2026-03-02
Nate Breznau, Judith Offerhaus
This study investigates continuing vocational education and training (CVET) in three institutional contexts: Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Drawing on PIAAC Cycle 1’s unique questions and transparency, we analyse institutional regimes and socio-economic gradients in CVET participation. Barriers to and engagement in CVET is embedded in educational, labour market, and welfare state institutions. Results show that Sweden’s universal-collectivist regime fosters the highest participation with minimal disparities, while Germany’s corporatist regime shows lower participation and higher stratification. The UK’s liberal-individualist model exhibits moderate participation but sharp socio-economic inequalities, emphasising financial and employer-related barriers. Resource constraints such as time and money are prominent barriers across institutional contexts. Our exploratory measurement of CVET interest opens pathways for future research that was not thought possible with existing PIAAC data. These findings contribute to long-term institutional analysis and theory, and inform policy interventions to reduce barriers, increase interest, and support disadvantaged groups.
2025-10-01
Alexei Medvedev, Anke Grotlüschen
It is widely emphasized that there are existing gaps between parents who understand themselves as residents and parents who are positioned as immigrants or even ‘perpetual foreigners’. This qualitative study illustrates how unconscious and unintended raciolinguistic attitudes position some groups of parents and keep them excluded despite the programmatic idea of school-based parent cafés, legitimized by governmental strategies of better inclusion. The theories of raciolinguicism and monolingual habitus are further explored to understand intertwined mechanisms of creating groups. The analysis was planned and carried out using the Grounded Theory based on interviews. As the main findings, it is argued that German is understood as the language that leaves parents with another first language languageless with no or just limited communication skills. In certain school-related contexts, the monolingual habitus of German can be replaced by another dominant language. The study also showcases the phenomenon of (self)othering that can occur unintendedly in parent cafés.
2025-09-16
Samuel Raoufi-Kvist
This article examines four life-histories from students who recently completed second-chance education at a Swedish folk high school, having previously left upper secondary school without full qualifications – an experience often associated with academic failure. Through their studies, they have now gained eligibility for further education. Their narratives – shaped by different explanations for their earlier difficulties – are analysed using Erving Goffman’s concept of stigma. The study highlights the varied ways individuals navigate school failure and departure from dominant educational norms. At the same time, their stories reflect pride in having forged alternative paths, particularly through labour market experiences. Using an educational life-history approach, the article explores how participants relate to their past school failure – retrospectively, in the present, and with regard to their futures. Particular attention is paid to how stigma tied to compulsory school failure influence their educational trajectories and how they position themselves as students.
2025-06-15
Erik Nylander, Kjell Rubenson
Public policies in adult education have been shaped by two generations of human capital influence, each reflecting different assumptions about the relationship between education and the economy. While the first generation, emerging in the post-war decades, has received little scholarly critique, the second has faced extensive criticism for its neoliberal orientation. Tracing these lines of thought internationally, we emphasise the need for a broader historical-institutional perspective to understand what was at stake and why the world of work remains a central component of contemporary Adult Learning and Education (ALE) policy. Using historical institutionalism and the concept of pressure points, we analyse Swedish adult education policy from the late 1950s onward. We show how its adult education system, shaped by both economic and social demands, emerged and has remained largely intact despite grand societal changes and political shifts. At the same time, evolving policies have paved the way for private providers within welfare services, hybridising the Swedish welfare-state-model.
2025-06-15
Emilia Mazurek
The aim of this study was to identify how young adults position themselves in relation to family stories for better understanding the dynamics of continuity and discontinuity in the process of becoming adults. The qualitative research was conducted in Poland. Author’s family narrative sheet was used for data collection. A total of 54 participants aged 19 to 25 were enrolled. Three types of family narratives were recalled by participants, which correspond to the levels in the ecological systems model by Robyn Fivush and Natalie Merrill. Four strategies of self-positioning towards them were identified: construction, co-construction, negotiation, and rejection. The results could be used to support families in deepening relationships through encouraging storytelling. On the other hand, they could help in avoiding idealization of family storytelling and the recognition of young adults’ freedom to re-position themselves towards family stories, myths and legends in order to build their own ideas, values, identities.
