
John FieldUniversity of Stirling · School of Education
John Field
BA (Hons), PhD
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Publications (155)
The notion of 'openness' is becoming increasingly important across education, particularly in contexts of digital education. The corona pandemic seems to catalyse these developments. This idea has been widely debated across the educational sciences, as the move towards openness in terms of educational access and process begins to challenge establis...
In response to our chapter in this book (Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-10946-2_10), Marcella Milana restates the significance of country comparison in adult education research. In developing this position she highlights three aspects of her own chapter (Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-10946-2_11), which we gladly comment on, both as a way of completing the debat...
In 2016 and 1017 we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the beginnings of comparative education. Marc-Antoine Jullien, also known as Jullien de Paris, laid the foundation stone of comparative education as an academic discipline with the publication of a standardised questionnaire of 266 questions partly published in 1816 and 1817 in the ‘Journal d’...
Versión española de la Guía EMPLOY para Estudiantes, dentro del proyecto Erasmus+ EMPLOY.
The article analyses how citizenship is conceptualised in policy documents of four key international organisations. The basic assumption is that public policy has not turned away from adult learning for active citizenship, but that there are rather new ways in which international governmental organisations conceptualise and in some cases seek to op...
The paper explores the past, present and future of comparative adult education research. It coincides with the 200th anniversary of Jullien de Paris' outline of comparative education, which we take as an opportunity to ask whether the age of confident comparative research (including international research) is at a turning point.
SUNY Press 1-877-204-6073 www.sunypress.edu suny@presswarehouse.com s tat e u n i v e r s i t y o f n e w y o r k p r e s s T his groundbreaking book critiques the boundaries of where adult education takes place through a candid examination of teaching, learning, and working practices in the social periphery. Lives in this context are diverse a...
Flexibility and change are typically viewed as endemic features of late modernity, leading to increased emphasis on the importance of transition during the adult life course. The paper examines experiences of transition for eight contributors to a research project that collected and
analysed life histories as the basis for an understanding of learn...
Many social theorists argue that late modernity is characterised by increasing change across all areas of adult life, leading to continuing experience of transition in the adult life course. Moreover, participation in education and training can itself provide a stimulus to further change, whether in employment or in other spheres of everyday life....
Universities and Engagement is a timely and insightful book that examines what universities can contribute to their communities and economies through lifelong learning, a topic which is of increasing importance to Higher Education Institutions across the world. The book will offer an answer to the question 'What can be understood by University Life...
’scotland has a proud tradition of commitment to excellent education for all our citizens’ (Scottish Government, 2013, 185). The Scottish Government’s confident faith in the country’s educational excellence is widely shared by Scotland’s inhabitants. A leading historian claims that the distinctiveness of Scottish education has served as ‘a mark of...
A wide variety of voluntary work camp systems developed in the interwar years. This chapter distnguished between those which provided a social service, including the main work camp systems organised by university students, and the pacifist International Voluntary Service camps; and camps organised in order to promote social change, including nation...
This chapter examines protest and resistance within the camps, as well as outside campaigns against their existence. Of the outside bodies, the most important was the National Unemployed Workers Movement, an offshoot of the Communist Party. While the NUWM made conditions in the camps a public issue, and also influenced the Ministry of Labour and ot...
This chapter explores the early idea of the labour colony, and places it in a wider context of concern with unemployment and struggle over access to the land. Debates over the labour colony arose partly out of frustration at the shortcomings of the poor law system in general and the workhouse in particular. Radical thinkers such as George Lansbury...
The physical deterioration debate, as well as wider concerns over the poor law's failure to deal with the sick and infirm, led a number of public bodies to explore the idea of the labour colony as a therapeutic community. The value of the labour colony lay in its combination of physical isolation with ready access to fresh air and plentiful work. A...
This chapter starts by placing the interwar work camps in an international context. It distinguishes between work camps that were organised in order to channel relief to unemployed men in countries like the USA, Canada and Australia, and work camps that were organised alongside a welfare system as in Britain and Weimar Germany. It also distinguishe...
Most of the earliest British labour colonies were opened by non-conformist churches. By far the largest was the Salvation Army colony at Hadleigh, which opened in 1891, and others followed in England and Scotland. In the aftermath of the Boer Wars, public opinion was concerned over the prospect of physical deterioration; preoccupations with nationa...
