Adult education and learning access: Hope in times of crisis in South Africa

Abstract

The call for chapters for this book was inspired by the shock of COVID-19 impacting on the adult and community education sector in our country. However, the proposals for chapter after chapter that landed in our inboxes underscored the reality that people active in this field are constantly buffeted in the waves of a whole range of crises, and that they lack protections taken for granted by many practitioners in other sectors. Consequently, this book offers a collection of chapters describing a wide range of crises that affect both learners and educators in adult and community education. Written by people working in this sphere, it makes available practitioners’ firsthand experiences of the impact of some of the more sudden and acute crises, as well as their experiences of dealing with more enduring and enervating problems.