Knowledge and Power in Adult Education: Beyond Freire and Habermas

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Abstract
The incorporation of work by Freire and Habermas into adult education theory has contributed to the development of concepts such as "communicative competence" and "transformative education." This contribution has generated a lively and spirited debate within the field of adult education. My purpose is to extend the debate to include an analysis of the role of power and knowledge in educational theory. By examining the contribution of postmodern social and cultural theories to adult education, I argue that (a) adult educators not lose sight of the connection between knowledge and power, (b) all individuals in educational settings occupy multiple subject positions through which they construct a complex and often contradictory understanding of their life world, and (c) that adult educators be attuned to the various ways in which power is deployed through their own discourse about particular discipline-specific knowledge.

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