Many in the labour colony movement saw an obvious outlet for unemployed Britons in Empire settlement. Before 1918, a number of voluntary labour colonies co-operated with governments in Australia, Canada and other ‘settler societies’ to develop training for emigration. Race was an important part of the equation, with British movements and Dominions...
Ideas of land settlement have a long historyin Britain. By the 1880s, a number of groups had developed proposals for alternative utopian colonies that would become the kernel of a new way of living. Ruskin's ideas had a lasting and direct influence, particularly through the small colony associated with his Guild of St George. In 1892, Herbert V Mil...
In 1929, the Labour Party came to power, and the overseas training centres were turned into camps for training the long term unemployed. The focus of the new camps was to be on ‘reconditioning’ young unemployed men, through heavy manual labour in remote settings. The Labour Government introduced compulsory recruitment for the long term unemployed,...
Under the National Government, the Ministry of Labour's control over work camps grew, as did its scale. While recruitment was voluntary once more, the number of camps and training places were expanded, and the scheme was opened up to all long-term unemployed males. Its main focus continued to be ‘reconditioning’ through heavy manual labour. The cre...
Women never seem to have entered the thinking of those who developed and ran government work camps. After the Great War, rising unemployment among women workers led to a number of training programmes designed to produce domestic servants, and from the mid-1920s these increasingly included residential training centres. Initially, these were jointly...
Social class is a major determining factor of people's life chances. Much sociology-based research shows that socio-economic position is still one of the best predictors of who will achieve success, prosperity and social status and, in particular, who will enjoy the highest levels of educational outcomes. Survey data and qualitative studies alike c...
This exploratory paper considers the concept of generation in the context of learning across the life course. Although researchers have often found considerable inequalities in participation by age, as well as strongly articulated attitudinal differences, there have so far been only a handful of studies that have explored these patterns through the...
Aging has emerged as a major and urgent issue for individuals, organisations and governments of our time. In this well-timed and comprehensive handbook, key international contributors to the field of study come together to create a definitive map of the subject. Framed by an authoritative introductory chapter, the SAGE Handbook of Aging, Work and S...
Countries must learn how to capitalize on their citizens’ cognitive resources if they are to prosper, both economically and socially. Early interventions will be key.
The nature of transitions across the lifecourse is changing, as are the ways in which these transitions are understoodand investigated by social scientists. Much earlier debate on older adults’ transitions has tended to be rooted in acco-unts of relatively fixed social roles and age-based social stages. However, while we can detect some tendencies...
This article examines the role of work camp movements in developing rural critiques of urban living in interwar Britain. A variety of work camp movements flourished in Europe during the interwar years, often partly as a reaction against urbanisation, and this paper explores the ways in which three such movements developed the work camp as a means o...
Lifelong learning is an important policy goal in Europe. While policymakers tend to emphasize the economic purposes of lifelong
learning, it is also for many adults’ experienced as a response to rapid social and cultural change. This may be even more
important for older adults, who are at the forefront of changes in the adult life course, and may e...
Higher education participation has become an important focus for policy debate as well as for scholarly research. Partly this results from ongoing attempts to expand the higher education system in line with wider policies promoting a 'knowledge economy'; and partly it results from widespread policy concerns for equity and inclusion. In both cases,...
This article considers the role of university staff and students in camps for the unemployed in interwar Britain. These ventures can be seen as showing continuities both with nineteenth-century social service initiatives like the educational settlements, but also with contemporary concerns with service learning. The article explores three camping m...
The paper seeks to reconceptualise the significance of transitions in adult learning. It combines reflection on existing research with an analysis of original data on adults' experiences of significant educational transitions. The paper starts by considering how lifelong learning and mobilities of various kinds have become absorbed into, and expres...
We have, in recent years, seen a remarkable expansion in serious research attention to lifelong learning and its benefits (Schuller and Desjardins 2007). Many researchers and policy specialists find this work particularly persuasive, because it is based on large scale longitudinal survey data. These surveys follow a sample of individuals over time,...
As a policy goal, widening participation (WP) is increasingly associated with retention and completion. For those who are concerned with equity or social mobility, it makes little sense to recruit new types of students if they do not then qualify for a graduate profession. In its strategic plan, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEF...
Recent years have witnessed considerable growth of research on the benefits of adult learning. Much of this is UK-based, and draws on evidence from large scale longitudinal data sets. Overwhelmingly, these studies have found clear evidence of economic, social and individual benefits
as a result of participating in adult learning. While these claims...
