Adult learning and the concept of social participation

This chapter aims to draw attention to the distinction between ‘learning’ and ‘participation’ by exploring the notion of participation, especially as it has been used beyond the field of adult education, to see what light it may throw on the causes of adult learning. Participation comes to adult education via the discipline of sociology. A theme running through both urban and community studies was that of ‘social participation’ in all its many and varied forms. G. Beal began by criticizing the tendency to see and measure participation in voluntary associations in the standard way: membership, attendance, contributions, membership on committees and holding office, as if the phenomenon had nothing to do with the type of organization being studied. Organizations such as voluntary associations, as described by A. Booth and J. Edwards, H. Wilensky and others, are in many cases extensions of earlier systems designed to socialize the individual and acculturate him or her to the dominant social forms.