Marcella Milana

Adult and lifelong education: the European Union, its member states and the world

For two decades, the European Union has been at the forefront of international policy-making on lifelong learning. From the European Commission’s white papers on Growth, Competitiveness, Employment (Commission of the European Communities [CEC], 1993), and Teaching and Learning: Towards a Learning Society (CEC, 1995), and its adoption of 1996 as the ‘European Year of Lifelong Learning’, the EU has developed lifelong learning as an important policy tool. When a major world power—albeit not a nation-state as such—espouses adult and lifelong education as a vehicle for its political, economic and social aims, we should expect scholars of adult education, of education more generally, and indeed of social policy in general, to take note. Perhaps (as Holford & Mlezcko, 2013 suggest) a little belatedly, they have. A little unevenly too: the development has been noticed more by educational than by social policy researchers. But although ‘lifelong learning’ has been more and more present in EU policy language since the mid-1990s, what the term has meant has been far from static. It has also varied both between countries—EU member states and others —and within them, and not always in exactly the same ways. Even within a single state, its policy significance can vary by sector, or between jurisdictions—as it

Widening participation, social mobility and the role of universities in a globalized world

A university education has long been seen as the gateway to upward social mobility for individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds in countries the world over, and a well-educated working population is presented as a pathway to national prosperity for both developed and developing nations alike (e.g. Leitch, 2006). Given the higher number of socially advantaged young people who have traditionally entered university then, which in many developed nations has effectively been at saturation point, any expansion in numbers of higher education students must be achieved by broadening the social base of the undergraduate population, or ‘widening participation’ as it is usually known. The so-called ‘widening participation agenda’ has been driven by the twin objectives of social justice for the individual and greater economic prosperity for the wider society, objectives that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Political rhetoric and media discourse have supported and reinforced these notions, and government policy in the developed world has, at least until relatively recently in the last half century or so, sought to ensure the expansion of higher education (e.g. Dearing, 1997; Robbins, 1963). At the heart of this policy is the need to reach out to people from social groups not traditionally associated with university study (Milburn, 2009; National Audit Office [NAO], 2002). This social justice project continues to be supported by recent national and international initiatives since the financial crash of 2008. The 2011 UK Government White Paper Students at the Heart of the System, (BIS, 2011) for instance, suggested that ‘... widening participation for students of all backgrounds remains a key strategic objective for all higher education institutions’. Whilst in Europe, the position is also similar, the Bucharest Communique (European Higher Education Area [EHEA], 2012) suggesting that ‘(T)he student body entering and graduating from higher education institutions should reflect the diversity of Europe’s populations’. Readers of this journal will have their own interpretations of what such laudable declarations may mean in practice (e.g. see Holford’s article in this issue) and that will vary from not just regional, national or continental perspectives, but also in terms of other ‘demographic’ factors impacting upon groups of individuals, including gender, ethnicity, dis/ability, social class, religion, sexuality, rural/urban locality and, perhaps most pertinently in the pages of IJLE, age.

Promoting Democratic Citizenship Through Non‐Formal Adult Education: The Case of Denmark

The article presents selected findings from in‐depth case studies of two non‐formal learning activities organized by the Danish Folk High Schools and Day High Schools, respectively. The purpose of the empirical study was to investigate how longstanding, non‐formal, adult education institutions have worked to foster the acquisition of civic competencies among young adults, and thus contributed to learning for democratic citizenship. The analysis highlights that negotiation of meaning is never value‐free; nonetheless teachers play a key role in securing a learning environment that allows for a multiplicity of views to be expressed and mutually recognized. Furthermore, the communication flow between learning institutions and the public sphere constitutes a crucial dimension for raising students’ awareness of societal matters at both local and global level. The authors argue that, despite the particularity of the socio‐cultural context that characterised the study, the above mentioned dimensions are of general interest for those involved in designing and managing learning activities for democratic citizenship in varying contexts.

Debating Global Polity, Policy Crossing, and Adult Education

This article revisits the concept of “global polity” as a useful conceptual tool for studying public policy development in adult education. First, it describes the relations between polity, policy, and praxis and how these are addressed in adult education research. Then, it reviews how policy is conceptualized in terms of material and ideational crossing as well as of social and political crossing. Next, the article advocates integrating these perspectives with an actor-network “sensitivity” to better capture the complexity of the global-local tensions between polity, policy, and the practices these shape in diverse socioeconomic and political systems. Put briefly, the article argues for the need to deconstruct the false belief in education that what is “global” is intrinsically distinct from the characteristics of geographical or social territories; instead, it points to localized norms and ideas as ultimately contained and constituting what is (often) perceived as global.

