We are concerned then to attempt to step back from the research and intellectual
resources that we perhaps commonly take for granted in the study of the education and
learning of adults. We sketch the field, in a fragmentary way, in our own fashion; first,
through a short, narration of its history of traditions and epistemology, and, second, in a
turn to consider the current appearance of theory in research and scholarship in the field
– reviewing and characterizing theoretical orientations drawn on today within four
dominant international journals in an attempt to provide a ‘thought piece’ for
discussion. We have no conclusions here, but feel that debate about the direction of the
field and its capacity to ask questions is without doubt important. Without better
understanding of this dynamic, discursive, political, powerful and historical fashioning
of research and intellectual resources in the field, it is not for us clear how current or
future directions might be informed or understood. Leaving this discussion to those who
would direct research to an effective relationship between commerce and education
does not seem to us to be necessarily fruitful