Philippe Carré

Hall of Fame Class of 2018

Since the 1980s, Philippe Carré has promoted communication among authors studying self-directed learning across age ranges and curricular boundaries. He has encouraged the comparison and discussion of related topics such as self-directed learning, self-regulated learning, self-determination, learning motivation, and Bandura’s concept of agency, and he has made a special effort to bring the work of North American scholars in adult education and learning psychology to the attention of French researchers.

Beginning in 1976, Carré worked as a trainer in English for adult professional development and later became head of a training organization in international communications that included working in various countries (in West Africa, and France) running English training programs. Since that time, he has amassed more than 200 publications as author, first author, contributor, or editor, including 16 books. Additionally, he has been general editor of Savoirs, an international journal of adult education and training research, since 2006. He has been a professor of education sciences at Paris Nanterre University since 1999, conducting and overseeing research related to adult and continuing education, teaching graduate courses, and supervising numerous doctoral dissertations. He leads a large doctoral cohort focused on adult and continuing education, and to date, 28 of his doctoral students have written doctoral dissertations on continuing education, distance education, gerontology, human resource development, and self-directed learning.

Carré has a long history of promoting self-directed learning in Europe, North America, and beyond. He completed a doctoral dissertation on learning projects of older learners and has written or co-written numerous related books, special journal issues, journal articles, and conference papers on the topic. He serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Self-Directed learning, the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Self-Directed Learning, and was the 2010 recipient of the Malcolm Knowles Award for Lifelong Contributions to the field of Self-Directed Learning. He regularly attends and presents at that symposium and frequently facilitates fellow faculty and students in their attendance and paper presentations.

Carré has served as an ambassador in Europe for self-directed learning, coordinating a 2012 symposium on lifelong and self-directed learning in France that involved participants from Canada, Colombia, England, France, Germany, and the U.S. That symposium resulted in a book co-edited with R. Hiemstra (A Feast of Learning, 2014). He also co-organized seven European conferences on SDL and was part of the organizing committee of the Montreal (1998) and Paris (2000) World Conferences on SDL.

Carré has had an extraordinarily productive career as a scholar and practitioner in adult and continuing education. His contributions are a credit to the profession, and his work has contributed to the advancement of the visibility and stature of adult and continuing education.