This article addresses the personal negotiations that lead individuals to pursue adult education. Analysing this process determines ambitions pursued, and thus makes it possible to identify how the individuals involved perceive their desired future as an improvement. This study found that ambitions were negotiated in order to make them acceptable…

This paper explores patterns in participation in adult education and training (AET) by comparing five countries with high participation rates (the Nordic countries and the Netherlands) with three countries with significantly lower participation rates (France, Poland and the Slovak Republic). Using PIAAC data the paper examines differences in the…

This article analyses the influence of the European Union's educational policies on the implementation of devices for the recognition and the validation of informal and non-formal learning within public policies on education and training for adults in European Union Member States. Portugal and France are taken as examples. The European Union's…

This paper uses a socio-historical approach to explore the emergence in French theoretical literature in the mid-1960s of a new notion, the "relationship to knowledge" ("rapport au savoir"), and its success in the emerging field of professional adult education within the Complex of Nancy, France. The increasing use of this…

A study of funding models for continuing education in France, Ireland, Italy, and Scotland shows that cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is generally implicit and not articulated in technical terms. Course providers' value systems or ideologies militate against simplistic use of CBA. (SK)

Explores the growth of positivism and its influence on freemasonry and popular education in France. Discusses its adoption as an educational reform ideology by the Radical Party and, through its conception of class harmony, its influence on the development of the welfare state. (Contains 20 references.) (SK)

Describes the adult and higher education system in France in terms of institutional boundaries, increased proportion of adults in universities, and the chaotic system of qualifications. Examines procedures for articulation and transfer between the various components of the educational system. (SK)