Democracy and Adult Education Practice: Pathways Towards Renewal

Abstract

This special issue of Adult Learning emerges amid global trends of dedemocratization, corruption, fragmenting political order, and aggressive social and political polarization. It proposes frameworks, concepts, and approaches for imagining the role of Adult education in this challenging context. Historically, Adult education research and practice has interpreted itself as a beacon of principled democratic process, guided by the spirit of openness, access, and personal and social progress. As the recent Summit for Democracy called for participants to renew democracy at home and confront autocracy abroad, the editors and authors of this issue apply this framework of renewal to the research and practice of our field in this uncertain context (See (https://www.state. gov/summit-for-democracy/). Adult education for democracy is crucial (Lima, 2022). John Dewey (1916/1944) characterized democracy as “more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (p. 87). He described the ideal conditions of democracy as requiring “a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder” (p. 99). Eduard Lindeman (1987), for example, stressed, that Adult education should be prepared, amongst other things, to “reveal to people the nature of those democratic disciplines which describe the thought and conduct of persons living within