Tight, Malcolm (2002). Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training. Second Edition. Douglas Fleming, University of British Columbia

	Tight, Malcolm (2002). Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training. Second Edition. London: Routledge Falmer. Pp. i + 196. $40     ISBN 0-415-27579-2 Douglas Fleming University of British Columbia November 24, 2004 The fact that Routledge has published a second edition of Malcolm Tight’s Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training (2002) so soon after the first (Tight, 2000) underscores the changing nature and greater importance now being paid to such notions as “lifelong learning” and “learning society”. Professor Tight’s survey is an excellent and wide-ranging introduction to the field that also serves, given its extensive sets of bibliographies, as an authoritative reference. This authority, informed by his long experience in continuing education and his editorship of Studies in Higher Education, is evidenced by Tight’s use of extensive citations to make his points throughout the text. This scholarship ensures the importance of this text for the field and explains why is one of those rare beasts: a best-selling academic publication. The value of Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training is also enhanced by the clarity of its writing style. Tight refrains from jargon and uses an engaging and conversational style. The text's accessibility and usefulness is also reinforced by the fact that the organization is explicitly laid-out in the introduction and the way in which it progresses logically to a clear summary at its conclusion. Tight’s revisions to this second edition are not limited to an extensive updating of references, examples and citations, which is quite a substantial task in itself. He has also added sections that deal with social capital, problem-based learning, communities of practice and social inclusion. His treatment of these newly included concepts not only examines their intellectual underpinning, but also provides explanations as to their interconnectivity and current popularity. I also find that he make convincing arguments as to why some concepts have fallen by the wayside and others have gained ascendancy. Tight does an admirable job of sorting out the myriad of competing concepts found within adult education and training and placing them in contexts. As the author contends, the theoretical confusion in this field has been brought about by its extreme breadth and looseness, the high number of political stakes at play within it, the historical legacy, and the force of technological change. All told, Tight reviews 45 concepts that he arranges into seven categories. These categories consist of core, international, institutional, work-related, learning, curricular, and structural. As the author freely admits, this categorization is somewhat artificial, given their complex interrelationships. However, as a tool for analysis this categorization is highly useful, especially as a way to demonstrate the highly contested nature of these concepts. Tight does write from a British perspective and employs terminology that is slightly different from mine. Problem-based instruction, to cite the most important difference in regards to my discussion below, is better known in North America as task-based instruction. If I find fault in Tight's presentation at all, it is in regards to the fact that he does little to point out the differences between British terminology and that employed elsewhere. However, this is a minor quibble. In my review below, I purposely do not provide more than a thumbnail sketch of the concepts Tight covers in his text. I do not propose to provide a summarized replacement for the book. Rather, my goal in this review is to demonstrate the usefulness of the approach Tight has taken in terms of obtaining an appreciation of the field as a whole and as a means of evaluating the critical challenges it now faces. I refer to these challenges in my discussion most particularly when I examine the points Tight makes in reference to experiential learning and problem (task)- based instruction in greater detail at the end of my review. I do this in order to show how Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training has helped me place my own theoretical and research concerns in second language education (SLE) into context. Hopefully, I will whet the appetite of my good reader enough so that you go and obtain your own copy. Let me first begin, however, with a thumbnail sketch of the concepts on which Tight expounds in his analysis. In my discussion of each of the seven categories, I will cite at least one example in order to illustrate the ways in which the author illustrates controversies within the field. The first of the categories of adult education and training concepts that Tight expounds upon are those that can be characterized as being core, the ones that are central and most commonly used. In this category has been placed the notions of adult, education, training, learning, teaching, development, vocational and liberal. Although these might seem to be mere manifestations of ‘common-sense’, Tight adeptly problemizes them by teasing out the assumptions commonly made about them in various social contexts. The differentiation between education and training, for example, is not simply related to the intellectual engagement brought to the learning process. As Tight emphasizes, the differentiation between these two terms is highly contested academically, socially, and politically. In my opinion, one of the more important of the categories developed in the book is the second, which pertains to the international dimension of adult education and training. Into this category, Tight has placed