Masters’ Courses In The Education Of Adults In The UK

By Professor John Field, University of Stirling, (This is an abridged version)

Qualifications are offered under a variety of different titles: many universities now offer taught postgraduate courses in areas such as lifelong learning, continuing education, post-compulsory education and training or adult education. This report examines the background against which these courses developed, and explores a number of curricular and organisational issues associated with them.

Continuing education is a very diverse field, and its practitioners come from a variety of different institutional backgrounds (including, of course, universities themselves). As a Canadian study reported some years ago, the professional identity of this grouping is not rigidly defined, nor is it universally shared (Council of Ministers of Education 1996). The context in which postgraduate courses in continuing education are developed and taken is very different from the context that has commonly operated, at least until recently, in regard to postgraduate advanced qualifications for school teachers.