La storiografia dell’Educazione degli adulti in Italia: un sentiero smarrito?

Abstract

This paper focuses on historical dimension of Adult education, considering it a very important issue for the research in this field. The arguments put forward start from a critical survey of the literature, through the identification of various approaches (and their paradigmatic examples) to address this dimension: the presentation of historical excursus, propaedeutic to theoretical contents and current issues of Adult education; the deepening of more circumscribed periods, authors, writings or situations considered particularly significant in this field; and the re-discovery of “classics”, offered as benchmarks for the theory and planning of educational practices. Although there are notable examples considering history of education as a fundamental dimension of Adult education research, it notes that this research field needs to be revitalized, to answer to the exigency – expressed by many scholars, but not only by them – to equip itself with more refined interpretative and planning tools.