Critical Adult Education: A Response to Contemporary Social Crisis

Many adult educators currently are looking to critical theories of society as a foundation for reconceptualizing the relationship between theory and practice in the four sites of adult education: program administration, instruction, policy development and educational research. In this article, relationships between dialectics, critical theory, and critical social science are described, with particular emphasis on the role of unquestioned vital cultural tradition in perpetuating existing patterns of social reproduction. Implications are drawn for their use in the reconceptualization of the social role of adult education, with the intent to provide a conceptual framework for adult educators who are interested in but relatively uninformed about the concept of critical adult education.