This comprehensive collection discusses topical issues essential to both scholarship and policy making in the realm of Lifelong Learning (LLL) policies and how far they succeed in supporting young people across their life courses, rather than one-sidedly fostering human capital for the economy. Examining specific regional and local contexts across Europe, all various in context, this book uses original research to evaluate differences in scope, approach, orientation, and objectives. It enquires into the embedding of LLL policies into the regional economy, the labour market, education and training systems and the individual life projects of young people, with focus on those in situations of near social exclusion.

This comprehensive collection discusses topical issues essential to both scholarship and policy making in the realm of Lifelong Learning (LLL) policies and how far they succeed in supporting young people across their life courses, rather than one-sidedly fostering human capital for the economy. Examining specific regional and local contexts across Europe, all various in context, this book uses original research to evaluate differences in scope, approach, orientation, and objectives. It enquires into the embedding of LLL policies into the regional economy, the labour market, education and training systems and the individual life projects of young people, with focus on those in situations of near social exclusion.

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 arrangements that impact on their opportunities in education and labour. Considering the relevance of LLP in shaping those opportunities, the chapters draw from multi-level, mixed-methods research and offer original insights on the interplay of discourses and governance patterns in the processes of policy-making and deliverance. The book yields noteworthy insights into the widely differing realities across the European landscape, and also into the diverging ways young people deal with and actively participate in LLP.

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.

This book examines lifelong learning through the lens of policy studies. It scrutinises the implications of lifelong learning policies in a variety of states and localities to explore the interplay between commonalities and differences within and across Europe and Latin America. The chapters explore adult education and learning, vocational education and training, higher education and employment policies in Europe and Latin America with a focus on how decision-makers have designed and implemented them. These contributions analyse to what extent diverse providers offer opportunities to learners with a variable range of ages. Their main research questions focus on the interactions between providers, educational authorities and employers of graduates at local, regional and national geographical scales. This book invites the readers to broaden up the concept of lifelong learning beyond the scope of compensatory, upskilling measures. The chapters spell out subtle but powerful connections between lifelong learning, digitalisation, employability, social inclusion, strategic policy-making and local development. This volume will be a key resource for practitioners, scholars and researchers of lifelong and adult education, educational policy, education studies, sociology, political science and psychology. It was originally published as a special issue of International Journal of Lifelong Education.

FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE AS OPEN ACCESS BOOK! The European Union is now a key player in making lifelong learning and adult education policy: this is the first book to explore a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives researchers can use to investigate its role. Chapters by leading experts and younger scholars from across Europe and beyond cover the evolution of EU policies, the role of policy ‘actors’ in what is often seen as the ‘black box’ of EU policy-making, and the contribution state theory can make to understanding the EU and its relations with Europe’s nations. They consider what theories of governmentality—drawing on the work of Foucault—can contribute. And they demonstrate how particular methodological approaches, such as ‘policy trails’, and the contribution the sociology of law, can make. Contributors include both specialists in adult education and scholars exploring how work from other disciplines can contribute to this field. This is the first book in a new series from the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults, and draws on work within its Network on Policy Studies in Adult Education.

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 national levels. Filling an important gap in the current literature, this book examines how strengthened policy coordination at the EU level contributed to the blurring of boundaries between policy fields and the redefinition of the function of adult education after the 2008 recession. Divided into three parts, this book draws on a range of case studies from countries including Spain, Denmark, Bulgaria and the UK. It will be of interest and value to students and scholars of education policy and governance, adult education and lifelong learning.