Lifelong Education Administration and Policy

Adult Education

Graduate Handbook

Multicultural Vision/Mission

Multicultural adult education is part of the field of inquiry, practice, and theory devoted to the development of policies and practices that recognize, accept, and affirm cultural differences and similarities among groups; challenge oppression and structural and procedural inequality. Multicultural adult education aims to help adults to better understand their own cultural identity and heritage, especially in relation to other cultural groups in society.

As such multiculturalism in the graduate program in adult education is concerned with:

Restructuring the adult education curricula to reflect the culturally relative nature of knowledge and its production;
Expanding and supporting different approaches to scholarly inquiry to reflect culturally different ways of knowing;
Actively promoting cultural diversity, especially racial diversity, in the faculty and student body;
Reviewing departmental policies and procedures that have impact on this diversity; and
Engaging the Athens and Georgia community to graduate study in adult education in the socio-cultural environment within which education occurs.

It is important to recognize that all individuals are cultural beings and that they are members of and participate in a variety of "cultures" including family, neighborhood, work/profession, religion, leisure, and so on. Inequality based on cultural difference is the target of multicultural education. Multicultural adult education aims at producing authentic communication and interaction that recognizes and values difference.