Adult and Continuing Education

The volume of papers touches some main concerns of the Extension system in the Universities in India. These include Literacy, Adult Education, Continuing Education, Women's Studies, and Population Education. The scholars have looked at both the conceptual moorings of these concerns as also the programmatic concerns. Central to all the papers are social constructs like the individual learners, group of learners, community of learners, community of learners, development with justice, communication, and market needs. Another central concern reflected in all the papers is the belief that education as an all-encompassing term envisages an active learner-participant, a teacher as a facilitator-cum-learner, and the learning environment that encourages description-analysis-inferential moves.

Sugan Bhatia (b. 1943), completed his Master's degree in English (1967), and, two years of studies in Linguistics (1968-70) from the University of Delhi. He joined the University of Texas at Austin in 1970 on a Fulbright scholarship and went on to complete his Ph. D. from that University (1972). He taught as a trained graduate teacher (1964-1967) in two Senior Secondary schools in Delhi, and as an Assistant Lecturer in English (1967-1969) and as Lecturer in English (1970-72) as Selection Grade Lecturer in English (1972-1979) in a college in the University of Delhi. He joined the Adult and Continuing Education Cell, University of Delhi as its Coordinator (1979-1982), went on to become its Director (1982), and was appointed as Director-Professor in 1984. He retired from that position in June, 2005 after completing 38 years of service in the University of Delhi. During his teaching period of 41 years, he has been Radio Broadcaster with the All India Radio English Programmes, Concept Development Specialist for films on social development, Consultant for English Language Teaching Programmes, Trainer with the University-based Academic Staff Colleges, the Administrative Staff College of India, the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, and several national and international NGOs. He was one of the Consultants that prepared the feasibility report for the National Open School. He has been one of the Expert Members on Continuing Education and National Development at the University of Kuwait. He was General Secretary of the Indian University Association for Continuing Education from 1979 till about 2000, after which he became its Vice-President (2000-2006). He is currently the President of the Indian University Association for Continuing Education since February 2006. He is also Advisor to the All India Senior Citizens' Confederation. He is considered as one of the leading members of the various Committees of the University Grants Commission that helped set up more than 1000 Departments of Adult, Continuing Education and Extension in Universities in India. He was again one of the leading members that introduced Population Education in Higher Education.