Adult Education as Future-ing Practice

Within the doctoral project, theoretical and empirical research will be conducted on how future is shaped in educational practices and this by investigating how future is shaped in the temporal acts that education institutes (e.g. by installing rhythms, slowing down practice time, relating to the past in a certain way, etc). The empirical part of the research will, on the one hand, focus on practices of academic education at KU Leuven itself and, on the other hand, also investigate educational practices with adults within the field of socio-cultural adult work. This doctoral research adopts a practice-theoretical approach and this makes it possible to investigate how futures take shape in an interplay of interactions between people and other-than-human actors. In this practice-theoretical elaboration, this interplay of various actors at the micro-level is also linked to the question of how policy helps shape the future, for example through the measures it imposes (e.g. dividing educational time into modules), through the discursive actions a policy text entails (e.g. the adopted vision of learning for the future, the adopted vision of leisure time and volunteer engagement), etc.. In this interplay of various actors at various levels, a pronounced tension emerges today between securing a well-defined future as individuals and opening up a future for living together with each other.