What the field of adult education research is and how it can be described has been a debated issue over the decades. Several scholars argue that the field today is heterogeneous, borrowing theories and methods from a range of disciplines. In this chapter, we take such statements as a starting point for empirical analysis. In what ways could it be argued that the field is pluralistic rather than monolithic; heterogeneous rather than homogenous? Drawing on bibliographic data of the top cited articles in three main adult education journals between 2005 and 2012, we illustrate how the citation patterns have tendencies of homogeneity when it comes to the geographical country of authorship, since the USA, UK, Australia and Canada dominate, as well as the research methods adopted, since qualitative approaches have near total dominance. Furthermore, there is a tendency to adopt similar theoretical approaches, since sociocultural perspectives, critical pedagogy and post-structuralism represent more than half of the articles in our sample. At the same time, the results of our analysis indicate signs of scholarly pluralism, for instance, in terms of authorship, since both early career researchers and established researchers are represented among the top cited publications. We conclude the chapter by arguing that empirical analysis of publication and citation patterns is important to further the development of reflexivity within the field, not least for early career researchers, who might benefit from knowledge about what has been recognized among peers as worth citing in recent times.

In this article we report on findings from a large-scale bibliographic study conducted based on the citation practices within the field of research on adult learning. Our data consist of 151,261 citation links between more than 33,000 different authors whose papers were published in five leading international journals in the field of adult learning during the time period 2006–2014. By analysing the composition of the dominating citation clusters we are able to construct a telescopic view of the research field based on an accumulation of bibliographic citations. The results consist of two parts. First we go through the dominating players active in the field, their position and mutual relationship. Secondly, we derive two main structural oppositions inherent in the citation networks, one connected to the research object (studying education or work) and the second to the level of analysis (cognition or policy). We find that the most dominating tradition within adult learning the last few decades – socio- cultural perspectives on learning – occupies a very central position in the space of citations, balancing between these opposing poles. We hope that this analysis will help foster reflexivity concerning our own research practices, and will reveal the relations of dominance currently prevailing within the field of adult learning.

Denna databas samlar folkhögskolornas nationella kataloger mellan åren 1952-2019. Materialet är inskannat vilket möjliggör undersökningar om hur skolorna förändrats över tid, vilka ämnen de tillhandahållit och hur de beskrivit sin verksamhet. Innehållet i databasen härstammar från de fysiska katalog exemplar som bevarats i de nationella arkiven (Kungliga Biblioteket, Riksarkivet). Genom att OCR-tolka och digitalisera katalogernas innehåll och presentera det i ett digitalt gränssnitt möjliggörs undersökningar av hur folkhögskolorna förändrats historiskt. Man kan också söka efter enskilda folkhögskolors kursutbud eller förekomster av ord och ämnen i folkhögskolornas förflutna.

Databasen vänder sig till alla folkbildningsforskare, folkhögskollärare, folkbildare, rektorer och alumni som vill lära sig mer om skolformen. Arbetet med databasen har möjliggjorts genom anslag från Stockholms Arbetareinstitut och bygger på ett samarbete med Linköpings universitetsbibliotek.

If the framing and composition of research fields are never fully fixed or saturated (Abbott 1995; Gieryn 1983), this is a particularly salient feature of the research field that deals with the education and learning of adults. Not only is the research question of adult education and learning approached from a multitude of academic disciplines – such as sociology, psychology and education – the very concepts that are used to denote this field have also undergone important changes. Such conceptual changes are visible, for instance, in the recent development whereby the model of adult education and Bildung came to be partly replaced by the notion of lifelong learning. In Europe, lifelong learning gained prominence in the policy area with the year of Lifelong Learning in 1996 and then the Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, published by the European Commission (2001), which positions lifelong learning as a central policy concept in the realisation of the Commission’s strategies. As a policy preoccupation, lifelong learning supersedes concepts of adult education (Lindeman 1926) and lifelong education (Faure 1972). The shift from focusing on education to speaking about learning is important to address in research, because it marks out a new way of conceptualising the education and learning of adults in terms of the why, the how, the what, the when and the where questions. These policy changes can also be identified within research and, particularly, in how the research field on the education and learning of adults is defined and delimited (see Chaps.  2 and  3). Thus, while it is clear that the research field of adult education and learning undergoes changes over time and is quite diverse in terms of the current choice of theories, research objects, methodologies and so on, little is known empirically about its current “state of affairs” and how it can be mapped out and characterised scientifically.

An “economy of publications and citations” has emerged in academia, where databases as Web of Science and Scopus provide tools for “quality” measurements. The assumption is that such measurements are unbiased in terms of geography, language, gender etc. This is investigated by scrutinizing the “invisible colleges”, i.e. networks of citations in adult learning/education journals, indexed by Scopus. A bibliometric analysis is made of 151,261 direct citation links in 5 journals published between 2006–2014. The outcome shows a pattern of biases: a US/UK, anglophone, male domination. It also shows how the investigated field consists of many loosely connected invisible colleges. This might make the field weak in terms of academic power.

