ABSTRACT
Most leadership training, like most adult education, is self-directed. Houle made the point that the majority of adult educators in America were either volunteers or part-time with only a few being full-time and yet Wilensky claimed that the first stage in professionalisation is 'to start doing full time the thing that needs doing'. If this is the first stage of professionalisation, then it might be claimed that adult education has not begun to professionalise. From its very earliest organisations adult education has had an international orientation. As early as 1929 there was a World Conference on Adult Education held at Cambridge, United Kingdom and even before that Albert Mansbridge had founded a World Association for Adult Education. By early 1960s a genuine concern for the future of the subject of adult education in American universities was emerging, so that by 1960, not only was Houle's paper published in the Handbook but another by Liveright on adult education in the universities.
