What crisis are we in actually?

In our paper, we focus on influential crisis-discourses, which have recently emerged as a renaissance of the concept of Bildung. This gradual expansion has remained largely unnoticed in the academic adult education community, but the concept has become vital for diverse networks of adult education influencers and organisations in formulating their crisis solutions. Interpretations about European traditions of adult education and the philosophy of education, which the protagonists of the Bildung hype are effectively disseminating, are biased and selective rather than systematic and analytical. Therefore, we find it essential to explore this hype more deeply and reflect its meaning for adult education as an academic discipline, practice and policy. Adult education has always been highly contested as a field of practice and semi-professionalisation, as an academic discipline and as a complex policy field. The institutionalisation of adult education has been closely related to the political, social and economic formation of different types of welfare states. And adult education has become highly diverse and the most flexibly transforming field of education. We assume that the attraction of the Bildung hype in adult education indicates a more fundamental crisis of academic adult education because of its parasitic relationship to practice and policy and their subservient role in dominant social, economic and educational policies.