globalization, lifelong education, learning organization, and learning society. The importance of the global context is evident during Tight’s discussion of life-long education (LLE), which provides valuable insights for academics and practitioners alike. After touching briefly on the relatively well-known academic and intellectual antecedents of LLE, Tight focuses on an examination of its contested nature through an explication of its treatment by such international organizations as UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the OECD. In this way, the reader comes to appreciate the fashions that periodically sweep the field and, more importantly, what is at stake globally in claims made about adult education and training. Tight’s third category of concepts are related to institutions. This category subsumes education and training commonly referred to as further and higher, adult and continuing, community, formal, non-formal and informal. Again, the contested nature of these concepts is evident. For example, in his discussion of community education, Tight notes the broadening nature of recent definitions of the term. He makes the point of how elusive and vague the term community has become in light of recent attempts to develop definitions that are more and more inclusive. As a community increasingly comes to denote little more than generalized common interest, so they tend to loose the emotional import that originally made the term valuable. The set of concepts that make up the text’s fourth category relates to work. These concepts are made up of education and the economy, human capital, human resource development, career, professional, and social capital. In describing these concepts, Tight does not shy away from delineating the ideological baggage that each brings to the field. The text summarizes the three stages that have made up the historic development of the term human capital in reference to national education policy, for example. In a tightly argued passage, the text describes how early uses of the term emphasized public investment in adult education; a stage that was followed by structural adjustment; and then surpassed by the current uses of the term which stress screening functions, credentialing, and private investment in education. The text’s historical treatment problemizes the concept, which Tight rightly contends underpins much of current policy orientations towards adult education. When combined with summaries of some of the essential critiques of human capital, this passage illustrates just how intense the contentions around this concept are. This is no static and dry outline of commonly accepted terminology in the field. Tight’s dynamic representation of the fluidity of the debates and interests that are at stage is truly masterful, in my opinion. The fifth category of concepts that the text outlines pertains to learning concepts. Into this category has been placed the organization and practice of adult learning; distance, open and flexible; experiential, problem-based, independent and self-directed; andragogy, conscientization and communities of practice; and changing information and communication technologies. I feel that this section is the one in which Tight's viewpoints (and contributions) come out the clearest in the text. I have therefore fleshed out my description of this section in a little more detail than the others. This fifth category, most particularly in regards to experiential learning and problem (task)- based instruction, also has the most pertinence to my own field, second language education. Accordingly, I have devoted some space at the end of this review to a description of the points made in the text in regards to experiential learning and problem (task)- based instruction. These are offered as a means of demonstrating how Tight's work can serve as a basis for theoretical analysis and practical applications. This section also examines the concept of communities of practice. Tight characterizes this concept as a sort of bridge between those that tend to focus on the individual (such as andragogy) and those that tend to focus on the institution (such as distance education). As Tight points out, communities of practice has drawn on conscientization (Friere), experiential learning (Dewey; Kolb) and self-directed learning (Tough). In many ways, in fact, communities of practice with its emphasis on joint enterprises, mutual engagement and a sharing of community resources, seems to have supplanted these earlier concepts at both the academic and practical levels. This is certainly true theoretically, as a perusal of numbers of ERIC documents devoted to these concepts will attest. The popularity of communities of practice is also evident in practical terms. Many teachers (including those in my daughter's school) have established the development of communities of practice as one of their chief program goals. Tight contends that Freire's concept of conscientization has not been widely or successfully adapted outside of its original third-world setting. Although some might strongly disagree with this assessment (Kellner, 2004), I believe that it is true Freire has fallen out of favor in North American mainstream education as of late. Tight notes that many of the currently offered alternatives, such as capability and competence (discussed below) are far less politically radical. This section also contains Tight's assessment of the impact of technology on adult education and training. Displaying what I believe to be a refreshingly even-handed approach, Tight criticizes the tendency shown by many theorists to seek quick fixes to pedagogical problems through technological solutions. While acknowledging the usefulness of technological tools, Tight makes the point that equality of