Learning for and from work is a critical part of many people’s lives. How they learn through work has consequences for workers’
careers, and for their well-being. It can also shape the prosperity and performance of their organization. This chapter takes
an unusual approach to the study of work-related learning. It draws on original research, using...
Adult learning matters. There is now widespread agreement that modern countries depend on the creativity, skills and knowledge of the entire population for their prosperity. Many people talk of our future well-being in terms of a ‘knowledge economy’ or a ‘learning society’ in which every person’s ability to develop new capabilities will provide the...
There is now widespread agreement that modern countries depend on the creativity, skills and knowledge of the entire population for their prosperity. Many people talk of our future well-being in terms of a ‘knowledge economy’ or a ‘learning society’ in which every person’s ability to develop new capabilities will provide them with resources that wi...
Introduction Access and retention in HE has become an important policy issue in recent years, across the UK and Europe. The massification of HE has increased the numbers of students entering HE while widening participation policies have opened the doors slightly to non-traditional students, both younger and adults. Research indicates that the learn...
The aim of this research project, entitled Access and Retention: Experiences of Non-Traditional Learners in Higher Education, is to further knowledge and understanding of how and why some non-traditional adult students are able to develop a learning identity and successfully complete an undergraduate degree, and why others do not. Policy and struct...
This report sets out the findings of our research on the experiences and perspectives of non-traditional students (both younger and adult) in higher education. Specifically, our project set out to address this question: What are the factors that support and constrain the success or otherwise (including non-completion) of non-traditional students, f...
Based on findings from a large-scale longitudinal study into the learning biographies of adults, this paper focuses on the different representations of time in the interview data. The paper discusses three such representations: chronological time, narrative time, and generational time. The authors show how different notions of time operate within t...
Transitions are no longer tied to a bounded set of age-related passages, but increasingly are experienced by all adults through all stages of the life course. This development has stimulated an explosion in the range and variety of transitional learning, as well as reshaping its distribution over the life course. Existing research on learning trans...
The Scottish Government, in common with governments elsewhere in Europe, is committed to promoting high and inclusive levels of participation in adult learning. The paper reviews currently available evidence on participation, and concludes that while overall participation in Scotland is high by international standards, there are some indications th...
Although there is a widely held view that adult learning has a positive impact on well-being, only recently has this proposition been systematically tested. The paper reviews recent research findings on the influence of adult learning on earnings and employability, both of which may influence well-being indirectly. These are more important for some...
Abstract Many social theorists argue that late modernityis characterised by increasing change across all areas of adult life, leading to continuing experience of transition in the adult life course. Moreover, participation in education and training can itself provide a stimulus to further change, whether in employment or in other spheres of everyda...
Countries must learn how to capitalize on their citizens' cognitive resources if they are to prosper, both economically and socially. Early interventions will be key.
The term 'social capital' is a way of defining the intangible resources of community, shared values and trust upon which we draw in daily life. It has achieved considerable international currency across the social sciences through the very different work of Pierre Bourdieu in France and James Coleman and Robert Putnam in the United States, and has...
How can people make the most of their lives in a fast-changing world? And how should adult learning help? These are large questions, and the answers are unlikely to be simple or straightforward. Yet if adult learning does not help people to flourish, then it is hard to see why it should enjoy any public support at all. The evidence for the contribu...
This fully revised second edition of Social Capital provides a thorough overview of the intense and fast-moving debate surrounding this subject. This clear and comprehensive introduction explains the theoretical underpinning of the subject, the empirical work that has been done to explore its operation, and the influence that it has had on public p...
The concept of emotional labour is generating increasing discussion among educational researchers. Dominant accounts present emotional labour as an oppressive and totalising form of control, but recent studies have started to explore worker agency. Drawing on two case studies of experienced women call centre workers, I argue that while emotional la...
From metaphor to concept -- Networks in use -- A walk on the dark side -- Future tense or present perfect? : social capital in a changing world -- Policy and politics : social capital in the real world.
The paper examines the influence of behaviourism on vocational education and training in Britain in the period between the Second World War and the mid‐1970s. By the 1970s, behaviourism provided deeply‐rooted underlying curricular and pedagogic principles that were widely accepted by VET professionals in the UK. Insofar as behaviourist ideas were d...
