The connections and interactions of lifelong learning and social justice are complex and contested. Both are seen as a means to unconditional good, with little account taken of the inequalities and equalities located in constructions of power. This book develops critical ways to engage with international debates about lifelong learning and social justice through a range of competing and contested definitions, setting out some of the complexities and challenges of linking the two concepts. In particular, it engages in debates about the equalities and inequalities of learner identities, displacement and place. Its chapters consider those marginalised in complex and multiple ways, including gender, social class, ethnicity, age and migration. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Lifelong Education.

The ongoing economic crisis raises fundamental questions about the political and social goals of the European Union, particularly the feasibility of harmonising social and education policy across member states. The forward momentum of the European project is clearly faltering, raising the possibility that the high water mark of European integration has been achieved, with implications for many aspects of education and social policy, including lifelong learning. This timely book makes a major and original contribution to the development of knowledge and understanding of lifelong learning in an expanded Europe. Its wide range of contributors look at the contribution of lifelong learning to economic growth and social cohesion across Europe, focusing its challenge to social exclusion. It draws on comparative data from the EU Sixth Framework Project Lifelong Learning Policy and Practice in Europe (LLL2010), which ran from 2005 - 2011 and involved twelve European countries and Russia. Very little research has been conducted to date on the nature of lifelong learning in post-Soviet countries, and this book provides important insights into their evolving education and lifelong learning systems. The book will be of interest to researchers and academics in the UK and Europe, especially those from social policy, adult and comparative education, equality studies and practice of lifelong learning.

This book focuses on educational experience as a lifelong and society-wide issue. The author draws on research, policy, and contemporary thinking in the field to provide a comprehensive guide to the educational inequalities that may exist and persist throughout an individual's educational course. Providing an international perspective on different ethnic, gender, and social groups, the book covers a broad range of issues, including:theoretical, policy, and research developments; inequalities that may exist during the years of schooling; government policy; and beyond the school classroom.

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.

Well-educated populations are important aspects of any contemporary society, as education increases national and global development and the positive expansion of communities to participate actively in civil matters also increases. Educational equality is based on the principles of administrative competence and fairness of access and distribution of resources, opportunities, and treatment, which ensures success for every person. Ensuring equal access to quality education requires addressing a wide range of persistent inequalities in society and includes a stronger focus on how different forms of inequalities intersect to produce unequal opportunities or outcomes that affect marginalized and vulnerable groups. Policy and Practice Challenges for Equality in Education takes a multifaceted look at issues of equality and inequality in education as related to policy, practice, resource access, and distribution. As such, this book explores the potential practices in education that serve to mitigate and transform unproductive practices which have left societies scarred by social and educational inequalities. The chapters provide a critical analysis of the manifestations of inequalities in various educational contexts and discerns how broader social inequalities are informed by education-related matters. This book is ideal for sociologists, administrators, instructors, policymakers, data scientists, community leaders, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in educational equality and the unique challenges being faced worldwide.

Pt. 1. Learning communities -- pt. 2. Participation and non-participation -- pt. 3. Work-based learning and learning through work.

Over the last forty years, the International Journal of Lifelong Education has become a global leader in the field of research on adult education and lifelong learning. Drawing extensively on articles published in the journal, scholars from Africa, Asia, North and South America, Australasia and Europe reflect in two volumes on how the field has evolved over four decades, and on the strengths and weaknesses of its contributions to knowledge. The second of two volumes, this book is based on a collective research project, carried out largely by members of the journal’s editorial advisory board, on what it has published over four decades. The introduction explains the origins development of the journal, the sometimes-passionate debates in the wider field, and the approach and concerns of those who conducted this research. Other chapters explore critical areas of debate (citizenship and its learning, learning and work, and widening participation and higher education); ‘political’ and ‘scientific’ dimensions in intergovernmental organisations’ policy work; inequality and lifelong education; opportunities and tensions created in universities by lifelong learning; and the development of studies of learning in later life since the 1980s. Two concluding chapters examine the influence of Paolo Freire and Jack Mezirow. The two volumes will appeal to researchers, teachers and professionals in lifelong learning and adult education, as well as to those interested in the development of knowledge in fields of science and practice.

This book re-imagines the essence and role of adult education at both the individual and societal levels. It provides arguments for understanding adult education as a process of agency and empowerment, which has not only instrumental but intrinsic and transformative roles to play. This book brings together ideas from the capability approach with insights from recognition theory; the embeddedness approach; the political economic perspective for understanding public and private goods and the common goods perspective. The analysis draws on data from large-scale international studies – alongside qualitative data - and adopts a wide-ranging European comparative perspective. The book develops original instruments for measuring different dimensions of adult education as a common good, and its realisation in different social contexts. It is aimed at academics, students, practitioners, and policy makers interested in adult and/or higher education and the social justice perspective to human life.

This book investigates the ways in which the social purposes of adult education are (re)interpreted over time, and between the global south and global north. It brings together thirty-seven authors from fourteen countries with extensive experience as academics and/or practitioners in the field. The book is inspired by the work and life of Lalage Bown, a leading proponent of post-colonial and inclusive visions of education for all. Over her long life she worked tirelessly to promote access to basic and higher education for people of all ages and backgrounds: with a deep commitment to striving for greater equality for women. Following an Introduction, the book is structured around four main themes: Adult Education and Social Justice; Decolonisation, Post-Colonialism and Indigenous Knowledge; From Literacy to Lifelong Learning; and, Fostering Excellence, Policy Development and Supporting Future Generation of Adult Educators. The book concludes with reflections on Lalage Bown’s Enduring Legacy.

This book promotes the development of nontraditional literacies in adult education, especially as these critical literacies relate to global citizenship, equity, and social justice. As this edited collection argues, a rapidly changing global environment and proliferation of new media technologies have greatly expanded the kinds of literacies that one requires in order to be an engaged global citizen. It is imperative for adult educators and learners to understand systems, organizations, and relationships that influence our lives as citizens of the world. By compiling a comprehensive list of foundational, sociocultural, technological and informational, psychosocial and environmental, and social justice literacies, this volume offers readers theoretical foundations, practical strategies, and additional resources.