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 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 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 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 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 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…

This chapter focuses on the growth, influence and complexity of policy instruments supporting the data generation governance mechanism. It reviews the historical development of educational indicators to illustrate the difficulty of defining and 'translating' social issues into measurable variables and the possible effects of their use, overuse or…

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 Youth Guarantee (YG) as a quick response to youth unemployment in Bulgaria. It analyses the use of financial mechanisms for tackling social challenges and governing policy in adult education. The chapter draws attention to governance structure, management and financial flows within the YG to show how the results of policy…

This chapter focuses on Education and Training 2020 (ET 2020), a significant European policy framework that provides an integrated approach to education and training. The chapter identifies the main governance mechanisms and policy instruments used by the European Union (EU) institutions within ET 2020 that lead to increased domestic policy…

This chapter focuses on the analysis of the European Youth Strategy (2018) and its historical antecedents, which have been defining the policy priorities for European youth since the early 2000s. Through the examination of the changing policy objectives in the youth field, the chapter traces how the policy instruments utilised by the European…