access will remain a significant problem for some time to come. Tight's sixth category of concepts relate to curricular considerations. Within this section, he has placed developing the curriculum; knowledge and skill; capability and enterprise; competence; and quality. To my mind, the concept of competence is the key one here because it is usually used in reference to state mandated testing. Tight points out that there has been a struggle by many to expand the concept beyond a mere technical description of how well one performs a task in reference to a prescribed standard. These struggles have sought to link competence to include more holistic or 'meta' skills or understanding. The seventh and final category of concepts in the text refers to structural notions. Into this section, Tight has placed input, experience and output; access and participation; accreditation and modularization; success and dropout; social inclusion; and policy and research. All of these concepts are, as Tight points out, related to who has access to adult education and training, how are these opportunities organized, and what are the benefits gained through participation. These notions are organized through state policy and reflect the priorities identified by government agencies and those stakeholders that are considered legitimate. The eighth and final chapter of Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training is a summary all those preceding. In this section, Tight examines how the concepts in his analysis are interrelated on a multitude of levels and offers his summary as to the current trends within the field. He notes the decline of such concepts as continuing education, conscientization, andragogy, capability and enterprise and the ascendancy of the notion of life-long learning. Tight also makes a number of predictions for the conceptual development of the field. These include: that adult education and training will continue to be politicized; that there will be a continual recycling and renaming of basic notions; that the liberal/ vocational divide within the field will continue; that theoretical work will intensify around the concepts of the learning organization, the learning society and life-long learning; the continued development and popularization of notions surrounding further, higher, adult and continuing education; the growth of work-related concepts related to human and social capital; the development of concepts that will replace the andragogy; a refinement of the concepts of success, failure, competence, outcomes. Let me now turn to my chief purpose in writing this review, which is to demonstrate the usefulness of the text in regards to my understanding of theory and my own research. This will be in particular reference to experiential learning andproblem (task)- based instruction. The current popularity of experiential learning in my own field, second language education (SLE), is due in large part to the link that has been established between it and task-based assessment and curriculum planning. As I have argued with a colleague elsewhere, experiential learning has particular value for SLE because it has the potential to link learner autonomy with teaching professionalism (Fleming & Walter, 2004). The fact that Tight groups experiential learning with independent andself-direct learning is a further indication of this link. As Apple and Jungck (1992) have pointed out, teachers in every field of education have been subjected to the process of intensification through a greater use of externally developed sets of behavioural objectives, assessment instruments, commercially produced classroom materials and externally controlled technologies. This process has resulted in a marked reduction in preparation time for teachers (Hargreaves, 1994), a trend which has lessened the abilities of dedicated teachers to be inventive, flexible, adaptable and responsive to student needs. This trend is no less evident for adult educators than for those in other disciplines. Professional autonomy in SLE curriculum design is a relatively complex issue because of interconnections between language (both first and second) and thematic content. In a previous study of decision-making processes (Fleming, 1998) I showed that a group of ESL instructors in a typical work site exhibited a range of attitudes towards professional autonomy over various curricular elements. The teachers in my study clearly wanted quite strongly to retain control over the choice and design of classroom activities. To the instructors involved in this study, an important element in the design of classroom activities is the setting of authentic and realistic learner tasks. Although the term task has had a long history in general education theory (Tyler, 1949), it is important to note that it was not common to use the term in describing SLE classroom objectives and activities prior to the late 1980s (Long & Crookes, 1992). Stern (1983), Ellis (1985), and Howatt (1984), in their authoritative surveys of the field do not refer to tasks in any great detail, for example. In SLE, the increased use of the term task has been increasingly associated with the communicative approach and assessment. In one of the first discussions of the communicative approach in curriculum design, Johnson (1979) makes the linkage between the two very clear by saying that fluency in the communicative process can only develop within a "task-orientated teaching'- one which provides "actual meaning" by focusing on tasks to be mediated through language, and where success or failure is seen to be judged in terms of whether or not these tasks are performed. (p.200) Today, tasks are prominent in most ESL teacher education manuals and course texts (Brown, 2000, Larsen-Freeman, 2000, Ur, 1996). Many SLE scholars