2025-06-11
Przemyslaw Szczygiel, Piotr Kowzan
The article examines the concept of competences from a critical perspective. The authors begin with an analysis of the dominant competences discourse, highlighting its limitations in times of polycrises. They propose the concept of wild competences, acquired through collective actions. These competences are both individual and collective in nature. Unlike traditional competences focused on adaptation within neoliberal frameworks, wild competences are subversive, enabling social actors to destabilise hierarchies, challenge the status quo, and initiate transformative actions. The analysis explores three aspects of wild competences: their foundation for reflexive action, their role in the laboratory of emancipation, and their contribution to reconstructing social orders. Wild competences thus provide alternative pathways for societal change and democratic engagement.
2025-05-11
Bernd Käpplinger
This paper revisits a theoretical paper on quality published in the adult education journal RELA in 2011. It analyses the relationship between quality management and professionalisation in Germany, drawing on empirical studies conducted after 2011. The diverse and sometimes ambivalent results demonstrate that there is still a conflation of quality management and professionalisation, with the latter occasionally taking a dominant position. Nevertheless, bridges and mutual benefits between both logics are also observed. One significant finding is that the landscape of quality management is not solely determined by external forces such as policies and other professions. The role of trained educators is also crucial and perhaps relatively more important than other professions and disciplines.
2025-04-06
Paulina Beatriz Chavez Rodriguez, Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret, Tero Järvinen
This article aims to advance a critical understanding of language learning and identity negotiations among adult immigrants. Through Bonny Norton’s (2013) theoretical lens of ‘identity as a site of struggle’, we argue that immigrants often find themselves in contradictory positions assigned through unequal power relations because of their inadequacy in using the local language. Using narrative positioning analysis, we explore the ways in which highly educated adult immigrants in Finland negotiate their identities through Finnish language learning. Our data consists of initial interviews from a longitudinal study with seven adult immigrants who participated in Finnish Integration Training. Our findings show how the acts of identity negotiations referred to three specific types of ‘struggles’: struggle for recognition of competence; resistance against immigrant stereotypes; and the balancing act of parenthood in a multilingual context. These negotiations highlight difficulties and inequalities adult immigrants face, but also their empowerment through language learning.
2025-02-13
Brigitte Kukovetz, Annette Sprung, Petra Wlasak
In response to the growing heterogenous populations in urban areas, and the important role of civic engagement and active citizenship for the promotion of democratic processes, this paper discusses the active participation of resident foreign citizens and/or persons with a history of migration, in urban areas. The theoretical connections between active citizenship, lived citizenship and civic learning are outlined and then linked with the results of an applied research project focused on various aspects of gender. In conclusion, active – lived – citizenship, in particular ‘performative’ acts of citizenship, generate civic learning as subjectification. Public spaces as learning opportunities for active engagement should take into account aspects of diversity as well as inequalities in a diverse society in order to promote inclusion and democracy for as many residents as possible regardless of their citizenship status.
2025-02-13
Laura Formenti, Davide Cino, Francesca Loberto
This paper presents a critical literature review on the systemic interconnections between ageing, learning, and care. Using the lenses of complexity and interdisciplinarity, we analysed a sample of 62 papers published between 2003 and 2022, examining their reference to micro, meso and/or macro levels, theoretical depth, and use of complexity as a sensitizing concept to understand implications for learning and transformation as structural features of an ageing society. Our analysis highlighted the role of different settings of care (formal, informal, and technology-mediated) in shaping, enhancing, or hindering meaning, well-being, and social justice for older learners and their caregivers, and the implications for society at large. Findings suggest a gap in the examined literature regarding the use of complexity theories to highlight self-organisation, interdependence, and co-evolution of individual and systemic learning. A theoretical interdisciplinary framework, we contend, would better mirror the multiple factors and levels entailed in the process of ageing.
2025-02-13
Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert, Chad Hoggan, Nicole Luthardt
This article explores the role of adult education in supporting democracy through an examination of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) (1949-1990). This case study presents the institutional landscape, political regulations, and key trends of adult education in the GDR, complemented by insights from educators who worked within the field during the 1970s through 1990s. Two key categories emerge from the findings: (1) ‘Learning society’: Opportunities, access, and control of learning; and (2) Coexistence of conformity and resistance. Interviews highlight the diverse aspects of adult education in the GDR. While some programmes facilitated access to education, culture, and certain professions that would have otherwise been unattainable, the indoctrinative, centralised, and state-controlled education system promoted a predefined societal model and sought to mould a specific personality type, aligning with the vision of a totalitarian learning society, which clashes with the fundamental values of adult education and creates a contradictory situation for adult educators.
