a survey of the viewpoints of educators at the agriculture and natural resources education centers towards the phylosophy of adult education

despite the passage of seven decades from the field of adult education activities, and establishment of several formal vs. informal organizations, not only a comprehensive philosophy for adult education has not been developed, but also a significant effort to introduce the philosophy of education as regards adult education is lacking. the aim followed in the present study was to seek the attitudes of the trainers of the agriculture and natural resources training centers with regard to the philosophy of adult education. the research was a descriptive-correlational one. the census population consisted of all the 110 educators (from imam khomeini agricultural education center in tehran and from center for natural resources and watershed training and empowerment of beneficiaries in klarabad. a judgment random sampling method was employed to select 86 educators as sample. zinn’s questionnaire was utilized as the instrument for data collection. a pilot test was conducted to determine the reliability of the questionnaire. cornbach’s alpha was estimated 0.91. the findings indicated that a majority of the educators in either center are of a progressive philosophical view as regards adult education. the results of t-test revealed that there existed a significant difference between the attitudes of the two centers’ educators in liberal philosophical view at the 0.05 level. based upon the results of the correlation coefficient there exists a significant relationaship between the age and teaching experience variables and the voriables of: liberal philosophical perspective, behaviorism, social progress, humanism and radicalism.