Abstract
In this article we report on findings from a large-scale bibliographic study conducted based on the citation practices within the field of research on adult learning. Our data consist of 151,261 citation links between more than 33,000 different authors whose papers were published in five leading international journals in the field of adult learning during the time period 2006–2014. By analysing the composition of the dominating citation clusters we are able to construct a telescopic view of the research field based on an accumulation of bibliographic citations. The results consist of two parts. First we go through the dominating players active in the field, their position and mutual relationship. Secondly, we derive two main structural oppositions inherent in the citation networks, one connected to the research object (studying education or work) and the second to the level of analysis (cognition or policy). We find that the most dominating tradition within adult learning the last few decades – socio- cultural perspectives on learning – occupies a very central position in the space of citations, balancing between these opposing poles. We hope that this analysis will help foster reflexivity concerning our own research practices, and will reveal the relations of dominance currently prevailing within the field of adult learning.
This chapter has previously been published as Nylander, E., Österlund, L., & Fejes, A. (2018) Exploring the Adult Learning Research Field by Analysing Who Cites Whom. Vocations and learning, 11(1), 113–131.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
However, Broady (1991) argues that symbolic capital can be seen as the most generic concept in Bourdieu’s toolbox, one that permeates to the three forms of capital his work is normally associated with, i.e. cultural, social, and economic capital.
- 2.
- 3.
Thus, other newer journals such as, e.g. Vocations and Learning, or The European journal for research on the education and learning of adults, were not part of our sample.
- 4.
This journal publishes papers which concerns adults learning as well as the learning of youths in the regular school system. Since the journal is one important publication outlet for adult learning scholars interested in relations between education and work in was included in our sample even tough it has a slightly wider scope.
- 5.
Please note that Scopus includes a maximum of eight authors per reference – the seven first ones and the last. In the field of adult learning this is a minor limitation as few publications contains more than eight authors.
- 6.
All author subjects with more than ten citations and the 100 most cited authors were double checked by two researchers independently.
- 7.
- 8.
The networks were visualized in 2D using the ForceAtlas2 algorithm, which is a force-directed algorithm. For more on Gephi see Bastian et al. (2009).
- 9.
After generating the network the most cited authors were filtered out. A cut-off rate of 50 fractionalized citations was chosen as the best alternative for level of detail versus readability.
- 10.
A researcher that is absent from the list of top fifty leading citation bibliographies between 2006 and 2014, but nevertheless seem influential in giving shape to the bibliographies in the more sociologically oriented part of the map, is former IOE Professor Barsil Bernstein (1924–2000).
- 11.
The influence of Paulo Freire’s work seem particularly strong within American adult learning research, although Freire uphold an outlier position in the full space of citations, perhaps due to the fact that he never contributed to the field as such, wrote much of his work a long time ago and in Spanish.
- 12.
However, please bear in mind that the way we chose to fractionalize citations (see section “Method, Data and Analysis”) favours the most productive and collaborative scholars that are being cited in the field. In so far that Australian scholars are producing more collaborative articles that is being picked-up and cited among colleagues, our research method is thus helping translating that graphically into the central area of the space of citations. Another reservation for interpreting the centrality of Australian scholars in the field in terms of scholastic excellence or research quality, has to do with the political steering mechanisms for academic production in which Australia have had a rather extreme policy based on journal publication alone. Butler (2003) has shown how this has resulted in increased publication activity paired with a decline in general impact.
References
Archambault, É., Vignola-Gagné, É., Côté Larivière, V., & Gingras, Y. (2006). Benchmarking scientific output in the social sciences and humanities: The limits of existing databases. Scientometrics, 68(3), 329–342.
Åström, F. et.al. (2009). Celebrating scholarly communication studies: A festschrift for Olle Persson. Published by ISSI. Vol. 05-S June 2009. International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics: Link 2016-09-05: http://issi-society.org/ollepersson60/ollepersson60.pdf
Bastian, M., Heymann, S., & Jacomy, M. (2009). Gephi: An open source software for exploring and manipulating networks. International AAAI conference on weblogs and social media.
Bourdieu, P. (1985). The market of symbolic goods. Poetics, 14(1), 13–44.
Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo Academicus. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1996). The rules of art. Genesis and structure of the literary field. Palo Alto: Stanford University press.
Bourdieu, P. (2004). Science of science and reflexivity. Oxford: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boyack, K. W., & Klavans, R. (2014). Including cited non-source items in a large-scale map of science: What difference does it make? Journal of Informetrics, 8(3), 569–580.
Bright, B. P. (Ed.). (1989). Theory and practice in the study of adult education: The epistemological debate. London: Routledge.
Broady, D. (1991) Sociologi och epistemologi: om Pierre Bourdieus författarskap och den historiska epistemologin. Dissertation. Stockholm: HLS.
