HANDBOOK OF ADULT AND CONTINUINGEDUCATION:
LANDSCAPE OF THE FIELD
NEED
Adult and continuing education, its practices, scholarship, and academic
discipline, are facing unique challenges in this postmodern society. There are also
challenges represented by changes in adult learners’ engagement, as well as the impact of
tectonic changes of new knowledge, skill, and understandings upon adult personal growth
and professional competence. As both the profession of adult and continuing education
and other allied professions and organizations seek to create and sustain viable adult
learning enterprises, there is a growing awareness of the permeability of adult learning
structures and processes across all forms of practice engagement and individual pursuits.
Thus, this Handbook will speak to this broader, diverse audience; it will provide an
intellectual and descriptive landscape of adult and continuing education guiding practices
and understandings, key forms and processes, and key beliefs and issues. It will also
offer a general foundational guide and reference tool for individuals and groups who are
engaged in adult learning as part of their practice (whether they identify themselves as
adult educators or educators of adults). As a guide it will provide understandings, key
practices, major scholarship, and current key issues facing the field. This proposed
Handbook will be focused on the primary need for a general overview and introductory
volume. This volume will offer a foundational referent for the complex set of historic
and contemporary forms, of current understandings and practices, and of key principles,
practices, and issues facing adult and continuing education.