Adult basic education's role, from the beginning, has been about serving people with foundational skill needs. The author, Judy Mortrude, agrees with the argument that adult literacy education needs to be repositioned within a new framework of lifelong and life-wide learning, a framework in which new policies are formulated, programs are designed…

The relationship between education policy and workforce policy has long been uneasy. It is widely believed in many quarters of American society that the U.S. education system is in decline and, what's more, that it bears significant responsibility for a wide range of social ills, including stagnant wages, increasing inequality, high unemployment,…

Wyoming community colleges provide dynamic lifelong learning environments through higher education, workforce development, innovative partnerships, and civic and global engagement that lead to responsible citizenship and economic, social, and cultural prosperity. Planning for the future of Wyoming's community colleges and fulfilling the mission of…

Futures research is gaining increased prominence in educational research and development (Tesar, 2021), and particularly now as we emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has provided a lever for change and an opportunity for innovation in learning, teaching and assessment (Hall et al., 2020; Jandric et al., 2022; Tesar, 2020). Designing…

Lifelong education has proven to be a significant challenge in the policy arena. The combination of formal education and labor-centered institutions has pressed the development of different mechanisms to understand the role of human capital accumulation in socioeconomic mobility and organizational performance. While the narratives of lifelong…

The United States is experiencing dramatic shifts in the skills required of incumbent workers and new hires. While the recent low unemployment rate was generally good news, it also exacerbated a persistent skill shortage in the region's labor force that has been consistently reported by many employers. A McKinsey Global Survey indicates that…

This case study discusses the implementation of formal organizational learning activities at the Richard G. Trefry Library, which serves the American Public University System, an accredited, for-profit, asynchronous institution of higher education. Discussed are the challenges and solutions throughout the implementation processes along with the…

Organizations advocating for federal, state, and local level support for adult education have long relied on the power of individual story to influence both public perception and public policy. They have developed training programs, provided advocacy toolkits, and organized visits with policy makers in order to promote and sustain awareness of the…

This article focuses on the relation between new public management (NPM) reforms and changing patterns of industrial relations (IRs) and social dialogue in the Italian education system. Drawing on data from the research project 'Social dialogue and industrial relations in education: The challenges of multi-level governance and privatisation in…

Dr. Jacobson's analysis of "hard to serve" is well founded, especially from an academic and theoretical perspective, yet the author is left wanting. Is the solution to merely change the language, the terminology of the legislation, or the terminology used by policy makers as well as practitioners? Are these adults hard to serve or ill…

Over the past 35 years, a range of 'new' policy actors and networks has emerged from the private sector under the rationale of efficient, free-market alternatives to traditional public policymakers. Under a critical policy studies framework, this paper uses discourse analysis and interviews with key stakeholders to examine how one regional…

Globalization presents Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries with opportunities for economic growth and transformation, as many of these nations face economic challenges such as the need for a diversified knowledge-based economy because of the finite resource of hydrocarbons. This requires the development of human capital providing workers with…

When the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the economy back into recession in early 2020, it laid bare a fragile and profoundly inequitable labor market. The economic expansion that reigned from 2009 through 2019 brought historically low unemployment and inflation but failed to reduce income inequality or arrest the decline in the number of high-quality,…

John Dewey's educational philosophy provides a compelling resource for empowering adult vocational education through a cultural vision, ultimately rooted in a view of social democracy as the creative task of lifelong learning before us. This is supported by Dewey's interpretation of knowledge construction in its varied cognitive, ethical, and…

This paper explores trade union collective voice as a mechanism for worker participation in training decision making. New Zealand is an example of a liberal market economy (LME) with relatively weak regulatory pressure on employers to engage in training. Consequently, drivers such as trade union collective voice could fill an important role in…