Full Description
Adult and Lifelong Education explores why politicians, researchers, and practitioners involved in educating post-school young people and adults have quietly abandoned the term 'education' in favour of 'learning'. Bringing together contributions from experienced as well as younger scholars, and from Europe, North America, and Australasia, it draws on global, national, and local perspectives to reveal key features of adult education's policy environment.
At the book's heart are three main concerns. First, what is the spatial reach of these developments, and what processes of fluidity and fixity emerge? Second, does increased state and international recognition of civil society's role in adult education and learning help to voice grass-roots learning needs for individuals and communities? Or does it create new patterns of dependency and 'domestication'? Finally, given the growing culture of monitoring, and the investment - of money, time and attention - which international organizations, national governments, and research institutes around the world are making in gathering information on people's skills and knowledge, and how they use them, what is happening when literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving abilities are tested? How is this knowledge used - and abused - in various policy environments, and who benefits?
The book is an outcome of the work of the European Society for the Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) Research Network on Policy Studies in Adult Education's inaugural conference, held at the University of Nottingham in 2012. This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education.
Contents
Introduction - Adult and lifelong education: global, national and local perspectives 1. Making educational spaces through boundary work: territorialisation and 'boundarying' 2. 'Ducking and diving' adult educator agency in testing times: insights from England and New Zealand 3. Immigrants as active citizens: exploring the volunteering experience of Chinese immigrants in Vancouver 4. Lifelong education and learning, societal project and competitive advantage: tensions and ambivalences in policy and planning of educational change in Portugal 5. Filling the gaps: the role and impact of international non-governmental organisations in 'Education for All' 6. Global, regional and local influences on adult literacy policy in England 7. Comparative performance measures, globalising strategies and literacy policy in Scotland 8. The media construction of an adult literacy agenda in Canada
