a profession when one is employed casually without knowing if

one will be so employed next year or ever again? The legal status (qualified teacher

status) of ACE teachers is barely debated here, and if the role of the teachers’

unions, which in many countries strongly oppose professionalisation of adult

educators on the grounds that less-well trained people are using it a back door into

the profession of ‘‘teacher’’, is discussed in these pages, I have missed it.

Perhaps the main subject here is the key competences required for an adult

educator – not surprising, coming from the EU context. And competences are seen

through the eyes of qualifications. In Europe

524 A. Rogers

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the sector attracts personnel who devote their whole time to the adult

education profession but do not have the competence, much less the necessary

qualifications, to handle the requisite tasks or activities. Those who are

competent and qualified move on to other professions or to upmarket private

learning centres, lured by the prospects of higher prestige and better

compensation. To exacerbate this situation, the bar of qualifications is made

lower so as to bring in teaching personnel to accommodate more adult

learners. The irony is not lost in this instance, as the skills for teaching adults

in any case should be considered similar to, if not even higher than, those

demanded in primary or secondary education (p. 25).

The problem is that training for qualifications will not bring that flexibility which

adult educators need to employ. Accreditation (including national qualifications

frameworks for adult educators, pp. 27, 97) is held in high regard here as an

indicator of expertise – but formal training in HE institutions will not encourage, nor

will accreditation indicate, the qualities needed to teach adults – ‘‘integrity, respect,

care, disclosure and responsibility’’, ‘‘values such as honesty, justice, equity and

benevolence’’ (pp. 131, 213 etc.). And the issue of power, of control of the

profession and its training, of ‘‘the power to name’’ who is and who is not an adult

educator – although running through these pages like a thin thread – is not brought

out into the open.

Perhaps now you see why I described this book as excellent but frustrating. So

many very good points are made about a very important subject – but they are

scattered throughout the text; and since there is no index, it is not possible to draw

the main threads together to make sense of the subject. Nor is there any summary

drawing together the key themes – the introduction does something but the

conclusion merely says we need more studies. Certainly the debate will continue.

This book is a major part of the fuel for that debate but its firm conclusions on which

to build are hard to find.

Book Review 525

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