National policy states that Swedish adult education should be flexible and individualized, based on students' needs. However, adult education in Sweden is a municipal responsibility with a high level of decentralization. Drawing on national policies, this study focuses on how the concepts of flexibility and individualization are enacted locally…

This article presents and discusses findings from a qualitative study of Swedish adult education, with focus on meetings between counsellors and students and how counsellors translate and enact different expectations from policies and ethical guidelines, as well as from adult students. The results show that counsellors have an important role in…

The policy of merging education institutions to improve efficiency and reduce public expenditure has gained popularity in many European countries. However, although this phenomenon is observed in adult education, there is currently a paucity of evidence on the subject within this field. We integrated novel data from 101 mergers of adult education…

Participation rate in adult and continuing education (ACE) is one of the multiple indicators of distributive justice. Nonetheless, the literature of recent decades has turned it into a cardinal principle and value. Expansive paradigm that envisages the progressive and generalised development of participation rate in ACE is examined in this…

"In Pursuit of a Lifelong Learning Society" explores the policy discourses of lifelong learning articulated by three major international organisations -- UNESCO, OECD, and the EU. Through comparative analysis, Moosung Lee explores how these organizations have shaped lifelong learning policies through their ideologies and interactions,…

This technical assistance paper provides policy and guidance to individuals with test administration responsibilities in adult education programs. There are four important reasons for creating a data-driven accountability system for adult education programs: (1) WIOA mandates that states develop a data-driven accountability system to establish and…

VET researchers and policy-makers have historically displayed a keen interest in the future. Two assumptions link VET to the future. The first is that there is a singular object called VET and, secondly, that it can influence a forthcoming state of reality. This relationship is investigated through a rarely utilised post-structuralist discourse…

The rapidly growing body of scholarship exploring White Christian nationalism in the United States has generated criticism for a lack of conceptual specificity. To address this shortcoming, we propose conceptualizing White Christian nationalism as a social movement. We explore how this conceptualization improves on past frameworks and offers new…

It could be argued that the current adult education paradigm aligns with a liberal knowledge economy. A more critical perspective is Paulo Freire's banking education concept that removes criticality from a learner's repertoire and facilitates alignment with the prevalent liberal education and its hegemonic objectives. Drawing from Paulo Freire's…

Black students attending AANAPISI/HSI universities have long been overlooked in communication and interdisciplinary research. In this essay, I draw on bell hooks's (2014) radical transgressive teaching and Patricia Hill Collins's "outsider within" framework to examine the experiences of Black students at minority-serving institutions…

The prevalence of chronic illnesses has resulted in calls in some parts of the world for a shift in the patient-provider dynamic, namely patient participation in chronic disease management. Patient and family engagement represents a widely discussed issue, underscoring the interconnectedness of health policy, practice, and individual health…

In 2000, federally funded public adult education programs provided basic skills training and English language instruction to over 2.6 million students, or about 1.5% of the U.S. adult population. By 2021, enrollment had plummeted to under 900,000, or less than 0.4% of adults. What explains these declines? This policy brief describes the evolution…

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world stage has impacted multiple aspects of our lives, affecting how we interact, organize public affairs, and carry out daily activities. This paper explores how students in an ongoing adult education program in Villa María, Argentina, continued their studies during the 2020-2022 pandemic in the…

This article draws on a qualitative study of insights and reflections from the COVID-19 pandemic completed for a master's thesis. It centred on the experiences of seven English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) practitioners in Ireland, considering the practical ways they responded to the public health measures, but also how they felt, how…

This article explores how language learning is an integral component of progressing linguistic reconciliation in contexts of war and conflict. Sri Lanka is a case where ethnolinguistic division and the devaluation of Tamil as a co-official language has led to linguistic injustice for Tamil people and users of Tamil. In the post-war landscape,…