This article explores the framing of youth and adult education (YAE) policies in two Latin American countries, namely Chile and Peru. It takes their participation in PIAAC as a contextual starting point to unravel the problems explicitly or implicitly framed in YAE policies and their root causes, as understood by key policy stakeholders. We found…

There is an increasing need for cross-cultural qualitative studies in an era of globalization. A focus group of five researchers, who were involved in a large international research project, identified effective strategies and challenges associated with five key domains of qualitative research with key informants: identification, recruitment,…

This article presents the findings of a comparative study of values-based adult learning and education (ALE) fields; specifically, in Austria, critical-emancipatory adult basic education; Scotland, learner-centered, community-based adult learning; and South Tyrol, Italy, the "Winterschule," a radical-critical popular education format. We…

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), launched by the United Nations in 2015, established ambitious targets to be achieved by 2030, including in education. SDG 4, which focuses on ensuring "inclusive and equitable quality education and promot[ing] lifelong learning opportunities for all", attracted attention from the adult education…

The topic of the professionalization of adult education is receiving a great deal of attention worldwide. This is justified because the competencies among adult learning professionals have a significant impact on the effectiveness of adult learning. The professional preparedness of adult learning practitioners is therefore a basic condition for…

The purpose of this study was to conduct national and cross-country analyses to provide insights about educator cognitive skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving within Canada and across nineteen countries using the PIAAC data. MANOVA results of profession differences within Canada demonstrated that educators outperformed other…

The role of international governmental organisations (IGOs) in global policymaking has received significant attention in the field of adult learning and education (ALE) in the twenty-first century, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was recognised as one of the most influential IGO due to its skill surveys --…

We investigated whether andragogical assumptions and their common critiques are reflected in global PIAAC data using its motivation-to-learn (MtL) and elaboration scales. A preliminary validation study with 300 adults revealed that andragogical assumptions cluster on these scales' two factors. Using hierarchical linear modelling of PIAAC data, we…

Non-formal adult education (NFE) provides adults of all ages with the opportunity to acquire skills, knowledge, and expertise. However, there is currently a lack of validated instruments that measure the factors of NFE non-participation in European countries, particularly their barriers. One exception is the Non-participation in Non-formal…

The 'Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies' (PIAAC), developed and managed by the OECD, is an important source of knowledge about adult skills as well as an intervention in the field of education policy. One level of the intervention is the presence of PIAAC results in public media and debate. This article presents a…

The massive shift to online learning due to the COVID-19 outbreak has opened wider possibilities of telecollaboration among English learners through global online communities. Responding to the limited empirical evidence on what drives these learners to learn beyond their geographical boundaries, this phenomenological case study intends to delve…

Democracy is not only a system of government, but also an overarching way of living together. It is through the social structures we live in and the resulting social relations, behaviors, and norms emanating from those structures, that we learn how to live together, democratically or otherwise. Adult education can promote the learning of democracy…

This study explores gender-related inequality in participation in Adult Education and Training (AET) in four countries with vastly different adult learning systems and support measures for women's AET. Our examination of the data from an original international survey conducted in 2022 has found that the participation of men and women clearly…

This study provides comparable lower-bound estimates of inequality of opportunity for tertiary education (EIOp) for 31 countries in Europe, by using the two EU-SILC waves for which information on family background is available (2005 and 2011). The results reveal an important degree of heterogeneity, with Northern European countries showing low…

We examine if the OECD survey of adult skills, PIAAC, can provide information about the relative quality of education and training in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We find that the average population scores are inappropriate while the mean scores of natives well approximate the skills of individuals that had the chance to attend the…