2025-02-13
Arnd-Michael Nohl
This paper presents for discussion two empirically grounded theses. First, political actors educate adults, and second, in doing so, they use directive forms of education; that is, they expect adult members of society to adopt certain orientations. Following a theoretical discussion on the directive education concept and its relevance to public pedagogy, the methodology (discourse analysis and documentary method) is explained. Then, three approaches to directive adult education demonstrated by political actors are empirically analysed: (1) directive political education is employed by political party leaders when, in the face of a potential U-turn of their party, they try to change the core political convictions of party supporters; (2) newcomers to society are directively educated to adopt democratic role orientations; and (3) in social fields in which practices are standardised by laws but cannot sufficiently be controlled, directive education for the common good can be observed. These types of directive education used by political actors are discussed vis-à-vis the concepts of paternalism and pedagogization.
2024-10-14
Maja Maksimovic
This study seeks to investigate the potential evolution of education when integrated with place, addressing socio-ecological degeneration. Special attention is given to art education, which not only views places as learning locations but also recognizes the material and relational aspects of a place’s ecology as having epistemic value. The inquiry into art education practices delves beyond art-based methods and draws on the rich tradition of place-based practices. To illustrate the contribution of art education to sustainability, the study examines the collaborative project ‘Full Line, Broken Line: The Future of Liminal Landscapes’ in Serbia, focusing on disrupted landscapes near Belgrade. This insight into how investigation and learning about a locality can elicit memories and interpretations through the lens of absence demonstrates the importance of the interaction of temporal and spatial dimensions when learning about what is lost and the possibility for renewal.
2024-05-02
Petya Ilieva-Trichkova, Pepka Boyadjieva
The article uses insights from the capability approach as a theoretical framework. It investigates the potential of higher education to provide fertile advantages regarding young adults’ participation in nonformal education and whether this potential is bounded by people’s individual characteristics and the wider social context in which they live. Applying descriptive statistics and multilevel modelling, we conducted a secondary data analysis of the Adult Education Survey for 29 European countries. The findings go beyond previous research by clearly demonstrating that the fertile advantages of higher education regarding participation in adult nonformal education are not absolute and straightforward. They are bounded not only by certain important individual characteristics (such as individuals’ social background and household income) but are also context-dependent. More concretely, they differ among countries and depend on various country-level factors, such as level of innovation and economic growth.
2024-02-12
Samantha Jane Broadhead, Sharon Hooper
This article considers an arts-based project, Learning Returns (2023), that seeks to capture the experiences of adults who have returned to arts study after some time away from formal education. The aims of the project are twofold: firstly, to evaluate the combination of narrative inquiry and digital film-making hosted on YouTube as a method of investigating adult learning and secondly, through an analysis of the Learning Returns content, to discover what themes the participants considered important to communicate to an imagined, virtual audience. The findings suggested that the aesthetics of the videos/films interconnect with the lived experiences of the participants. The participants were able to give an account of their experiences spontaneously, and at the same time communicate messages of hope to prospective adult returners. It was also discovered that the editing process offers a means of analysing the content of the films that is analogous to the approaches associated with qualitative research.
2024-02-12
José González-Monteagudo, Teresa Padilla-Carmona, María A. Tenorio-Rodríguez
This paper investigates the characteristics and both material and emotional costs of upward social mobility through university education in Spain and the Dominican Republic. A comparative qualitative study has been carried out, based on biographical-narrative interviews, with a sample of 6 Dominican students and 9 Spanish students coming from an economically disadvantaged background. The results show the social mobility experiences and expectations of the participants and their families, with different nuances in the two contexts. The need to combine study with work is one of the main costs of university. The primary coping strategy in both countries is material and symbolic family support, but additional coping mechanisms to persist in studies are also evident. The conclusions highlight both the perspectives developed by the participants and the critical role of structural dimensions (social background, national context, recent history, economy, social values, culture, religious beliefs) in understanding their experiences in the university context.
2024-02-12
José Pedro Amorim, Felismina Viterbo
With this text, we try to understand if – and if so, how – mature students are represented by and in the governing bodies of higher education institutions. With a theoretical framework that values above all the institutional dimension, we carried out thirteen semi-structured interviews with students and faculty members who are part of the various governing bodies with student representation of a Portuguese higher education institution. The data show that (i) the functioning of these bodies tends to be known only by the students who participate in them, (ii) the bodies usually react to, rather than prevent, the problems that arise, (iii) mature students are perceived as a source of ‘difficulties’ and ‘needs’, and (iv) student representation in governing bodies does not seem to fairly and equitably represent all students, and some specificities of mature students (among other underrepresented groups) seem to be made invisible .
