Management tools do more than manage and organise - they classify and contribute to the construction of education-as-concept. This article shows how tendering-based procurement, used by Swedish municipalities to outsource adult education to non-public providers, works to commensurate 'education' into measurable tender evaluation criteria. Drawing…

Privatisation of public education is becoming more and more common across the world. As much current research presupposes causal links between the degree of privatisation and issues of competition and student's free choice, we see a need for research on other ways of organising the presence of private providers in public education. In this…

This article identifies new arrangements between the state and non-state actors in the public sector, one that extends current understandings of education privatisation, the transformation of public services 'by substitution' and, specifically theories of the 'shadow state'. Drawing on data from the Political Economy of Teacher Education (PETE)…

The aim of this study is to analyse how formal adult education in Sweden is enacted locally. For this analysis, the data consist of a nationwide survey sent to Swedish municipalities, background data on municipalities from public statistics and interviews with representatives of 20 municipalities. Swedish formal adult education, which includes…

In this article I discuss the vision of education for liberation during the antiapartheid struggle in South Africa. The article focuses specifically on "People's Education" and "Workers' Education". Instead of an instrumental role for education reduced solely to the labour market requirements of business, economic growth and…

Over the last year and a half, British Columbians (BC) have worked together to decrease the spread and reduce exposure to COVID-19. BC teachers have risen to the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as it has taken its toll. Teachers are on the front-line of witnessing what is needed to move BC from a crisis response to a longer-term--and…

While students chanting "No cuts, No fees, No corporate universities" may be dismissed as youthful hyperbole by some, it is not as superficial a characterisation of the state of our public university system as it seems.

This paper discusses the Lifelong Learning Strategy document which was on the agenda during the European Union harmonization process of Turkey. The public policies in the document, regarding non-formal and adult education, will be analyzed. Lifelong Learning strategy became a current issue in the last stage of neoliberal transformation of…

This article, written in December 2016 following the election in May 2016 of a majority Conservative government, and the election to the leadership of the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn, a left-wing social democrat, "Old Labour style socialist", revises and updates substantially a previous article of June 2015 published in this journal…

This article addresses one of the many sensitive and challenging problems generated by China's era of reform and economic growth: the need to retrain or educate laid-off (displaced) workers from state owned enterprises (SOEs). It does so to provide valuable insight for those responsible for the changes associated with the move to the current…

This article discusses findings from two case studies examining the impact of neoliberal education reform on the classroom practice of teachers and adult educators in Ontario, Canada. We asked educators to comment on the impacts of 20 years of policy shifts in their classrooms. Teachers in public schools and adult literacy programmes echoed each…

Purpose: The aim of this article is to provide evidence on the consequences of the privatization process in Brandenburg with a focus on the agricultural advisors' situation. Before the background of future European Union (EU) expectations on Farm Advisory Systems (FAS), their capacities and competences to respond to such challenges are discussed.…

In this article, the authors define some of the most evident features of globalisation from below, which they distinguish from hegemonic globalisation, and draw out its implications for adult education. They draw out the implications for European adult education that emerge from the different features of these two types of globalisations. They…

Economic growth is stimulated through learning. In "the learning economies" of those European regions that chose to develop their human and intellectual capital wisely, benefits have been visible. But this is a one-dimensional outlook in a multi-dimensional world. A "Learning Region" is an entirely different entity, pooling and…

This article turns to the history of the modern practice of adult education to speak to the versatility of lifelong learning as a fluid and indeterminate concept that some have viewed as a learner's way out and others have viewed as a learner's burden. It identifies change forces that have shaped particular purposes and functions of lifelong…