The development of adult and community education policy in New Zealand: insights from Popper.

This paper examines the process by which all post-compulsory education in New Zealand has become integrated under one administrative structure, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), with the intention of developing a single coordinated system of tertiary education. In particular, adult and community education (ACE), the least formal and organised sector, is required to develop programmes that align with an externally conceived set of priorities, which themselves arise from the Tertiary Education Strategies. Using Popper's concepts of 'holistic' versus 'piecemeal' change, it is argued that such large-scale change is potentially dangerous as there are likely to be unintended, damaging consequences of such policies; consequences which are difficult to fix in modern, complex societies. In particular, ACE which is built on an insider, community-focus ethos, able itself to identify and respond to community-learning opportunities, is likely to be changed fundamentally so that the very characteristics that have made ACE effective in the past will be lost in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]