ADULT EDUCATIONdesignated 1996 the ‘‘European Year of Lifelong
Learning’’ and established the European Lifelong
Learning Initiative to research, coordinate, and
develop lifelong learning policies and programs
throughout Europe. In 1997, the Commission for
a Nation of Lifelong Learners, representing U.S.
business, labor, government, and education inter-
ests, called for policies that would ensure equity of
access to lifelong learning, optimize the use of new
technologies, reorganize the education and train-
ing system into one providing comprehensive life-
long learning, and commit private and public re-
sources sufficient to these ends. The federal
administration established a yearly summit on life-
long learning to pursue implementation of these
goals. Similar policy formation and advocacy is
now widespread at the local level, and cities recog-
nize the importance of lifelong learning to workforce
development and urban economic viability in the
new ‘‘knowledge economy.’’ It remains to be seen
whether the new focus on adult education policy
will result in the kind of resource deployment or
accessible, comprehensive system for lifelong learn-
ing recommended by most analysis.
SOCIOLOGY OF ADULT EDUCATIONThe sociology of education has traditionally fo-
cused on the processes, structures, and effects of
schooling, with very little attention to adult educa-
tion. Thus, there is no scholarly or applied field,
no distinct body of theory or research that can be
properly labeled ‘‘the sociology of adult educa-
tion.’’ Expositions of a sociology of adult educa-
tion that do exist tend to be general characteriza-
tions of the field in terms drawn from general
sociological and schooling literature (e.g., Rubenson
1989; Jarvis 1985). Certainly much of this is appli-
cable. Adult education presents many opportuni-
ties for sociological interpretation in terms of the
functionalist, conflict, reproductive, or postmodernist
educational models applied to schooling; in terms
of adult education’s impact on social mobility,
status attainment, and distributional equity; or in
terms of its contribution to organizational effec-
tiveness, social welfare, or economic development.
The small body of sociological research in the area
takes just such an approach, focusing on issues
such as: the patterns and causes of adult enroll-
ment in higher education (e.g., Jacobs and Stoner-
Eby 1998); the consequences of women’s return to
higher education (e.g., Felmlee 1988); and the
patterns of access to and provision of employer-
provided training (e.g., Jacobs, Lukens, and Useem
1996). However, neither the extent nor the depth
of sociological study in the area matches its poten-
tial importance.Adult education is clearly no longer a social
activity marginal to schooling. The information-
technology revolution, the knowledge society, the
learning organization, and the increasingly critical
concern of individuals and organizations with the
development and control of human and knowl-
edge capital are representative of trends that are
bringing adult education into the mainstream of
social interest, analysis, and policy. Responses to
these trends for which adult education is central
include new and powerful forms of higher educa-
tion, new determinants of the structure and proc-
ess of social inequality, new bases for economic
and social development, and new conceptions of
the relationship of education to the human life
cycle. Many opportunities for the application of
sociological theory, research, and practice to adult
education await realization.REFERENCES
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