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06 January 2011: Research on a 'broadcasting university' published

Michael Bailey's analysis of early 20th Century adult education through the BBC appears in Citizenship Studies Volume 14, Issue 6 December 2010 , pages 681 - 695.

The paper explores the political rationalities and discursive practices that epitomised adult education broadcasts in 1920's Britain. The paper argues that early twentieth-century adult education, particularly as articulated in and through the BBC, was less concerned with the dissemination of knowledge than it was with endowing adult learners with new capacities for self-regulation. The idea was that  following the long-awaited arrival of universal adult suffrage in 1918, citizens might then better fulfil their newly acquired civic responsibilities. As a result adult learners were increasingly subjected to a series of self-governing, ethical obligations that are best characterised as 'civil prudence'.