where he wanted to move to work, having spent some time at Florida State University, North Carolina and Nebraska in the US. Many of the stories told during the interviews talked about the importance of networking. International conferences, it would appear, among their many other purposes (Armstrong, Miller and Zukas, 1997, ix-xiii), add to social capital. Dan talked about how his cross-cultural perspectives on adult learning had been stimulated more by networking with graduate students. We were concerned to find out how adult educators survived major shifts in political and economic discourses, in their global context. Miller and Zukas (1995) had already observed that the language and metaphors of the economist heard in the USA, which were strange to the British ear in 1984, were by 1995 commonplace. The impact of globalisation was very evident. One of the participants in Miller and Zukas’s study referred to the differences in awareness of political ideologies in the USA and the UK. Now this difference is understood as consensus politics in the UK. Both authors of this paper, were very influenced by the international and global perspectives they engaged with following participation in this exchange. Nod Miller , for example, in thinking autobiographically, states I entered university adult education in 1979, after a short career in further education and three years of postgraduate study in the sociology of education and the mass media. At that time I was relatively secure in my identities as a feminist, a marxist and a media sociologist. Although my reading of the literature on deschooling society (for example, Illich 1971) made me sceptical of any easy educational solution to social inequality and injustice, I was committed to doing whatever I could in my personal and professional lives to contribute to radical social change. My feminist perspective, underscored by the slogan ‘the personal is political’, meant that I saw the micropolitics of social interaction as important as involvement in large-scale political movements. My working-class origins were also very influential on my views about the need to work towards social equity in education. During the seventeen years that I spent in the University of Manchester, I worked with educators from all over the world, and spent a good deal of time debating the relationship between education and development. I was socialised into a more global perspective, and my perceptions of racism were sharpened massively by my interaction with colleagues and students from diverse nations and cultures, and by a number of professional visits to Third World countries. Nod goes on to say, specifically about the exchange, My involvement in the Kellogg Exchange opened up new worlds and brought me into contact with a new set of researchers and broadened immeasurably my theoretical and practical insights into adult education policy, research and practice. I visited the USA on numerous occasions following my initial Exchange visit, and also made professional trips to Australia, Canada, Brazil, India and Thailand. The important side benefits of such activities were the insights into my back-home practice, and, most satisfying, the close bonds I formed with my British fellow-travellers (such as the co-author of this paper). Changing times, changing perspectives The co-author of the paper, Paul Armstrong, was aware of the ways in which international and cultural exchanges made him much more aware of difference, but at the same time, what is was that different nations at similar stages of economic development had in common. It leads to a much deeper understanding of one’s own culture, and awareness of the specific political and economic context. In a recent review of the transatlantic exchange, Paul wrote: Interestingly these developments were accompanied by significant changes in social and educational theory which were providing academic adult education researchers different lenses with which to interpret what was going on in the world. In 1984, the discourse of Marxist critique was still evident, if not more so, due to the explicit social control strategies of the right-wing governments, who were silencing the voice of the unions and collective solidarity through the promotion of individualism and competitiveness, and the polarisation of the powerful and the powerless. Indeed, some of us at that time were optimistic that Marx’s prediction about the inevitability of capitalism sowing the seeds of its own destruction was about to be realized. However, with trade unions’ power reduced, and the increase in individual competitiveness and rational goal-seeking ambition, the reliance on the Marxist grand narrative was to be undermined. Indeed, any socialist ideas and values were to be severely tested by the challenges of postmodernism. Since then, social and economic theory has taken a number of ‘turns’. (Armstrong, 2004, 38) At the time, Paul’s writings were heavily theorized through Marxism, particularly Gramsci (Armstrong, 1988). From the mid- 1980s to the mid-1990s, his papers delivered at the Adult Education Research Conference were primarily theoretical, but significantly shifted from a marxist grand narrative to a more postmodern discourse, in which he revisited earlier sociological theories of Durkheim and Marx. On reflection, he felt that his task was, possibly patronizingly, to take sociological theory as applied to the education of adults, and addressed through social purpose discourse to the North American communities of practitioners and researchers. Nod outlines how a similar shift took place in her ways of knowing during this period of change: My interest in conferences as learning events meant that I was frequently critical of the annual conferences which I attended. I was also critical of the what I perceived to be the largely white, male establishment in several of the professional organisations which I encountered. I was vocal in my criticisms, and worked with like-minded colleagues to make what were designed to be feminist or marxist interventions in academic communities, running ‘alternative’ workshops or making impassioned speeches in business meetings. I saw myself as engaged in a struggle conducted from the margins of each professional groups. However, it was only a short time before I found myself making bids for formal power in these organisations, and for six years between 1985 and 1993 I chaired two national associations. From my marxist perspective of the time, I saw myself being incorporated into the establishment, and recognised that my power to change structures and processes (or, at least, to surprise and shock) was somewhat diminished as a result. This had an impact on her theoretical view of the world and her practice: In 1995 I moved to a new job in the University of East London, a new (post-1992) university. I was attracted by this university’s reputation for widening participation in higher education, and for pedagogic innovation, as well as by the title (which I still hold, although the department has disappeared) of professor of innovation studies. However, many of my colleagues (in both Manchester and East London) clearly saw as incomprehensible my move from a star-rated research department in an old, elite university to an undergraduate department in a former polytechnic with a low research base. I was energised by my shift of location, and stimulated by the multi-cultural environment of East London. At the same time I was shocked by some of the differences between my old and new institutions, particularly in terms of the anxiety and low morale of my new colleagues. I soon learned how easy it is to be ground down by constantly seeing one’s place of work castigated for high ‘wastage’ rates and notable for its appearance close to the bottom of newspaper league tables of university performance. My belief that there was huge potential in this diverse, working-class, demotic university led me to seek out the Vice-Chancellor (something I should not have dreamed of doing in Manchester) and outlined some of my ideas for putting UEL on the map by highlighting the university as a prime example of lifelong learning in practice. Two years after my initial meeting with the V-C, I was assistant vice-chancellor for lifelong learning, responsible for co-ordinating strategic efforts in this area across the institution, and directing a year-long festival of lifelong learning to mark the millennium. If I ended my tale here, it could fit quite neatly into a narrative model of the heroine’s journey. However, the festival of lifelong learning was not exactly the triumph for which I had hoped. It began well, and we assembled an impressive programme of events, but soon after its launch fears of financial meltdown for the university, anxieties about audit and damaging press coverage of failing, ‘mickey mouse’ universities brought staff morale to rock bottom. Furthermore, it seemed that there was widespread perception of lifelong learning as a capitalist, New Labour plot amongst colleagues with whom I hoped to form alliances. Celebrating learning was really hard work. Four years on, there has been a complete overhaul of senior management and our university has a new corporate team. Faculties and departments have been replaced by schools, and innovation studies is no more. The post of assistant vice-chancellor (lifelong learning) has disappeared. I still occupy a cross-institutional position as head of the university’s graduate school, and greatly enjoy my work with doctoral students. I no longer spend most of my week in committees, which is a relief. But sometimes I am frustrated by a lack of opportunity or ability to influence widespread change from where I am. And at the end of an exhausting and confusing year, I have no clear sense of where I belong or where I am going next. I still see myself as a feminist; I don’t know whether I’m still a sociologist; I don’t call myself a marxist much; most of all, I think I’m a postmodern subject. Ian Bryant and Rennie Johnston, together (Usher, Bryant and Johnston, 1997) and separately (Usher and Bryant, 1989; Bryant and Usher, 1997) had worked with Robin Usher, who with Richard Edwards (1994, 2001) were to make the most significant break with orthodoxy in terms of social and political perspectives through engagement with postmodern ideas and concepts. In interviews, both Ian and Rennie presented themselves as being pragmatic and located in practice (‘streetwise’ is how Rennie described himself), and both considered this was important in their writing and research projects Robin Usher, who preferred to play ideas, concepts and discourse. More than any other factor, they suggested, that the shifts in the theory in the 1990os had a much deeper and more profound impact on practice in university adult education than party politics and ideologies. Besides, through the lends of postmodernity, with an emphasis on diversity and difference in a global context, national