2023-10-12
Jakob Bickeböller
Using the perspective of neo-institutionalism and institutional logics, this article examines regional networks in the field of literacy and basic education. The goal of the analysis is to identify different forms of community-logics within two actor constellations. For this purpose, two regions are focused within a multiple-case study design. The empirical approach is based on interviews with experts from the field of literacy and basic education. The Interviews are evaluated qualitatively. The interview material will be used to identify different logics of communities in the regions and to examine the contexts in which actors orient themselves to the different logics. It becomes clear that communities in adult basic education are constituted on the basis of both geographical and content related aspects. By becoming a member of the communities, the actors benefit from various advantages. This collaboration ultimately enables the social participation and inclusion of the low-literate in the regions.
2023-02-13
Astrid von Kotze, Shirley Walters
The climate catastrophe is a clarion call to humanity to change how we live. How do radical popular educators respond to this call? We ‘join the dots’ using climate justice, ecofeminism and our own insights from our engaged activist scholarship as theoretical positions to explore this question. Dominant Western worldviews which separate humans from other life forms contribute to ecological degradation. For climate justice, this hard-wired worldview needs to be disrupted. Drawing on multiple examples from Africa, we conclude that ways to do this require the foregrounding of cognitive justice which includes recognising the validity of multiple knowledges, learning from others and supporting communities’ in their struggles for reparation, reclamation and conservation of their land. These actions can be amplified in engagements which disrupt the unsustainable behaviour and policies of the wealthy. We argue that radical popular education in these times is climate just and ecofeminist.
2023-02-13
Lyn Tett
This article investigates if health inequalities can be reduced using popular education (PE) methods. It argues that, although ill health may be experienced as a private trouble, it is embedded in broader social and political processes and should be seen as a public issue. It illuminates this concept of health by using student writings from the Health Issues in the Community (HIIC) project. These writings illustrate the impact of unemployment, lack of facilities, food poverty etc. on people’s physical and mental health and the action they have taken to challenge and reduce these inequalities. It is argued that PE contributes to human flourishing, but the educator must resist the power they have to steer students in particular directions. It concludes that whilst PE cannot abolish health inequalities, HIIC participants have taken small steps to change existing realities and so have challenged oppressive social relations.
2023-02-13
Mai Atta, John Holst
The field of Adult Education is rich with general theories of learning but limited in terms of theories that inform social movement learning (SML). Today, there are several conceptualizations of SML, but little learning theory development based directly on empirical studies of SML. This article aims to present findings from a systematic literature review of empirical studies on social movement learning (SML). We collected and identified 69 empirical studies focusing on adult learning and education within social movements for this literature review. We purposely focused on empirical research studies and did not include works that conceptualise or theorise social movement learning outside of actual empirical studies of SML. From our review of empirical studies, we have identified five elements we believe could serve as the foundation of a theory of learning and education in social movements.
2023-02-13
Piotr Kowzan
In this article, the protest songs of teachers on strike were analysed as a traditional pedagogical tool of popular education, social movements, and trade unions. An important context for this was the commodification of the entertainment market, expectations towards the teaching profession, and the state of musical competencies in the population. By identifying what the essence of teaching in the teachers' protest songs was, recommendations for making these activities more educational and politically more effective have been presented. The songs might have played a role in the demise of the strike, in the specific political context, described in the paper. Using the comparisons of teachers to animals by the teachers themselves was a common, but risky tactic.
2023-01-31
Bernd Käpplinger, Ralf St. Clair
Beginning with Boeren’s (2018) or Rubenson and Elfert’s (2019) claims of under-recognition of quantitative methodology in adult education, authors use the ecological niche from biology as a metaphorical and heuristic model in order to consider the mechanisms determining the viability of research methodologies in education for adults. The authors discuss ecosystem factors affecting research methodologies and consider the situations of Germany and Canada to illustrate application of the niche metaphor. The conclusion stresses the complementary relevance and integrative value of different forms of research. Addressing diverse questions requires diverse methodologies and a rich ecosystem of resources and research capabilities.
2022-10-12
Jenni Koski, Kaisa Pihlainen
The participation and meaningful engagement of older people are strongly supported because of their individual and communal benefits. Currently there is a lack of general understanding of how older people participate in research activities. The purpose of this review was to examine the ways older people participate in learning studies. A search of abstracts of empirical studies published in English was conducted in three databases between 2015 and 2019 using scoping review methodology. The results showed that most often older people did participate as study subjects in clinical studies. Other participant roles included informants, partners, and multiple roles. The review addressed a paucity in qualitative and participatory roles in older people’s learning studies. All participant roles are still needed to provide various standpoints for learning studies. Further studies are suggested to provide various meaningful and participatory ways for older people to get involved in research activities.
