Lifelong education,space and the spirit of place

This paper begins by stating that adult education is facing two challenges. First, adult educators need to help people learn to live in harmony with the environment. Second, adult education must assist people in identifying ways to live peacefully with diversity. It is then argued that currently the field of adult education is characterized by a tension between those who subscribe to the professionalization of adult education and those who subscribe to radical adult education. This tension, it is argued, can be better understood as a shift in the structure of human consciousness. This perspective is then explored using as examples the agrarian and scientific/industrial revolutions as historical turning points in the evolution of new organizing structures of consciousness. This is then followed by an in‐depth discussion of the new emerging structure of consciousness and vision‐logic, and a brief discussion of the implications for adult education.