The Houle Typology After Twenty-Two Years: A Large-Scale Empirical Test

Abstract

More than 20 years ago, Houle proposed that adult learners were goal, learning or activity oriented. His typology aroused considerable interest, because it appeared to be a parsimonious way of classifying adult learners. Various instruments were designed to investigate the structural foundations of the typology and relationships between "orientation" scores and other variables. The most enduring, often used, and psychometrically defensible instrument was the Education Participation Scale which Boshier used during a 1971 search for Houle's typology. During the last decade, the E.P.S. has been used in most parts of the world. In this study, E.P.S. data from 13,442 learners in Africa, Asia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States were combined and subjected to a cluster analysis designed to examine the extent to which Houle's typology fitted the phenomenological reality that exists within adult education participants. Houle's goal and learning orientations were reasonably clear. His activity orientation was evident but only as a forced aggregate of the Social Stimulation, Social Contact, External Expectations and Community Service factors. In some respects this study completed a survey research tradition begun more than twenty years ago. In the future the scope of this research needs to be broadened to test the impact of participation on motivational orientations and to include experimental studies where E.P.S. scores are treated as the independent variables.