Budd, J. M. (1990). Higher education literature: Characteristics of citation patterns. The Journal of Higher Education, 61(1), 84–97.
Budd, J. M., & Magnuson, L. (2010). Higher education literature revisited: Citation patterns examined. Research in Higher Education, 51, 294–304.
Butler, L. (2003). Explaining Australia’s increased share of ISI publications – The effects of a funding formula based on publication counts. Research Policy, 32(1), 143–155.
Carruthers, B., & Espeland, W. N. (1991). Accounting for rationality: Double-entry bookkeeping and the rhetoric of economic rationality. The American Journal of Sociology., 97(1), 31–69.
Espeland, W. N., & Sauder, M. (2007). Rankings and reactivity: How public measures recreate social worlds. American Journal of Sociology, 113(1), 1–40.
Fejes, A., & Nylander, E. (2014). The anglophone international(e): A bibliometrical analysis of three adult education journals, 2005–2012. Adult Education Quarterly, 64(3), 222–239.
Fejes, A., & Nylander, E. (2015). How pluralistic is the research field on adult education? Dominating bibliometrical trends, 2005–2012. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 6(2), 103–124.
Fejes, A., & Nylander, E. (2017). Adult education research: Publication strategies and collegial recognition. In M. Milana et al. (Eds.), Palgrave international handbook on adult and lifelong education and learning. London: Palgrave. ISBN 978-1-137-55782-7.
Gingras, Y. (2014). Criteria for evaluating indicators. In B. Cronin & C. R. Sugimoto (Eds.), Beyond bibliometrics: Harnessing multidimensional indicators of scholarly impact. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Gingras, Y. (2016). Bibliometrics and research evaluation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Harris, R., & Morrison, A. (2011). Through the looking glass: Adult education through the lens of the Australian Journal of Adult Learning over fifty years. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 51, 17–52.
Heilbron, J. (2015). French sociology. Cornell: Cornell University Press.
Hicks, D. (2004). The four literatures of social sciences. In H. Moed, W. Glänzel, & U. Schmoch (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative science and technology research (pp. 473–496). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Hicks, D. (2013). One size doesn’t fit all: On the co-evolution of national evaluation systems and social science publishing. Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics, 1(1), 67–90.
Käpplinger, B. (2015). Adult education research between field and rhizome: A bibliometrical analysis of conference programs of ESREA. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 6(2), 139–157.
Karpik, L. (2011). What is the price of a scientific paper? In J. Beckert & P. Aspers (Eds.), The worth of goods: Valuation and pricing in the economy (pp. 63–85). New York: Oxford University Press.
King, J. (1987). A review of bibliometric and other science indicators and their role in research evaluation. Journal of Information Science, 13, 261–276.
Lamont, M. (2009). How professors think: Inside the curious world of academic judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lariviére, V., Archambault, É., Gingras, Y., & Vignola-Gagné, É. (2006). The place of serials in referencing practices: Comparing natural sciences and engineering with social science and humanities. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(8), 997–1004.
Larsson, S. (2009). An emerging economy of publications and citations. Nordisk Pedagogik, 29, 34–52.
Larsson, S. (2010). Invisible colleges in the adult education research world. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Research, 1(1–2), 97–112.
Nylander, E. (2014a). Mastering the jazz standard. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 2(1), 66–97.
Nylander, E. (2014b). The rites of jazz institutions: Uncertainty and valuation in music auditions. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 2(2), 266–276.
Nylander, E., Österlund, L., & Fejes, A. (2018). Exploring the adult learning research field by analysing who cites whom. Vocations and Learning, 11(1), 113–131. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-017-9181-z.
Persson, O. (1991). Forskning i bibliometrisk belysning. Umeå: INUM.
Rubenson, K., & Elfert, M. (2015). Adult education research: Exploring an increasingly fragmented map. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 6(2), 125–138.
Sapiro, G. (2010). Introduction. I Gisèle Sapiro (red). Sociology is a martial art: political writings by Pierre Bourdieu. New York: New Press.
Small, H. G. (1973). Co-citation in the scientific literature. Journal of the American Society for Intformation Science, 24(4), 265–269.
St.Clair, R. (2011). Writing ourselves into being: A review of the Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 23(2), 27–44.
Taylor, E. (2001). Adult Education Quarterly from 1989–1999: A content analysis of all submissions. Adult Education Quarterly, 51(4), 322–340.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nylander, E., Österlund, L., Fejes, A. (2019). Exploring the Adult Learning Research Field by Analysing Who Cites Whom. In: Fejes, A., Nylander, E. (eds) Mapping out the Research Field of Adult Education and Learning. Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10946-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10946-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-10945-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-10946-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)