Fonds 1810 - Alan Thomas fonds

Identity area

Reference code

UTA 1810

Title

Alan Thomas fonds

Date(s)

  • 1944-2009 (Creation)

Level of description

Fonds

Extent and medium

3.048 m of textual and graphic records (20 boxes)

Context area

Name of creator

(1928-)

Biographical history

Alan Miller Thomas was born 26 June 1928 in Toronto. After attending preparatory and secondary school at Upper Canada College, Thomas studied English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto and briefly worked in Canadian publishing (as educational representative for Copp Clark Publishing and managing editor of Canadian Life) before pursuing a Masters and PhD in Education at Columbia University. Of his career, Thomas has remarked, “I had no idea what I should become. I fell into Adult Education as a vocation and as a cause. I never looked back. The study of learning as a culture came naturally.” Thomas is the founder and past President of the Carold Institute and has been a professor of adult education at OISE for over thirty years. He was a contributing editor to foundational textbooks on adult education, including "Learning for Life", and has held executive and board positions with the Canadian Association for Adult Education and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. Dr. Thomas is perhaps best known for his role in developing Prior Learning Assessment Recognition (PLAR) in the community college system - whereby individuals can have life experience and non-institutional learning acknowledged within formal educational settings. On his vocation as an advocate of education, Thomas remarked in 2002, “What seemed to me to be the constant was learning itself. For me, then and since, Learning was to Education, adult or child-centred, as physics was to engineering. The more fundamental element. I had begun the voyage, that resulted 30 years later in my book, “Beyond Education” to free Learning from the grip of psychologists, and to explore what has become, the culture of learning.”

He received the Order of Canada in 1982. He was also involved in the National Advisory Council of Voluntary Action and was chairman of the televised project “People Talking Back.”

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Content and structure area

Scope and content

Fonds consists of research notes, draft articles, published articles, reports, budgets and correspondence created and accumulated by Alan Thomas in the course of his activities as a student, scholar and professor of adult education and an advocate for adult education. He was a contributing editor to foundational textbooks on adult education, including “Learning for Life,” and has held executive and board positions with the Canadian Association for Adult Education and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. Dr. Thomas is perhaps best known for his role in developing Prior Learning Assessment Recognition (PLAR) in the community college system – whereby individuals can have life experience and non-institutional learning acknowledged and accredited within formal educational settings.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Open

Conditions governing reproduction

Language of material

    Script of material

      Language and script notes

      Physical characteristics and technical requirements

      Finding aids

      Uploaded finding aid

      Allied materials area

      Existence and location of originals

      Existence and location of copies

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      Related descriptions

      Notes area

      Alternative identifier(s)

      Accession

      B2012-0007

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      Description control area

      Description identifier

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      Rules and/or conventions used

      Dates of creation revision deletion

      -Original finding aid by LIndsay Osmun, 2012
      -Added to AtoM by Karen Suurtamm, September 2016

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          Accession area