Allen Tough

His contributions to the field date from the 1960s, and his research illuminated adults' successful efforts to learn and change.

More than 90 major studies in eleven countries were based on Tough's early work.

Tough's inquiry contributed to an expansion of the dialogue on adult learning to include self-directed learning.

He was instrumental in catalyzing movement from research focused primarily on who participates in organized adult education, to one which embraces the entire range of intentional adult learning.

Allen Tough wrote seven books and numerous articles and papers over the span of his career.

His book The Adult's Learning Projects was chosen as one of the ten classical books in adult education.

Until the end of the 1970s, Tough's line of research focused on the adult's successful efforts to learn and change, particularly the 70% of adults who are self-guided without relying much on professionals or institutions.

His first books, The Adult's Learning Projects and Intentional Changes, were based on his thesis research.

For more than four decades Tough was globally recognized as a pioneering scholar in adult learning, self-directed growth, and personal change.

He was named "one of six most often used authors" in a survey of the Adult Education Association in 1978.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Tough continued to pursue these subjects, both through publishing and presenting papers at European SETI conferences, SETI League symposiums, and the World Space Congress.

In 1981 Tough expanded his areas of study to include the fields of Futures Studies and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI.

In his 1986 and 1987 SETI papers, Tough had discussed the likelihood that such a civilization can (one way or another) reach or study our solar system.

His 1991 book Crucial Questions about the Future, which united these themes, was translated into Spanish and Chinese.

In November 1994 he began to focus more intensively on such a possibility.

One year later, at the Boston Museum of Science, he devoted his Wright Lecture on Cosmic Evolution to this topic, specifically to the feasibility of a small smart interstellar probe reaching our planet.

Throughout 1995 and early 1996, Tough pondered how to detect extraterrestrial intelligence if it had, in fact, reached Earth.

During 1996, at SETI and Contact conferences in California, Capri, and Beijing, he presented papers that furthered this topic.

A year later he incorporated these papers into a foundation paper on small smart interstellar probes for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

In June 1996 he came up with a promising approach - he realized that the World Wide Web enabled a new search strategy.

It was now possible to switch from detecting to inviting.

Instead of figuring out how to detect extraterrestrial intelligence, humans could simply use the Web to invite contact.

He taught at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, for 33 years, retiring from teaching in 1997.

After his retirement he devoted his time and energy to his research interests.

Allen Tough was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

During his years as a student at the University of Toronto, Tough's interests included psychology, sociology, philosophy, global issues, alternative futures, journalism, youth and adult education, as well as soccer, skating, dancing, campus publications, and wilderness hiking.

He served as Editor-in-Chief of the all-campus yearbook for two years, recruiting and supervising a staff of 40 volunteers.

During his twenties, Tough taught high-school English and Guidance for two years, earned his M.A. at the University of Toronto, married and began his family, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and became an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.

In Chicago, in line with his focus on the psychology of adult learning and change, he did a Ph.D. internship in conference planning and wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the behavior of adults during self-directed learning projects.

His book When SETI Succeeds was chosen as one of eight works "The Editors Recommend" in the December 2000 issue of Scientific American.

He coordinated the World Future Society's Web forum on future generations, and was recognized as a Fellow of the World Futures Studies Federation and the British Interplanetary Society.

Tough was a SETI League Charter Member, edited the online academic journal Contact in Context, initiated that journal's Best Ideas Awards, was founding chair of the SETI League's Strategic Planning Committee, and served as a SETI League volunteer Regional Coordinator.

The SETI League honored him in 2003 with its Orville Greene Service Award.

Almost everyone who thinks and writes about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence agrees that the technology of any civilization we detect will be thousands or even millions of years beyond ours.

He received The Malcolm Knowles Memorial Award for significant lifelong contribution to the field of self-directed learning in 2006.

Later the same year, he was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame in Dallas, Texas.

Allen Tough (January 6, 1936 – 27 April, 2012) was a Canadian educator and researcher.

Widely known as a futurist, scientist, and author, Tough was Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto at the time of his death.

He made major contributions to the fields of Adult Education, Futures Studies, and SETI.

Linking these fields together was Tough's concern with the long-term future of humanity in the cosmos, and human kind's search for meaning and purpose on personal, societal, and global levels.