Adult Education and Disability Studies, an Interdisciplinary Relationship: Research Implications for Adult Education

Abstract

Disability studies is an emerging field of inquiry that investigates the disability experience as a socially constructed phenomenon similar to issues of race, gender, and class. However, the literature of adult education shows that we are not making these same connections. Nor are we conducting a thorough investigation of how the manifestations of the disability experience affect and/or constrain the adult learning context. This article promotes the idea of an interdisciplinary relationship between adult education and disability studies as a way to investigate the disability experience within the adult learning context. An overview of adult education and disability is provided first, along with a review of the disability studies literature, its history, tenets, and critiques. Embedded within this discussion are suggested implications for adult education practice and theory. The author concludes her discussion with possible ideas for research that she argues will create new lines of inquiry within adult education.