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This version was published on August 1, 2008
Adult Education Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4, 299-317 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0741713608318894

Autopoiesis and the Cosmology of Postmodern Adult Education

Christopher Sean Ostrom

Kansas State University, chris{at}ostrom.biz

William Jay Martin

Kansas State University

Jeff Zacharakis

Kansas State University

From the time adult education emerged as a field of study, it has suffered a crisis of identity by which the field is increasingly defined by a lack of consensus regarding its larger aspirations and operational boundaries. The purpose of this article is to begin deconstructing and reconstructing the field of adult education phenomenologically by (a) exploring the basic historical assumptions and socially constructed, collectivist realities on which adult education founded its theory and practice in the modern era, (b) elucidating the postmodern turn these realities have taken in the past half century, and (c) reconciling adult education's historical mission with new realities facing the field. This article ultimately concludes that any viable conception of adult education must not only make postmodern individuals better competitors in the global marketplace, but must also help them and the organizations they comprise to define themselves within a larger autopoietic web of relations.

Key Words: education • postmodern • phenomenology • autopoiesis • individualism • identity • social • constructionism • community


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