Study On Farmers' Learning Needs During Urbanization

As the further development of urbanization, the urbanized farmer has been the focus of social issues. At the same time, the learning and educational problems of this group have become a kind of very important researching program.Taking adult education as basic angle of view and using the qualitative research approach, I spent 3 months in collecting the original materials of the urbanized farmers' real life stories in B village in Shanghai suburb with observation and interview. After leaving the field, I made the materials into story texts which were analyzed with interdisciplinary theories after then. The aim of all the work above is to find out and interpret the learning needs of urbanized farmer.This paper is divided into ten chapters.Chapter one is introduction. I present the reasons and background of my research; summarize the related researching literature; display the whole process of how/why I choose and use the qualitative research approach; illuminate how to read this paper.In chapter two, four, six and seven, I deeply describe the urbanized farmers' real life status in B village from four aspects, such as their formal learning life (chapter two), the changes of their social roles and their economic life (chapter four), their social intercommunicating life (chapter six) and their future life (chapter seven).In chapter three, five and eight, I analyze and interpret the learning needs from the upper four chapters separately (chapter three to chapter two, chapter five to chapter four, chapter eight to chapter six and seven), using the theories of Humanistic Psychology, Psycho-Analysis, Sociology, and Social Psychology, etc.Chapter nine is the integrated display of learning needs which are abstracted and summarized from chapter three, five and eight, including the various forms, common characters and dynamic process of the urbanized farmers' learning needs.Chapter ten is the review and reflection of the entire researching process, including research aims, ethic and validity. Moreover, I discuss some related academic issues profoundly, such as reflection of the adults' living world, re-understanding of research on adult education, and imagination of the learning stories in B village.