This book discusses the current state of the art in research on the education and learning of adults, and how such research has been transformed through contemporary policy and research practices. Gathering contributions from leading experts in the field, the book draws on previous research, as well as new findings in order to provide a map of this research field and its contemporary history. 

The chapters address a number of questions, including: What constitutes this research field? What theories and methodologies dominate within the field? What “invisible colleges” are active in shaping this academic field, in marking out its contours and in transforming its contemporary battle zones? Who is publishing in the field and who is deemed worth citing? What is the relationship between the shift in state policy on adult education and the research that is conducted on the education and learning of adults? How has the research field changed over time in various western countries? What do these meta-reflections of the field tell us about possible future research endeavours? 

Rather than speaking from within the field, this is a book about the research field. The diversity of the chapters provide a fascinating resource for anyone interested in research on the education and learning of adults.  

Research funding, promotions, and career trajectories are currently increasingly dependent on the emerging economy of publications and citations across the globe. Such an economy encourages scholars to publish in international journals that are indexed in databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. These developments place an increased emphasis on the question of who is allowed to publish in the journals listed there and whose research counts as valuable. Based on bibliographic data this chapter firstly focus on the politics of indexation, i.e. what is being indexed in the main database Web of Science in terms of country of origin of journals and in terms of publication language. Secondly, we focus on the politics of scholars gatekeeping, i.e. what is the institutional affiliation of the editors and editorial board members in some key adult education journals, and thirdly, who is publishing in these adult education journals and who is being picked up and cited. Our results show, e.g., how four Anglophone countries dominate the field in relation to both published articles and the share of most cited articles and where the publication pattern of these authors are national and regional rather than international. Anglophone countries also dominate in terms of indexation, as well as scholars gatekeeping.

We began this book by launching a series of questions on what the adult education and learning research field looks like, how it has emerged historically and how it is transformed through contemporary policy and research practice. The chapters have, in different ways, contributed to answering these questions by case studies, as well as by looking at the transnational power relations across countries. In the debate on comparative adult education research finalising this book, Field, Künzel and Schemmann posed the rather provocative question of whether the chapter of international comparative adult education has now come to a close (see Chap.  10). We would argue that such research is still alive and possible to carry out, but that the conditions under which research is conducted also need to be taken into serious consideration. In the various contributions to this book, several chapters show how a comparative perspective on the field of research can contribute to our understanding of how knowledge about adult education and learning is produced. They also demonstrate how this knowledge is stratified across regional and national borders, as well as between individual scholars positioned in relation to one another.

In this article we report on findings from a large-scale bibliographic study conducted based on the citation practices within the field of research on adult learning. Our data consist of 151,261 citation links between more than 33,000 different authors whose papers were published in five leading international journals in the field of adult learning during the time period 2006–2014. By analysing the composition of the dominating citation clusters we are able to construct a telescopic view of the research field based on an accumulation of bibliographic citations. The results consist of two parts. First we go through the dominating players active in the field, their position and mutual relationship. Secondly, we derive two main structural oppositions inherent in the citation networks, one connected to the research object (studying education or work) and the second to the level of analysis (cognition or policy). We find that the most dominating tradition within adult learning the last few decades – sociocultural perspectives on learning - occupies a very central position in the space of citations, balancing between these opposing poles. We hope that this analysis will help foster reflexivity concerning our own research practices, and will reveal the relations of dominance currently prevailing within the field of adult learning.

År 2018 har svensk folkhögskola verkat i 150 år. Föreningen för Folkbildningsforskningbeslutade därför att ägna Årsboken 2018 helt åt folkhögskolans modernahistoria. Inför folkhögskolans 100-årsjubileum 1968 gav Svenska folkhögskolanslärarförening ut fyra band om Svensk folkhögskola 100 år.Publikationerna som samlades i dessa fyra böcker har alltsedan dess varit referenslitteraturför alla som intresserat sig för utbildningsformen. Mot den bakgrundenvar det viktigt att uppdatera och komplettera våra kunskaper omfolkhögskolornas utveckling de senaste 50 åren 1968 – 2018.Vår ambition har varit att boken så långt som möjligt ska spegla folkhögskolansmångfald. Boken består av 18 bidrag som skrivits av sammantaget 28författare. Olika perspektiv och angreppsätt bryts här mot varandra; forskningsbaseradetexter som syftar till att förstå och förklara folkhögskolans förändringarvarvas med texter som bygger på mångåriga erfarenheteter i folkhögskolepraktiken.Skrivarten varierar också, från basfakta i beskrivande texter, analyserav statistik och forskningsresultat till personligt hållna berättelser och tolkningar.

Författarna ansvarar själva för innehållet i sina texter.Boken bygger på fyra övergripande teman: Folkhögskolans moderna historia1968 – 2018, Frihet och styrning, Pedagogisk tradition och förändring samtPerspektiv på folkhögskolan i samtiden. Boken inleds med en sammanfattningav de första hundra åren (1868 – 1968) av den svenska folkhögskolans historia.