Radical adult education and learning

Griff Foley. (2001). International Journal of Lifelong Education, 20 (1/2), 71-88.

"Radical adult educators are those who work for emancipatory social change and whose work engages with the learning dimension of social life." (p. 72)

Foley acknowledged the democratic imperatives of Carl Rogers's approach to humanistic education, in which meaningful experiential learning was emphasized; yet, Rogers, unlike critical and radical educators, ignored social analysis and political commitment. More, Foley finds the root of the confusion in defining power in Rogers's approach to non-directive teaching. In Foley's definition, empowerment in education takes place when educators use their power to create educational situation in which learners can exercise power. For him, it is neither something that educators can do for the learners nor something that can be obtained by abandoning the educator's power. Foley suggests the educator's active role in empowering the learners. In this regard, he put it:

This will involve educators in recognizing the invasiveness of their work and struggling with learners to build a different sort of relationship, one that is based on a notion of solidarity rather than on a patronizing notion of service. (p. 75)

In an triumphal capitalism, Foley argued, radical adult education needs to be more strategic. One of the strategies is the action research method. He said that it is "ordinary yet radical... because it uncovers, and acts on, what is generally hidden and untouched. (pp. 82-83)

"We learn as we act, and our learning is both tacit and explicit" (p. 86). Foley emphasizes the understanding of the complex learning process that takes place in places where we work and live. [How is this statement related to the participatory research?]