Workers’ Educational Association: A Crisis of Identity? Personal Perspectives on Changing Professional Identities

Abstract

This paper presents some of the key findings from a qualitative study I conducted between 2005-2014 which explored the impact of a dramatically changed educational landscape on informal adult educators who had been working with and for the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) since the 1980s. The WEA - a voluntary organisation established in 1903 to 'promote the higher education of working men' (Doyle, 2003, p.6) - has grown to become the UK's largest voluntary adult education provider with an organisational mission to educate for 'a better world, equal, democratic and just' (WEA, 2013).