This fully revised and updated edition takes account of recent research and policy. It will be essential reading for academics with a scholarly interest in adult learning, as well as for teachers, managers and others who want to understand one of the most critical and fast-moving areas of modern educational policy.
This chapter analyses empirical evidence on the connection between people's networks and both their informal and formal learning. It examines the findings of a field-based study of adult learning and social capital in Northern Ireland. The chapter provides an evaluation of interview data gathered in the course of a research project funded through t...
This chapter briefly discusses some of Northern Ireland's distinctive characteristics, with a view to establishing the limitations that these might impose on the wider relevance of this study on social capital and learning. It examines the findings from recent research in terms of the relationship between networks and learning. The chapter then eva...
This chapter considers the issues of values and behaviour, based on survey data on people's attitudes towards learning, and the way that these can be associated with their engagement in wider sets of social relationship. It explains that the core idea of social capital is the suggestion that people's connections have value because they allow people...
This chapter examines the idea of both social capital and lifelong learning, and evaluates the relationship between them. It does so in the context of the notion of the learning society, along with such related ideas as the learning region, the learning city, and the learning organization. The chapter notes that what all these ideas have in common...
This chapter begins by discussing the benefits of connectedness and learning, including the benefits for one another. Next, it notes that people's networks are learning resources, which can provide them with greater access to, and enhanced capabilities of using, information and skills, whether acquired through formal mechanisms such as schools, or...
This book confirms the significance of social capital as an analytical tool, while challenging the basis on which current policy is being developed. It offers a wealth of evidence on a topic that has become central to contemporary government; provides a detailed empirical investigation of the relationship between social capital, knowledge creation...
Chris Phillipson, Graham Allan and David Morgan (eds), Social Networks and Social Exclusion: Sociological and policy perspectives, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004, 276 pp., $89.95/£49.95 hbk, ISBN 0-7546-3429-9 - - Volume 34 Issue 1 - JOHN FIELD
The concept of social capital commands considerable attention right across the social sciences and among the policy community.In recent years, it has also generated a lively debate among the research community in lifelong learning. There is some emerging evidence that social capital is associated with learning in adult life, but the nature of that...
Incl. abstract and bib. Social capital theory has been widely debated across the social sciences. Its core idea is that relationships and norms have a value, in that they enable individuals and groups to co-operate for mutual benefit. The role of social capital appears to be changing in the context of the self-aware reflexivity that characterises c...
In her recent contribution to the British Educational Research Journal, Pauline McClenaghan identified the link between social capital and community development, particularly community development education, as a core area where scholarly and policy interests overlap. She concluded that the concept of social capital is unable to grapple with the co...
Concepts of learner identities and learning careers have recently acquired popularity as ways of analysing participation in learning among young adults. This paper presents a conceptual challenge to unilinear approaches to the concept of learning careers. It draws on empirical data gathered during a study of new entrants to Scottish further educati...
This article explores disciplinary approaches to educa-tional studies over the past fifty years, in particular those developed by exponents of the ’foundation disciplines’ of history, philosophy, psychology and sociology. It investigates the establishment of the disciplines during the first half of the period, and their consolidation, survival, and...
This paper examines the concept of 'learning careers' as a way of understanding the processes through which adults return to education. It particularly considers the ways in which adults from groups who are at risk of social exclusion develop identities that enable them to engage with learning. The concept of learning careers is derived from symbol...
This collection of 19 essays shares the lessons of a wealth of experience and challenges professionals to open up adult learning to a variety of international perspectives. The first essay, "Building a European Dimension: A Realistic Response to Globalization?" (John Field), is an introduction to the essays. The six essays in Section I, Learning Le...
While the goal of lifelong learning commands a broad policy consensus, it has been widely criticized by adults educationists for its conservatism. This paper explores the origins of the concept in the 1960s and 1970s, and compares key themes with the dominant approaches of the recent period. While there was a turning point during the 1990s, its chi...
Apprenticeship systems have come under scrutiny in a number of European countries since the 1970s. The article describes the introduction of a standards-based approach to apprenticeship in the Republic of Ireland in 1994 and provides an assessment of its achievements in its first 5 years. Although the standards-based approach shows a number of simi...
The opportunities paradigm assumes that participation in lifelong learning is positive and voluntary, yet discourse analysis reveals pervasive pressure to be permanent learners. Recent research suggests that learners may switch between discourses of compulsion and self-realization, and they may combine participant and nonparticipant identities. (Co...