ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned to the epistemological relationship between the study of adult education as a university postgraduate subject in the UK and the discipline of psychology as one of the former's source disciplines. The epistemological vandalism represented by 'bad eclecticism' is dependent upon the definition of adult education as an academic and theoretical enterprise, which entails the reasonable assumption that such an enterprise obeys the rules and constraints governing the formulation of theories, and theories about other theories. The conventional epistemological structure would suggest that good practice is based upon authentic incorporation of source discipline knowledge and its elaboration within the practical domain of a given field. The interdisciplinary nature of adult education is potentially a positive feature for both its subject specialist teachers and students, yet this is rarely exploited or developed, even within the vertical framework of conventional epistemology.
