This book examines access, lifelong learning and education for all, which have been policy preoccupations in all countries for more than half a century, but have been overlaid and pushed aside by the development of mass higher education. The authors examine what has been achieved, what lessons have been learnt and what still remains to be done,…

This open access book challenges international policy 'groupthink' about lifelong learning. Adult learning -- too long a servant of business competitiveness -- should be reimagined as central to democratic society. Young adults, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, engage more in education and training, and learn more day-to-day at work, if…

This book presents and advocates for a framework of competing epistemologies and conceptions of ethics as a way of understanding modernist lifelong learning. These epistemologies are grounded in a recognition of the normative nature of knowledge that informs lifelong learning; each being framed by a different account of the sort of knowledge that…

This open access book explores different landscapes of Lifelong Learning policies (LLP), producing case-based examinations of their institutional, discursive, and relational dimensions. Across Europe, young people develop their life courses amidst diverse living conditions and are confronted with a variety of institutional and structural…

This book explores the potential for lifelong learning in dementia. A growing social issue, dementia has previously been understood as a wasteland for learning: at best, those with dementia are helped to hold on to some pre-existing skills. This book draws on extensive qualitative data with people with dementia and their families to demonstrate…

This book explores new and distinctive forms of higher vocational education across the globe, and asks how the sector is changing in response to the demands of the 21st century. These new forms of education respond to two key policy concerns: an emphasis on high skills as a means to achieve economic competitiveness, and the promise of open access…

This book examines the development of British post-Second World War short-term residential adult education, through the lens of the Shropshire Adult Education College (1948-1976) and the tenure of Sir George Trevelyan as its first warden. Trevelyan is acknowledged as the godfather of new-age spiritualism in the UK and is credited with the…

This book explores European governance and policy coordination within lifelong learning markets. Using an instruments approach, the editors and contributors examine the ways in which governance mechanisms employed by the European Union influence policy to regulate lifelong learning, and intervene in lifelong learning markets, at both European and…

This book re-imagines the essence and role of adult education at both the individual and societal levels. It provides arguments for understanding adult education as a process of agency and empowerment, which has not only instrumental but intrinsic and transformative roles to play. This book brings together ideas from the capability approach with…

This chapter explores the impact of Upskilling Pathways (UP), a developing European programme adopted by the European Council in 2016. UP targets all people over 25 who may be in employment, or unemployed, or economically inactive, but require uplifting in literacy, numeracy and digital skills. This is at a time when 73 million adults have low…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore teen-adult dialogic interactions during the co-design of data literacy activities in order to determine the nature of teen thinking, their emotions, level of engagement, and the power of relationships between teens and adults in the context of data literacy. This study conceives of co-design as a…

This chapter outlines the instruments approach to studying European governance used in this book. It draws from public administration, political science and public policy literature that (1) evaluates the effects of policy instruments, (2) appreciates the choice of policy instruments and (3) unpacks the process through which policy instrumentation…

This chapter focuses on the Renewed European Agenda on Adult Learning and elucidates the three substantive authoritative functions (i.e. legal, epistemic and procedural) it performs to ease European governance in the adult education policy domain. It traces the development of the European policy objectives in the area of adult learning and the…

This chapter focuses on the European Semester and its yearly cycle of policy coordination of fiscal and macroeconomic policies within the European Union (EU). It traces the shifts that occurred through the first codification of the European Semester in 2011, and up to 2018, from softer to more binding procedures, which set the EU agenda well…

This contribution focuses on Austria and its response to Youth Guarantee (YG) by explaining the reasons of the Austrian government not to participate in the YG, but to continue using a significant part of ESF funding for the 2014-2020 period for programmes with a high intake of young adults. This chapter therefore explores the specifics of an…