The Cooperative Extension Service has a long history of providing community-based lifelong education. Current trends affecting extension programming include new telecommunications technologies, necessity for accountability, and demographic shifts. (SK)

Empowerment through nonformal education helps women organize for change to meet practical and strategic needs. Stages of empowerment include awareness of the problem, ownership, interaction, personal action, and collective action. Each stage has cognitive, psychological, economic, and political dimensions. (SK)

The community is a natural setting for autonomous, democratic adult education. A framework for connecting the community and adult education has three mechanisms: community formal adult education, community nonformal adult education, and community informal adult education. (SK)

Analysis of Portuguese adult education policies from 1974-1999 showed that an early-70s radical period ended with establishment of capitalist neoliberal policies. There is a strong dichotomy between formal adult education and nonformal education offered by community organizations. Popular education is marginalized and the state's role in civil…

Data from Canada's New Approaches to Lifelong Learning Study confirm the pervasiveness of unpaid work and informal learning. Most employed persons engage in a variety of work-related informal learning activities. However, underemployment in terms of use of acquired skills is widespread. (Contains 29 references.) (SK)

This document includes three parts and six appendixes. Part 1 is the general report of the 1987 UNESCO seminar on international education for adults held in Finland. Among the topics covered are key issues and the role of leaders of nonformal education and of adult educators in international education. Part 2 provides the reports of four working…

A discussion of non-formal education examines definitions of informal, formal, and non-formal education; compares non-formal and formal education in terms of objectives, student entry, clientele, curriculum, learning situations; teaching methods and materials, teachers, pupil evaluation, and agencies; and discusses four types of programs deserving…

The author summarizes achievements of face-to-face learning linked with the use of broadcasts and printed materials as effective ways to promote adult education and national development. Unsolved problems include effective program length, feedback mechanisms, and the role of extension agents. (Author/AV)

Reports on experiences and insights gained from organizations in the Philippines and Thailand that are involved in various aspects of nonformal education and that are also involved in discussions with people about what is being done and why. (JOW)

The project described attempted to analyze the informal and nonformal educational practices within certain community agencies that are part of an emergent social movement in Cape Town, South Africa. The paper focuses on a critical discussion of internal participatory democratic practices within the agencies. (CH)

Provides background to the Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education seminar held in February 1985. The problem, according to the author, is how to get status for adult nonformal education when status traditionally is awarded by the universities that promote formal education. (CH)

A qualitative analysis of interviews of 78 adults with less than high school completion who were currently engaged in a learning project supported the hypothesis that self-directed learners, rather than preplanning their projects, tend to derive their structure and direction from resources available in the environment--the organizing circumstance.…

In examining the trend toward providing academic credit for informal education through lifelong learning, the author contends that programs of this nature further the efforts of individuals to educate themselves as well as promote the idea of formal education to a larger, better prepared, and more receptive population. (WL)

Examines the usefulness of participatory evaluation in program development. Emphasizes formative evaluation and suggests approaches for planning participation in evaluation and adapting methods to facilitate use of participatory evaluation in adult and nonformal education programs. (JOW)