Fleming, Ted (2006) The University and Democracy: Habermas, Adult Learning and Learning Society. In: What Price the University? Perspectives on the meaning and value of higher education from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. A Special Issue of Maynooth Philosophical Papers . National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Maynooth, pp. 96-116. ISBN 0901519766

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Abstract

This paper will attempt to articulate an agenda for the university that transcends the reductionist vision of the economic agenda. I write this from the perspective of an adult educator in the university. Adult education as a field of practice provides access routes for 2,000 mature students each year who enrol in modular, credit-bearing courses outside the College. But adult education is also an academic discipline with its philosophy, sociology and psychology, articulated and tested in the world of practice. It borrows from other disciplines and creates its own epistemologies,theories of learning and pedagogical practices. It has answers (even if, like all disciplines,these are provisional and contested) to such questions as, what is an adult? What is adult learning? What is adult education? And what is a university for? - The ideas of Jurgen Habermas will be the starting-point for the discussion of the role of a university, and this paper will attempt to reawaken the notion that the university has a critical role in the life of the Republic.

Item Type:	Book Section
Keywords:	Higher Education; Adult and Community Education; University; Lifelong Learning; Higher Education; Community Education; Jurgen Habermas.
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Adult and Community Education
Item ID:	1055
Depositing User:	Dr Ted Fleming
Date Deposited:	08 Oct 2008 13:42
Publisher:	National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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