Lifelong Learning, Young Adults and the Challenges of Disadvantage in Europe

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 provision is democratically organised and based on enduring and inclusive institutional networks, and when jobs encourage and reward the acquisition of skills. Using innovative qualitative and quantitative methods, the contributors develop a critical perspective on dominant policies, investigating – across the European Union and Australia – how ‘vulnerable’ young adults experience programmes designed to improve their ‘employability’, and how ‘skills for jobs’ policies squeeze out wider – and wiser – ideas of what education and training should do. Chapters show why some provision works for those with poor educational backgrounds, why labour market and educational institutions matter so much, how adult education can empower and expand people’s agency, and the challenges of using artificial intelligence in lifelong learning policy-making. Several investigate the pivotal role of workplace learning in organisational life, and in learning during ‘emerging adulthood’. Important comparative studies of workplace learning in the metals, retail and adult education sectors show the role of management, trade unions and social movements in young adults’ learning.

Part I Lifelong Learning for an Inclusive and Vibrant Europe -- Lifelong Learning, the European Union, and the Social Inclusion of Young Adults: Rethinking Policy -- Bounded Agency in Policy and Action: Empowerment, Agency and Belonging -- Part II Policies, Programmes and Participation -- Vulnerability in European Lifelong Learning Policies 1992-2018: Seeing Young People as a Problem to be Fixed? -- Participation in Adult Learning: System Characteristics and Individuals’ Experiences -- Participation of Vulnerable Young Labour Market Groups in Job-Related Training: The Effect of Macro-Structural and Institutional Characteristics -- Gender Gaps in Participation in Adult Education in Europe: Examining Factors and Barriers -- Adult Education as a Pathway to Empowerment: Challenges and Possibilities -- Governing Adult Learning through Influencing Public Debate: How the Media use PIAAC Data in Denmark, Italy and the United Kingdom -- Policy, Practice and Praxis: Computer-Aided Decision Support to Enable Policy Making in Lifelong Learning -- Part III Young Adults’ Learning in the Workplace and Beyond -- The Interplay of Organisational and Individual Bounded Agency in Workplace Learning: A Framework Approach -- Working and Learning in the Retail Sector: A Cross-Country Comparative View -- Organisational and Individual Agency in Workplace Learning in the European Metal Sector -- Work and Learning in the Adult Education Sector: A Cross Country Comparative View -- Speaking Up: How Early Career Workers Engage in Fighting for Better Working Conditions by Joining Youth-Led Social Movement Organisations -- Early Career Workers’ Agency in the Workplace: Learning And Beyond in Cross-Country Comparative Perspective -- Part IV Conclusion -- Adult Education, Learning Citizens, and the Lessons of Enliven.