1 PA 046 The applicability of networks to Australian adult and vocational learning research Barry Golding, School of Education, University of Ballarat Abstract Networks have increasingly been recognised by educators as important in adult and vocational learning contexts, in that they have the capacity to help potential learners engage and become better connected with a wide range of learning organisations through their families, jobs and communities and also with opportunities for future learning and work. The importance of ‘being connected’, including through networks to and between learning organisations, has come into higher relief with a recent increase in theorising about aspects of social capital including learning networks, the growth of lifelong learning and an identification of the particular penalties associated with several forms of disengagement from learning for people of all ages. This paper begins with a scan of research literature on networks in adult and vocational learning. The paper identifies some new techniques involving networks, found by experience to assist in the process of adult and vocational learning research: particularly for identifying potential research interviewees within learning organisations and communities, strengthening relationships between learning organisations and identifying opportunities for future collaboration. It also provides some insights from new data on organisational networks derived from a number of recent research studies about learning networks in TAFE, adult and community education and public safety organisations in small and remote towns. The paper finally provides a number of tentative, general findings about the broader applicability of network theory to research and theories about learning in such contexts. INTRODUCTION While the widespread use of the term network in education is relatively recent, many of the foundational research methods for studying networks came out of communications network research in large military and industrial organisations after the 1950s. Hare (1962, p 273), in a Handbook of small group research noted that in such organisations ‘a segment of the organisation often serves as an information processing centre … [though] frequently some of the members are separated physically from each other and communicate by telephone and other devices in restricted networks.’ Though network theory and the term network have recently become largely appropriated within a technological paradigm with the enormous subsequent development of information and computer technology network theory has continued to evolve, shape and inform education and other social research fields to a point that the ' social fallout' of connecting at a distance has become a topic of research (Chayco 2002).