ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a micro-level comparative analysis of one aspect of adult education practice and organisation; that is, graduate adult education as organised and conducted in university departments of adult education in the United States and Britain. It argues that the methods, curricula, evaluative criteria and modes, and intellectual terrain of graduate adult education can be analysed as socio-cultural products; that is, as practices, structures and attitudes rooted in and reflective of the society and culture of which they are a part. The chapter applies five analytical categories to understanding graduate adult education as a socio-cultural product: historicity, political context, philosophical orientation, specified competencies of adult educators and paradigms of appropriate research. There will be many researchers, academics and practitioners of adult education in Britain and America who do not recognise themselves, or their programmes, within the five analytical categories. Programmes of graduate study in adult education can only be understood from within their socio-cultural contexts.
