Abstract
In this article we report on findings from a large-scale bibliographic study conducted based on the citation practices within the field of research on adult learning. Our data consist of 151,261 citation links between more than 33,000 different authors whose papers were published in five leading international journals in the field of adult learning during the time period 2006–2014. By analysing the composition of the dominating citation clusters we are able to construct a telescopic view of the research field based on an accumulation of bibliographic citations. The results consist of two parts. First we go through the dominating players active in the field, their position and mutual relationship. Secondly, we derive two main structural oppositions inherent in the citation networks, one connected to the research object (studying education or work) and the second to the level of analysis (cognition or policy). We find that the most dominating tradition within adult learning the last few decades – socio- cultural perspectives on learning – occupies a very central position in the space of citations, balancing between these opposing poles. We hope that this analysis will help foster reflexivity concerning our own research practices, and will reveal the relations of dominance currently prevailing within the field of adult learning.
This chapter has previously been published as Nylander, E., Österlund, L., & Fejes, A. (2018) Exploring the Adult Learning Research Field by Analysing Who Cites Whom. Vocations and learning, 11(1), 113–131.
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However, Broady (1991) argues that symbolic capital can be seen as the most generic concept in Bourdieu’s toolbox, one that permeates to the three forms of capital his work is normally associated with, i.e. cultural, social, and economic capital.
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- 3.
Thus, other newer journals such as, e.g. Vocations and Learning, or The European journal for research on the education and learning of adults, were not part of our sample.
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This journal publishes papers which concerns adults learning as well as the learning of youths in the regular school system. Since the journal is one important publication outlet for adult learning scholars interested in relations between education and work in was included in our sample even tough it has a slightly wider scope.
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Please note that Scopus includes a maximum of eight authors per reference – the seven first ones and the last. In the field of adult learning this is a minor limitation as few publications contains more than eight authors.
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All author subjects with more than ten citations and the 100 most cited authors were double checked by two researchers independently.
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The networks were visualized in 2D using the ForceAtlas2 algorithm, which is a force-directed algorithm. For more on Gephi see Bastian et al. (2009).
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After generating the network the most cited authors were filtered out. A cut-off rate of 50 fractionalized citations was chosen as the best alternative for level of detail versus readability.
- 10.
A researcher that is absent from the list of top fifty leading citation bibliographies between 2006 and 2014, but nevertheless seem influential in giving shape to the bibliographies in the more sociologically oriented part of the map, is former IOE Professor Barsil Bernstein (1924–2000).
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The influence of Paulo Freire’s work seem particularly strong within American adult learning research, although Freire uphold an outlier position in the full space of citations, perhaps due to the fact that he never contributed to the field as such, wrote much of his work a long time ago and in Spanish.
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However, please bear in mind that the way we chose to fractionalize citations (see section “Method, Data and Analysis”) favours the most productive and collaborative scholars that are being cited in the field. In so far that Australian scholars are producing more collaborative articles that is being picked-up and cited among colleagues, our research method is thus helping translating that graphically into the central area of the space of citations. Another reservation for interpreting the centrality of Australian scholars in the field in terms of scholastic excellence or research quality, has to do with the political steering mechanisms for academic production in which Australia have had a rather extreme policy based on journal publication alone. Butler (2003) has shown how this has resulted in increased publication activity paired with a decline in general impact.
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Nylander, E., Österlund, L., Fejes, A. (2019). Exploring the Adult Learning Research Field by Analysing Who Cites Whom. In: Fejes, A., Nylander, E. (eds) Mapping out the Research Field of Adult Education and Learning. Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10946-2_4
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