Global perspectives on adult education and learning policy

Most observers regard both adult and higher education as key for citizenship and democracy yet the worldwide contexts, appearance and expression of adult education and lifelong learning have changed significantly during the past 20 years. Focusing on ten countries (Scotland, Czech Republic, USA, Brazil, Mexico, Botswana, Ghana, Palestine, South Korea and India) and five international organisations, this book explores recent changes in their overall contexts and policies about adult education, how such polic ies intersect with developments in higher education and how they may contribute to debates on citizenship and democracy. It highlights several significant shifts: increased awareness of the role of adult education/lifelong learning in enhancing economic growth and social cohesion and mobility, challenging economic and social exclusion and inequality, and developing human and social capital; increased involvement of transnational bodies; pressure for increased global and national co-operation and competition between educational sectors and institutions; and demand for more integrated, accessible, relevant and accountable educational systems and processes.

Incentives and Disincentives to Invest in Human Resources

The Memorandum on lifelong learning invites to increase investment in human resources as, at an individual level, the acquisition of skills and knowledge increases a person’s productive value, an idea that is grounded in human capital (HC) theory, and which still informs much of the debate in adult education today. This chapter critically examines the arrangements that European governments have put into place to encourage employers to invest in education and training and reflects on the potential benefits and limitations of the HC paradigm. The main argument presented in this chapter is that higher investment in the education and training of workers, although important, is not sufficient. Accordingly, it is suggested that institutional or legislative arrangements that favour human resource management strategies built on a shared social commitment towards employee development are the most beneficial not only to encourage employer expenditure on employee training but also to enable individuals to gain a better return on investment in education and training.

The MOOC phenomenon: toward lifelong education for all?

In one of his more technologically determined moments, Marx famously remarked that ‘[t]he hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steammill society with the industrial capitalist’ (Marx, 1963/1847, p. 109). Education, no less than society as a whole, has been shaped by technology: writing, the codex, paper, the printing press, the blackboard, the slate, the epidiascope, the fountain pen—all have very clearly shaped how knowledge was developed and disseminated, and how people could study and learn. In an age of Powerpoint, the Internet, Skype and the ‘virtual classroom’, the importance of technology for education is of course, a truism. Yet, perhaps strangely, specifically ‘educational’ technologies have always been of quite minor significance—certainly for adult and lifelong education—when set beside broader technological developments. Many years ago, Harrison (1961) showed how the development of railways made university adult education possible in nineteenth-century Britain. Correspondence courses everywhere have relied on cheap paper, cheap printing, and—probably most of all—universal and efficient postal services. The British government’s original name for the Open University, A University of the Air (Department of Education and Science [DES], 1966), reflected its reliance on radio and television. While the power of technology to shape education is not in doubt, exactly how it does so is a matter of constant debate. Most new technologies have their evangelists, though many have proven false prophets. Educational history is peppered with technologies whose impact was far smaller, or more transient, than their advocates expected; likewise, there are many examples of technologies whose impact came only after a ‘lag’ of years or decades. To take an extreme example, libraries’ pedagogical role in universities changed when printing made books cheaper and more plentiful—but not ‘until more than two and a half centuries after the introduction of print’ (Moodie, 2014, p. 457). The most recent objects of adoration among technological evangelists are ‘MOOCs’—Massive Open Online Courses. They will, we are told, change education out of recognition: partly by the new opportunities they present and partly by their threat to existing institutions, systems and structures. The authors of An Avalanche is Coming, for instance, have assured us that MOOCs both threaten ‘traditional 20th century universities’ which ‘don’t change radically’, and offer them ‘huge opportunities ... if they do’ (Barber, Donnelly, & Rizvi, 2013, p. 3).

