ADULT AND HIGHER EDUCATION
Education occurs in a range of contexts and extends throughout the life course. As learners move out of the compulsory/schooling sector, education pathways and contexts diversify significantly, and global, marketised, and political forces take on new significance. Learners, meanwhile, remain diverse, including in terms of their backgrounds, interests, needs, learning experiences, and motivations for engaging in adult or higher education; equity issues remain stark in a range of contexts; and tensions are highlighted between the roles of disciplinary (professional, vocational, academic …) expert and pedagogical practitioner.
While many (though not all) education researchers are employed in tertiary education settings and thus are in the business of educating adults and/or conducting higher education, this special interest group (SIG) specifically considers research into and on adult and higher education. The SIG focuses on topics and contexts including:
Academia/academic careers
Adult education
Community education
International education (within the tertiary sector)
Higher education
Māori, Pacific, and other Indigenous approaches to passing down and protecting cultural knowledge (among adults)
Policies, policy enactment, and policy impact across adult and higher education settings
Tertiary education
Universities
Vocational education and training
Workplace/workforce education and training
2025 Convenors
A complementary NZARE SIG is dedicated to the specific topic of Teaching and Teacher Education. From 2013-2023, the latter topic was combined with the adult and higher education topics above under the umbrella of a single NZARE SIG (“Adult and Tertiary Education”). However, at the 2023 NZARE AGM, a proposal to restructure this group into two distinct SIGs was ratified. The primary reasons for this move were (a) the large number of NZ researchers focused on teaching and teacher education, and given this, (b) the need to ensure researchers focused on other aspects of adult and higher education had a clear space to connect and explore their distinct interests. The Adult and Higher Education SIG and the Teaching and Teacher Education SIG will from time to time come together (e.g. to host joint events) but also offer dedicated spaces for their respective communities of interest to meet, connect, and collaborate.
The Adult and Higher Education SIG will exist as a dedicated stream within the 2024 NZARE conference, allowing researchers to submit their abstracts to this stream and (subject to peer review) present in dedicated Adult and Higher Education-focused sessions. The SIG will also seek to organise one or more SIG events each year. These events will sometimes be for this SIG alone and will sometimes involve partnership with one or more other NZARE SIGs.
