Citizenship education played a crucial role in the 19th century transition from royal sovereignty to democracy in the Nordic region, with folk high schools (FHS) playing an important role. While established to empower the people ("folk") for active participation in society, the contemporary folk high schools have reoriented from their…

World-renowned educational theorist Paulo Freire has a decades-long legacy reaching all corners of the world. In this reception study, we ask, is there a Nordic Freire, that is, have the Nordic educators and scholars recognized Paulo Freire's works in the past decades? Our reception study's purpose is not to go into depth to Freire's thinking but…

This article analyses the role of the cooperation with and the influence of the Nordic countries on the development of a democratic society in Lithuania through adult education since the reinstatement of its independence from Soviet regime in March 1990 to the present. The authors focus on three main areas: (1) the training of Lithuanian adult…

Previous Nordic migration and minority studies focus little on who produces research about migration and migrant education and in what ways. In contrast, by inquiring into how migrants and researchers themselves as knowing subjects are constituted through research and educational practices, this article seeks to destabilize established modes of…

We examine if the OECD survey of adult skills, PIAAC, can provide information about the relative quality of education and training in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We find that the average population scores are inappropriate while the mean scores of natives well approximate the skills of individuals that had the chance to attend the…

This article presents part of a larger study on potential relations between democracy and numeracy and mathematics teaching for adults. This study is motivated by the many challenges to democratic institutions and democratic values at local, national and international levels that I have observed in recent years. In this article. I go back to the…

Adult Education has many values, including experiences and co-operation among people, and the fact that adult education is full of stories from adult educators, which can help to understand trends in the past and developments in the present. Established in 1991 as part of a more general regional cooperation among five Nordic and three Baltic…

This report looks at the impact of the business cycle on participation in adult learning in the EU-27 using aggregate quarterly country level data for the period 2005Q1-2019Q4. Data come from the EU Labour Force Survey. Although downturns may give individuals more incentives and more time to update their skills and knowledge, their ability to pay…

In this study we examine the long-term impact of second chance education (SCE) on incomes of poorly educated individuals who live in Sweden but were not born in a Nordic country, using data on income changes from 1992 to 2003 compiled by Statistics Sweden. Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses show that participation in SCE increased the work…

The centrality of the users as partners in quality development is highlighted in official documents on career guidance, such as the EU Resolutions on Lifelong Guidance from 2004 and 2008. In addition, increased numbers of scholars in the field of organisational development and public service innovation highlight the importance of user…

This study explored drivers of participation in job-related lifelong learning (LLL) among low-educated mature-aged employees and compared them across four Nordic countries. Workplaces can be low-threshold, effective arenas for development of their skills in work and learning. The paper builds on the Bounded Agency Model and theories of learning…

This article tells the extraordinary story of the cooperation among adult educators in five Nordic and three Baltic countries (NB8) which began in 1991--the year when Latvia regained its independence. According to individuals who experienced the evolution of this cooperation from the beginning and were actively involved in the process of…

The article contributes to the academic discussion on Paulo Freire's pedagogical thinking as a basis for reinventing contemporary non-formal education. In Finland, Freire's transformational/liberatory theory of adult learning was applied as a framework for developing an adult educational model called Life Skills for All. The pilot project's case…

In this article, we develop a framework that demonstrates how older adults need to develop diverse capabilities in relation to their educational life course through engagements in Nordic museums, archives and street art activities. We discuss how European museums have taken up UNESCO's approach to lifelong learning as a way to conceptualise…

Citizens need to be college prepared in higher numbers and with greater urgency than in the past. This growing need for a college-prepared workforce places increased demand on schools to create college-ready students. The Career and College Readiness Standards for much of public education foster the skills and dispositions for academic excellence,…