Neo-liberalism and the shifting discourse of ‘educational fairness’

This editorial picks up and develops an issue we explored a year ago (Waller, Holford, Jarvis, Milana, & Webb, 2014), in an editorial on the role of universities in widening participation in education and (generally upward) social mobility in the globalized world. Commentators in the global north have noted a recent shift in both governmental rhetoric and policy direction on the role of education in social change. The movement has essentially been from education policies designed to help the many (e.g. for socially disadvantaged groups to access higher education), to those designed to help a very select (and generally more capable) few; that is, to permit just ‘the best and the brightest’ from that background to enter a ‘top university’ and be the beneficiaries of the trappings of career success. We seek here to identify how it came to be that, for much of the developed world in particular, the discourse and policy shift around educational fairness has changed since the turn of the Millennium, and in particular since the global economic crisis of 2008 onwards, from seeking a wide-ranging good of ‘social justice’ to a narrower target of ‘social mobility’ for a far smaller number. A leading writer on education and economic development, Shirley Walters (2014, p. 186), recently suggested ‘Learning has become an individualized and increasingly expensive possession’ that can be traded in the market place with growing ease. This is true both nationally and internationally as globalization leads to enhanced opportunities to study or gain employment abroad for those unencumbered by family commitments or other constraints. However, this process is not open to all citizens equally, leading to a widening gap between rich and poor, both internationally and within any given economy or society. Most developed societies are becoming economically more polarized despite politicians and commentators paying lip service to notions of greater equality—see the clamour to publicly support if not actually implement policy to advance the ideas of The Spirit Level for instance (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). Individuals with significant levels of initial education are able to pursue opportunities for lifelong learning far more readily than those with little or inadequate formal education. This enhances competition for increasingly scarce resources such as opportunities for educational experiences and qualifications. Most commentators, and in particular those from the political left, suggest the current world system of exchange is a ‘neoliberal’ capitalist one, which Flew

Global policy agencies and visions for twenty-first century lifelong education

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has recently published a vision for education for the twenty-first century Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good? (2015). Building on the spirit of two previous landmark UNESCO publications, Learning to Be: The World of Education Today and Tomorrow (1972), known as the Faure Report, and Learning: The treasure within (1996), the Delors Report, this latest text claims connections to the earlier policies and poses new questions and concepts to inspire debate and dialogue relevant to present contexts. In keeping with one of UNESCO’s main tasks as a global observatory of social transformation and stimulating public debate, the text is scholarly, as well as provocative. The process of producing the text appears to have modelled the iterative exchange of ideas that the observatory hopes will develop among education stakeholders following its publication. A core group of international experts under the co-chairs of Ms. Amina J. Mohammed and Professor W. John Morgan ensured the inclusion of perspectives from people located in Europe, the Middle East, Central America, India and Japan, whilst the wider group included people not only from these locations, but also from North America, Korea and Hong Kong. The structure of the text also demonstrates that the writers valued the need to discuss and understand the experiences of different educational settings and contexts using the format of boxed inserts to illustrate and discuss examples of research and practise from different parts of the world. Surprisingly though, given the rise of the newly advanced economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, few or no international experts were involved in the text production from some of these BRIC countries. Nevertheless, given that it is more than three decades since this global policy agency (UNESCO) provided a review and vision for the purposes of education, the question is: Will this text become top reading for policy developers, researchers and practitioners or will it be largely ignored? Among researchers, the study of how education policies travel from one context to another has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent academic research. Globalization has been associated with an increase in policy travelling, prompting researchers to question how education policies become borrowed, lent or modified across national contexts (Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). Additionally, researchers have asked whether the nation state is the most appropriate unit of analysis for understanding education policy (Lingard & Rawolle,

The Palgrave International Handbook on Adult and Lifelong Education and Learning

This Handbook provides a wide-ranging frame of reference for researching adult and lifelong education and learning. With contributions from scores of established and newer scholars from six continents, the volume covers a diverse range of geopolitical and social territories across the world. Drawing on the multiple heritages that underpin research on education and learning in adulthood, this Handbook addresses the inner tensions between adult education, adult learning, lifelong education, and lifelong learning, by using current research and theorizations from disciplinary backgrounds, including philosophy, psychology, biology and neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, history, political science, and economics. It provides an explicit discussion of the differences and tensions between adult and lifelong education and learning, and locates these in different policy and historical contexts, theories and practices. It explores a variety of discipline-based theoretical perspectives, and highlights how these have influenced, and been influenced by, research in the education and learning of adults. The Handbook also explores the inevitable frictions and dilemmas these present, and carefully examines the role of the international dimension in researching education and learning in formal, non-formal and informal contexts, beyond traditional schooling. This state-of-the-art, comprehensive Handbook is the first of its kind to explore adult education, lifelong education and lifelong learning fully as distinct activities on an international scale. It will be an indispensable reference resource for students of education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and for academic researchers, professionals and policy-makers concerned with adult and community education, further and vocational education, or work-based training and human resource development.