Moreover, the narratives demonstrate the slippery denotations as well as connotations of social purpose.  As we have seen, over a period of 25 years, not only has the world changed, with globalisation impacting on social, economic, political and cultural domains, but the discourses that reflect those cultures have also shifted.  The authors have engaged in a good deal of auto/biographical enquiry over the last 25 years, and we are conscious of having told their stories (which intersect a various points) in a variety of ways elsewhere.  Summarising aspects of our life experience in this context makes me acutely aware of the artfully constructed nature of auto/biographical narratives, and of the way in which a trajectory is described and defined varies according to the moment in time from which the past is being constructed. We can no longer believe in the possibility of isolating the ‘facts’ about our careers, and our commitment to social purpose.


Not only has the construction of social purpose changed, but so too have the meanings being attributed to it, which makes comparisons between then and now problematic.  This is not simply a methodological issue.  This strikes to the heart about the changing ways in which construct and reconstruct their identities through biographical work though the complex interplay between themselves and their cultural practices, mediated through discourse, which also shift in meaning in the process of transformation.  This paper has added another dimension to the narrative analysis.  Those university adult educators who participated in this study have been generous with their time to share their stories with us.  Yet some of what they were relating was already in the public domain – like us, they too had placed their autobiographies in the public domain, for they considered this necessary for the reader to know where hey were coming from, and to understand their ways of knowing..  Even those who have never explicitly included ‘themselves’ in their academic writings nevertheless had made public statements about ‘themselves’ through those publications.  Earlier drafts of this paper had uncritically assumed it was necessary to anonymise the participants, to keep their identities concealed – a convention in social science research.  Yet, we the authors were happy to expose our selves; indeed, we had a share understanding it was necessary.  To be able to link the stories to the life documents (in most cases, published academic articles) the same exposure was necessary.  However, this is not without ethical implications.  For example, in earlier drafts the stories included at least two that did not have an explicit  commitment to social purpose, and the anonymity was necessary to protect them from what might appear to others from being seen as politically naïve or uncritical.  In any case, in such a small world, there were readers who could identify them from the reconstructed stories told.  In inviting participants to tell their stories an to prompt them to reconsider their position on social purpose has inevitable methodological concerns which have to do with reconstruction of meanings, in changing times, in changing contexts.


Note

1This interview data as taken from ‘INTERVIEW: Sorting Out Experience’, accessed (September 2005) at html/pi/9601/article2.htm


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