2022-03-06
Clara Kuhlen, Regina Egetenmeyer
The paper provides an analysis of the categories of distinction seized by programme planners in adult and continuing education and the underlying reasoning arguments to reasoning them. The analysis of 14 interviews shows that in their target group orientation, programme planners make use of the categories gender, migration experience, age, educational needs and dis/ability. The categories of distinction are based on their attribution as individual characteristics, as characteristics for grouping individuals, as characteristics of shared expectations and as occupation- and employment-related characteristics. The findings point to a need for encouraging awareness and critical reflection about categories of distinction.
2022-02-07
Przemyslaw Szczygiel
The aim of this article is to show the learning potential of participation in protests in the narratives of several adults. Participation in rebellions is seen as a specific learning experience here. What is the relationship between experience and learning on the example of participation in rebellions? The author analyses this relationship, inter alia, on the example of critical practices described by Usher. This article is a part of a broader research project on learning mechanisms of adults participating in various forms of rebellion. The study is concerned with answering the questions: what and how do protesters learn? what are the social and cultural mechanisms of their learning? In this research project a biographical perspective was used. Within it, the biography is understood in a processual way. The biographical method focuses on the subjective level of experience in the socio-cultural and institutional context. The empirical material was analysed by searching for similarities and differences in rebels’ narratives. The results of the study are above all the identification of learning outcomes and identity-building processes.
2022-01-20
Elena Pont, Isabelle Collet
We have recently completed doctoral research on the reconstruction of paraplegic men’s and women’s vocational trajectories in French-speaking Switzerland. Based on three female informants’ life narratives, we analyse issues of gendered vocational guidance, pathways and identities in paraplegic people’s life courses. We shape some emancipating experience models and discourses about action, which empower the female informants on their vocational pathways. Our objective is here to point to the potential support that an emancipatory, feminist pedagogical approach could offer paraplegic women in the further development of personal models, and discourses of self in the conduct of their educational and vocational life.
2021-11-29
Halliki Põlda, Katrin Karu, Riina Reinsalu
Non-formal education is the central standpoint and practice of lifelong learning. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the possibilities of construing the meaning of non-formal education through practitioners’ conceptions in Estonia. At the same time, we show how non-formal education practice can enrich other types of education and how these principles may be more widely applied in formal education as well. The current research based on metaphor analysis draws on the materials collected in focus group interviews with practitioners (n=17). Analysis revealed that practitioners describe non-formal education as a cooperational journey of discovery which requires effort, concentrates on development and is related to emotions, play and creativity. At the same time, non-formal education is defined through metaphors of cultural symbols and open space. The diverse opportunities of non-formal education create the basis for choices and tolerance to differences, whereas the emergence of border area metaphors confirms the deep rooted idea that non-formal education’s place lies in between different types of education.
2021-11-10
Elena Ignatovich, Pierre Walter
This paper explores the construction of a Soviet learning society represented in Soviet political posters during the first decade after the 1917 Socialist Revolution. The theoretical framework is based on studies of learning societies, lifelong education and learning, Soviet education, and the theory of multiple modernities. We employed a post-structuralist discourse analysis that allowed us to explore verbal and non-verbal poster elements to identify key domains in the construction of the Soviet learning society. Our study identified six main discursive visual and textual messages in political posters as educational devices in the development of the Socialist learning state. Findings show that learning was embedded in broader social, political, economic and cultural practices and took multiple forms. Political posters served multiple functions: they were motivators for learning, learning devices, means to communicate the Soviet party-state agenda, and part of the social-political and cultural curriculum of the learning society to come.
2021-10-14
Claudia Kulmus
This paper discusses the potential that coping with ageing experiences in later life might have for dealing with the current Covid-19-pandemic. The paper is based on the results of a qualitative study on subjective ageing experiences and the respective coping strategies of older people. The study is based on subject-obnderlying social structures. (e.g. BMBF, 2010). A qualitative research design was developed using the method of group discussions. The data gathered in these discussions were evaluated based on the approach of grounded theory. The results of this study are discussed regarding the ways in which the coping strategies of the participants revealed the specific abilities of older people to manage crisis experiences. The findings offer new perspectives on improving current images of ageing.