Terenko O. Tendencies of Adult Education Development in the USA and Canada (the Second Half of the XX – Beginning of the XXI Century)

The dissertation provides a holistic systematic analysis of the formation and development of adult education in the United States and Canada, which identified and characterized the trends and essential characteristics of adult education in the United States and Canada in the second half of the XX – early XXI century to clarify the possibilities of creative usage of constructive ideas of the northern American experience in the development of adult education in Ukraine. The source base of the research is systematized according to the following dimensions: historical-pedagogical, socio-economic, theoretical-methodological, psychological, organizational-andragogical, social-educational, professional-andragogical. The interdisciplinary nature of research on the problem of adult education has been revealed. The prospects of comparative research in the field of adult education have been clarified. Theoretical and methodological bases of research of adult education in the USA and Canada are substantiated. A structural-conceptual research model has been developed. The implementation of a holistic study of the researched problem was facilitated by the continuous usage of a set of complementary methodological approaches, which were grouped according to the levels of methodology. The conceptual and terminological apparatus of the research are characterized, the theoretical analysis of which made it possible to distinguish three groups of concepts: general-pedagogical, basic, specific. The interdisciplinarity and multifaceted nature of the conceptual and terminological apparatus, its focus on clarifying the structure and updating the content of concepts in accordance with changes in society and science are substantiated.