Purpose: This paper reviews changing government policy on adult education in England over the past 20 years and the funding regimes affecting adult and community learning and union-led learning, which play a major role in learning opportunities for socially excluded adults. Design/methodology/approach: A review and analysis of extant literature,…

The purpose of this paper is to examine how adult education institutions have developed in close connection with the Danish welfare state and how structural reforms since the 1990s have changed the institutional structure and impacted accessibility. This involves analyses of the main functions linked to the different types of adult education…

This article draws on research into the further education (FE) Area-Based Review (ABR) process in London, England over the period 2016-2018 to suggest that the significance of ABRs can be judged as to the extent they reinforce or challenge the historical marketised model of FE. The implications of ABR are viewed historically through the conceptual…

While retrieval practice has been studied for over a century, it has gained a significant body of research within the past fifteen years in cognitive psychology and the learning sciences. However, there is little discussion in its study and application within topics of adult learning. In this article, we examine the historical and philosophical…

Vocational English as a Second Language (VESL) is a form of adult language education that teaches communicative skills in the context of preparing learners for a particular vocation. Despite their pedagogical and logistical benefits for adult language learners, such programs are uncommon today. This literature review traces the emergence and…

This article, through the sketched history from the mid-1940s to current, presents the dynamics of adult education in East Asia traditionally called social education, that has survived after lifelong learning has been adopted, assimilated, and dominates the whole pattern of practice. This article argues that the soul of adult education has been…

Drawing on an autoethnographic approach, we offer a retrospective and current reflection on the Adult Education Professoriate within the Canadian university system. Through our autographic texts as professors within the field of adult education, as well as a review of relevant adult education literature, we consider the historical and current…

This paper poses three research questions, based primarily on evidence from six decades of the Australian Journal of Adult Education (AJAL, 2000-present) and its antecedent journals dating back to 1961. Firstly, it asks what was the context for establishing a national adult learning association, Australian Association of Adult Education (AAAE) in…

This article describes two decades of workplace basic skills efforts in the United States (mid 1980s to early 2000s). Private- and public-sector groups defined the problem of inadequate basic skills in the incumbent workforce. They raised awareness of this problem as it affected various segments of the workforce and diverse industries. They…

As Chamoru scholars with experience working at two universities within the University of California (UC) system, the authors write from institutions deeply implicated in interconnected projects of settler colonialism and militarism. Addressing the UC's historical narrative in the authors' pedagogy is an important way to connect with ongoing calls…

This article -- the first part of a two-part contribution -- considers the current and past state of research on the history of adult education in Britain. Although there has been a broadening of interest among historians of adult education, the field remains to an extent in the shadow of the "Great Tradition" of liberal education…

Dusan M. Savicevic has been a towering figure working, researching and publishing in andragogy for more than a half-century. Dusan's prism of world-wide experience has been connected very vitally with helping establish it as a science, self-directed learning, work, and has inspired others to develop their own andragogical perspective, including,…

This paper focuses on the colleges and institutes of higher education (CIHEs), major providers of HE, almost sixty of which existed in England and Wales between the 1970s and the early twenty-first century. Its central argument is that a failure to develop the CIHEs as specialist institutions of advanced professional learning along the lines of…

By repositioning the salonniere as a progressive, feminist educator who employed a constructivist framework to regulate the discourse of the male philosophes who frequented her salon space, this article offers a new vantage point from which to examine her influence on the Enlightenment cause. Feminist historians have insightfully analysed the…

In 2010, Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana opened its first Excel Center adult high schools aimed at assisting adults in obtaining a high school diploma and transitioning those adults into higher education, industry certifications, and the workforce completely tuition free. MERS Goodwill, the largest Missouri branch of Goodwill (excluding…