have elaborated task-based curriculum models, among these Ellis (2003), Skeehan (2002, 1998, 1996), Long & Crookes (1992), Breen (1987), and Nunan (1988). Tasks have also been significant elements of many of the recent curriculum and assessment benchmark projects undertaken by national governments (Brindley, 1985). In terms of both professional and learner autonomy, tasks are inefficient and oppressive when linked to externally generated standards,. Teachers must be able to create their own tasks for activities tailor-made for the learners they face and not rely (or be controlled by) external assessment standards that can lead to a “one size fits all” tendency in SLE (Moore, 1997; Ashworth & Saxon, 1990). The complexities and varieties found within both adult and second language instruction are even more extreme, I would argue, than in general education. This is not to say that externally produced lesson plans and tasks are not valuable as heuristic learning devices; for example, in the education of new teachers or those inexperienced in task-based approaches. However, the building of a basic professional competence in learning to effectively and creatively design tasks also requires opportunities and freedom for teachers to practice doing this. In short, external standards and tasks work against the development of this teaching competence. Tight's text is useful for me to refer to in the context of these concerns. I believe that I was rather clear about the links between experiential learning and problem (task)- based instruction prior to my reading of Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training. However, I was less aware and appreciative of the links that Tight makes between these concepts and the others organized in the same category. This was particularly true in regards to the links with communities of practice, which extends the idea of task or problem solving from the classroom into the community. Problem solving can become community building, with further connections to human and social capital, links that Tight explicitly makes. In addition, the text is useful for me in this regard when Tight makes reference to the growing popularity of communities of practice as a concept and its links to andragogy and conscientization, some of my old standbys. Nice to know that I'm on the right track! In conclusion, I have found Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training to be a highly useful book that has been written with insight, sensitivity and authority. I humbly hope my illustration of its usefulness to me as a beginning scholar has been of benefit to the reader. I highly recommend Tight's text as an excellent introduction and valuable reference to the field. References Apple, M. W. & Jungck, S. (l992). You don’t have to be a teacher to teach this unit: Teaching, technology and gender in the classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 27, 227- 251. Ashworth, M. & J. Saxton (1990). On competence. In Journal of further and higher education, 14, 2, pp. 3- 25. Breen, M. (1987) Contemporary paradigms in syllabus design. In Language Teaching 20, 157-174. Brindley, G. (1995). Assessment and reporting in language learning programs: Purposes, problems and pitfalls. Paper Presented at International Conference on Testing and Evaluation in Second Language Education. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Brown, H. D. (2000). Teaching by principles. New York: Barnes and Noble. Ellis, R. (2003) Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding second language acquisition. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Fleming, D. (1998). Autonomy and agency in curriculum decision making: A study of instructors in a Canadian adult settlement ESL program. TESL Canada Journal, 16(1), pp. 19- 35. Fleming. D. and P. Walter (In press). Linking teacher professionalism and learner autonomy through experiential learning and task design. TESL Canada Journal. Hargreaves, A. (l994). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers work and culture in the post-modern age. Toronto: OISE Press. Howatt, A. P. R. (1984). A history of English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, K. (1979). Communicative approaches and communicative processes. In C. Brumfit & K. Johnson, K. (Eds) The communicative approach to language teaching. pp. 192- 205. New York: Oxford University Press. Kellner, D. (2004) Towards a Critical Theory of Education. Retrieved October 3rd, 2004 from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellnerhtml.html Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and principles in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Long, M.H. & Crookes, G. (1992). Three approaches to task-based syllabus design. TESOL Quarterly, 26, 27-55. Moore, H. (1997). Telling what is real: Competing views in assessing ESL development. Linguistics and Education, 8, 189- 228. Nunan, D. (1988) The Learner-centred curriculum: A study in second language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skehan, P. (2002). A non-marginal role for tasks. ELT Journal 56, 289-295. Stern, H. H. (1983). Fundamental concepts of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press Tight, M. (2000). Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training. London: Routledge Falmer. Tight, M. (2002). Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training. Second Edition. London: Routledge Falmer. Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching: Practice and theory. New York: Cambridge University Press. About the Reviewer Douglas Fleming is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia and is conducting research into conceptions of citizenship and identity among adult ESL learners in the local Punjabi speaking community.