| Andragogy – Raise and Fall of a Term | | Print | |
| Katarina Popovic | 18.10.2007 | Science - Articles | ||||
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The evolution of the term andragogy dates back to the 19th century when Alexander Kapp, the German grammar school teacher, coined the term to describe Plato’s concept of educating adult citizens in his model of an ideal state. However, classical scholars such as J.F.Herbart opposed the use of term and it faded from our vocabulary for almost a century.
The revival of the term began in the early part of the 20th century as part of the New Direction of the people’s education in the German Weimar Republic. Enthusiasm, commitment and intensive work in the field of people’s education at that time raised the question of professionalisation, theoretisation and scientific research in this area, resulting in the appearance of the term andragogy again in 1920. E. Rosenstock used it to make a distinction between the education of children – pedagogy, false education of adults – demagogy and the real education of adults – andragogy. Although there was no entirely clear definition of the term, it was used by a group of scholars with the clear intention of differentiating a specific area of both practice and theory. The first international “travel” that the term andragogy experienced at that time was in the work of E. Lindemann, who brought it from Germany to USA and used it with Anderson in 1927. There were two interesting attempts to place andragogy under the umbrella of a broader term coined by Medinski – anthropogogy (Russia, beginning of the 20th century) and by ten Have – agology (the Netherlands in the 1950s). During the 1950s, adult education practice started to develop faster, followed slowly by the theory. The heterogeneous forms and content of educational activities for adults at the time is related to the varying usage of the term andragogy which reappeared in several countries. The beginning of this usage can be traced back to Germany (“third invention” of the term, as J.Reischmann refers to it) by F. Poeggeler in his book “Introduction to Andragogy”. After that followed the Netherlands (ten Have), Yugoslavia (M. Ogrizovic, D. Savicevic) etc. In 1967, the term andragogy started an international carrier and became widespread around the globe. A group of authors who used this term in Europe received “support” from the USA. It is interesting to see how the term has “travelled”. The Yugoslavian author Dusan Savicevic met Malcolm Knowles during his stay in the USA and “infected” him with the term, which was completely unknown to Knowles. He reported this in his famous anecdote about their encounter. After this, the Knowles’s conception of andragogy become the main topic of discussion among scholars – more so in USA than in Europe with the meaning of “the art and science of helping adults learn” – the dominant idea of andragogy in English speaking countries. Though this conception has been criticized as a reduction of the approach and technique of teaching adults and does not refer to all fields and aspects of the sciences of adult education, this helped the acceptance of the term and the idea of a scientific field which is different to pedagogy. Frequently unpredictable international developments led to the phenomenon that even in Europe andragogy was accepted differently. In Europe, especially in German speaking countries, there was a clash with the rivalling concept of the “pedagogy of adults,” which prevailed. On the other hand, many countries in Eastern Europe (Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland – where the term was used between two world wars by H. Radlinska) accepted andragogy as the definition of the science which dealt with adult education and learning. They raised the level of scientific discussions, developed a significant number of theoretical and applied research studies, published books and transformed it into an established and respected field of university study and research. Since Yugoslavia and its university centres (Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, and Skopje) were leading in this process and the experts at these centres were very much involved in the work of UNESCO, the Council of Europe etc, they succeeded in bringing the idea of andragogy to the non-aligned nations where Yugoslavia was the political leader. It is not unusual to find the use of the term andragogy in these countries even today. Intensive growth of learning practices in Europe supported professionalisation, establishing new institutions, new researches, publications, programmes and the further scientific development of andragogy as a specific concept and also as a movement. The growing field of practice and theory increased the need for conceptual clarification, especially in Europe where the EU Commission and other bodies made adult education and learning an integral part of their concerns, activities and programmes. This was a chance for the further positioning andragogy, but political developments unfortunately played a negative role in this “career”. After the fall of communism, there was a tendency (both in Eastern European countries and outside Eastern Europe) to reject anything that seemed to have a “touch of past times” and this happened to andragogy as well. The first “post-communism wave” made it disappear from certain countries; but nowadays there has also been an opposite development – scholarships are coming back to the positive heritage, trying not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Intensive scientific development in the field of adult education could lead to further differentiation within the academic discipline, giving a “new birth” to andragogy. |
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