The issue of how the outcomes of research on vocational education and training (VET) are influenced by categories that frame thinking about research and learning was explored. Special attention was paid to the following issues: (1) the role of researchers' culture and race in identification of adult learning principles; (2) the need for researchers to pay more attention to the notion of whiteness as a way of exploring how researchers' culture and race shape their production of knowledge about VET and how whiteness shapes the development of social and public policy statements, curriculum documents, and other VET texts; and (3) the fact that many white people erroneously assume that nonwhites experience whiteness in much the same way as whites do and that many whites are therefore unable to see the effect of their whiteness on the subject of adult education. It is argued that, despite the difficulties inherent in undertaking contemporary studies about whiteness, VET researchers should write into adult education a more explicit examination of whiteness and its effects. More work is called for on the effects of whiteness as a "discursive system of pressures and constraints" on what can be achieved by programs underwritten by theories and principles formulated by whites. (Contains 20 references.) (MN)