Editors' Notes

The late Robert Smith, professor of adult education in the doctoral program at Northern Illinois University, when asked why adult education principles were not applied in his classroom, famously responded, “Higher education is not adult education.” The question raised within this book is, “Why not?” Clearly doctoral students are adults; they respond as adult learners. As research scholars, they aspire to self-directed academic excellence. They seek to walk the talk, to be responsible citizens who not only understand the world, but also act to transform it. In recent years, many authors have shed light on the hidden world of academe, seeking to reenvision the traditions and practices of the doctorate (Golde & Walker, 2006; Walker, Golde, Jones, Bueschel, & Hutchings, 2008). Emerging research on adult learning and adult education practice holds special promise for interrogating all that has been taken for granted in doctoral education. This book examines principles and best practices in the field of adult education to determine their relevance and applicability to doctoral education. Two traditions of higher education in the United States are juxtaposed by a clash of purposes that pull the practice of doctoral education in divergent directions. One purpose that looms large is the guardianship of disciplines, safeguarding the canon of academic truth and the standards of best practice, determining who is worthy of carrying the mantle of the discipline. This requires faculty vigilance and careful attention to curriculum and the means of assessing learning (Nilson, 2014). The role is largely that of experts mentoring and disciplining protégés through rigorous feedback and grades. On the other hand, there are also those who view doctoral education as a venue in which to nurture the emergence of scholars who will expand the canon and open up new possibilities for practice in the discipline (Rhodes, 2001). Such a view embraces creativity and innovation, experimentation with alternative approaches to research, and crossing disciplinary boundaries. It is to these champions of constructivism, who seek not only to transmit knowledge as experts but also to promote knowledge creation through dialogue, that the chapters of this book will speak most convincingly. Contributors to this volume reflect on some of the most deeply held values of adult educators—values that separate their work from the more traditional and formal values attributed to higher education. They demonstrate how their values could be embedded into doctoral studies in ways that would strengthen outcomes in a range of disciplines. Students in doctoral programs are, after all, adults. They come with an abundance of experience that they can reflect on, share with others, critique, and transform into knowledge. You don't learn from experience. As Myles Horton said, “You learn from experience that you learn from. You have to reflect on that experience, you have to look at it critically” (Moyers, 1981). Doctoral study is the most potent forum for attaining transformation through introspection and critical reflection. And adult educators have the values and insights into adult learning to make this happen. In Chapter 1, Tom Heaney reviews the 20th-century tradition in adult education linking its practice with building democracy. Adults needed to learn about their world in order to change it. He argues that adults as students seek to gain control over day-to-day decisions that affect their lives, a disposition that holds true even in the doctoral classroom. He demonstrates how students and faculty can share control over the curriculum without abridging or even threatening the responsibility that faculty hold as officers of the university. He provides evidence that the practice of democracy in the doctoral classroom can contribute to the rigor of scholarship and knowledge production. In Chapter 2, Stephen D. Brookfield identifies critique and critical reflection as practices, which are central in adult education, as being essential to the development of any professional practice. Yet many doctoral programs are constrained from implementing what are often considered to be critical educational approaches. Curricula are set in advance, and students have limited input in working collaboratively or designing their own program. This chapter considers how doctoral education could be reimagined if it was organized around the idea and process of critical reflection: of helping students to understand better how power operates in their educational environment and how students’ sense of individual and collective agency can be developed. Adults learn not merely to understand, but to change the conditions of life. While some content themselves with advancing their own status or careers, many commit themselves to transforming and enriching the lives of others. In Chapter 3, Dianne Ramdeholl discusses the deep ways in which her own educational trajectory and philosophical commitments are connected—shaped by and shaping each other. She discusses her own doctoral experiences and her journey from a grassroots adult literacy worker to academia. This chapter asks how doctoral work can not only nurture understanding but also inspire a commitment to democratic social change. In Chapter 4, Aziz Choudry and Désirée Rochat bring their work as adult educators, working as community activists in Canada, into dialogue with their doctoral studies as a supervisor and graduate student, respectively. The juxtaposition of activism and the academy provides a focus for both dialogue and tension. They provide examples of how scholarship makes a difference in a troubled world and of the ways the academy can become a space for inspiring and supporting radical and political work that transforms not just minds but the world. Adult education is built on dialogue—a free and open exchange among teachers and learners and among learners themselves. Exploring the idea of collaboration in a deep sense is embodied through jointly authored dissertations. In Chapter 5, Nadira K. Charaniya and Jane West Walsh reflect on the process of jointly authoring a doctoral dissertation and the implications of such a process for knowledge production and doctoral studies. Western universities frequently leave unexamined the Eurocentric paradigm that frames their curricula. Adult education literature has recently noted that, in the absence of self-ethnic reflectors, Asian, African American, Latino, and other people of color are denied their culture and their identity. In Chapter 6, Derise E. Tolliver discusses Africentrism as a worldview and theory, and the implications it could have for doctoral education. This chapter examines ways that the curriculum can embrace alternative paradigms and theoretical frameworks. In Chapter 7, Jaye Jones unpacks and reveals the complexity of the mind/body split in academia prevalent in Western worldviews that privilege rational ways of knowing above more embodied ways of producing knowledge. She offers rationales for more connected ways of knowing in academia and implications for women of color and other groups who, historically, have often been traumatized by this space. In Chapter 8, Gabriele Strohschen synthesizes the adult education principles of Paulo Freire and Sherman Stanage, juxtaposing them with her own action research on design and delivery practices, an international study from which emerged the concept of Blended Shore Education. Blended Shore can guide doctoral faculty in choosing organic and adaptive approaches of curriculum development and delivery, providing fungible and proactive solutions to the rapidly changing demands on today's adults. She provides a profoundly compelling approach for bridging cultures, locations, and contexts. In Chapter 9, the two coeditors of this issue synopsize each chapter and offer implications for reconceptualizing and reimagining doctoral education models based on the visions outlined in each chapter. In total, these reflections on adult education principles and practices open myriad possibilities for reenvisioning doctoral study. These principles and practices move the collaborative nature of scholarly work to center stage, while emphasizing the agency of the individual scholar in the production of knowledge. They honor the rich diversity of cultures as the lens through which doctoral curriculum emerges anew with each retelling. They reconnect the academy with community in a mutually rewarding synergy. They remind us that the mastery of a discipline is not an indication of the mastery of the art of teaching, that there is more to our practice in the doctoral classroom than transmitting the wisdom of scholars, but rather to engage in a scholarly dance—neophytes, apprentices, and masters—with a view to producing new wisdom and new scholars. Tom Heaney is professor emeritus of adult education at National Louis University and the founding principal of Adult Learning Unleashed. Dianne Ramdeholl is an assistant professor of adult education in the School for Graduate Studies, Empire State College, New York City.

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