Researching Participation in Adult Education
Inhaltsverzeichnis 2023 (1) (2)
Participation patterns and questions of why adults do (not) engage in learning activities have been a recurring theme in the research discipline of adult education. This volume of the International Yearbook of Adult Education makes a contribution to research on participation in adult education by including theoretical perspectives on lifelong learning participation and methodical reflections on both quantitative large-scale assessments and qualitative methods for researching participation in adult education. Furthermore, the phenomenon of participation is analyzed in a cross-national approach focusing on the role of employer support as well as on the national level in a study of participation in the Czech Republic and in a study researching drop-out in literacy and adult basic education. The volume is complemented by an article in the category “Miscellaneous” discussing the case of systematic literature reviews in adult education research.
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Abstracts:
Ellen Boeren
Conceptualizing Lifelong Learning Participation – Theoretical Perspectives and Integrated Approaches
This contribution argues the need for participation research in adult education. It reviews leading theoretical viewpoints to understand who does or does not participate in adult education including psychology, economics, sociology and organisational sciences. It then integrates these different theoretical explanations into a comprehensive lifelong learning participation model. This new approach highlights the need to study participation through the lenses of interacting stakeholders at the individual, organisational and governmental level.
Anke Grotlüschen & Klaus Buddeberg
Haben wir die falschen Instrumente?
Vor dem Hintergrund quantitativer Großstudien als dominantem Forschungsparadigma drohen differenzierte Befunde qualitativer Forschung zur Nicht-Teilnahme an Weiterbildung aus dem Blick zu geraten. Dadurch, so die Kernaussage dieses Beitrags, erscheint Weiterbildungsteilnahme im Diskurs als begründungspflichtige Abweichung vom Normalfall der Teilnahme an Weiterbildung im Rahmen lebenslangen Lernens. Einschlägige Großerhebungen berichten regelmäßig von einem hohen Anteil von Personen, die für ihre Nicht-Teilnahme „sonstige Gründe“ anführen. Diese hohen Anteile schränken die Aussagekraft ein und blenden bestimmte Motivlagen aus. Dazu zählt vor allem die Begründung eines fehlenden Nutzens von Weiterbildung für die Individuen. In qualitativen Studien wird diesem Aspekt breiter Raum gewährt, in den aktuell dominanten Richtungen hingegen, gerät er aus dem Blickfeld.
Ş. Erhan Bağcı
Documentary Method and Biographical Narrative Interview for Understanding Participation in Adult Education
In this article, it is asserted that researches in the field of adult education need a more comprehensive understanding of participation which goes beyond the dominant psychological theoretical framework in which the motives toward participation as internal/subjective factors on one side, and the deterrents toward nonparticipation as external/objective factors on the other, are examined. A more holistic approach to participation in adult education should consider that the decision and the act of participation do not happen arbitrarily, but as an outcome of the biographical experiences of the individual, which are accumulated through a lifelong path within a particular social field. Accordingly, it requires a better methodology which helps the researcher overcome the epistemological limits of the question-answer scheme in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Documentary Method and biographical narrative interview as discussed in this article provide the opportunity to understand participation in its contextual and relational dimensions.
Richard Desjardins & Jungwon Kim
Inequality in adult education participation across national contexts: is growing employer support exacerbating or mitigating inequality in participation?
Over the span of 20–30 years, evidence suggests that participation in adult education (inclusive of undertaking for job-related purposes) is on a significant upward trend since the 1990s in most OECD and many EU countries. The upward trend may be attributed partly to the increasing interest by employers (private, public, and non-governmental sectors) to invest in adult education due to its substantial benefits. As employer investment grows, who gets employer support to participate in adult education thus becomes an important research and policy question, particularly since inequality in participation may exacerbate social inequalities of various kinds. The purpose of this article is to explore whether the trend of increased participation in employer-supported adult education is exacerbating or mitigating the Matthew effect across different countries. It provides estimates of the change in probabilities of participation in employersupported adult education by various individual, socio-demographic, and job-related characteristics associated with adults between the period of 1994–1998 and 2013. Results of the data analysis based on the 2013 OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Competencies (PIAAC) and the 1994–1998 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) suggest that the growth of employer-supported adult education may be playing a role in mitigating inequality in participation. Reduced differences over time in the probabilities of participation between contrast categories associated with various individual, socio-demographic, and job-related characteristics (e. g. women compared
to men, lowest educated compared to highest educated, etc.) are interpreted as reduced inequalities in the probability of participation associated with those contrast categories. Further research on additional and updated datasets is warranted to explore the trend of whether growing employer support for adult education is exacerbating or mitigating inequality in adult education participation in different countries.
Lena Sindermann
Frustration, Care Work, and the Pandemic: Reasons for Drop-Out in Literacy and Adult Basic Education
One of the central goals in literacy and adult basic education is to avoid drop-out. This is because participation in basic education programmes can demonstrably promote social participation for their target groups. Consequently, a number of (inter)national political organisations have launched programmes to strengthen literacy and adult basic education in various fields such as policies, practice and research. Regarding research on literacy and adult basic education, participation behaviour has been increasingly examined. Remarkably little attention has been paid to researching the factors that prevent low-literacy people from completing these programmes once they are in the course. The article takes this as an opportunity to examine the reasons of drop-out in the field. Based on interviews with trainers in literacy and adult basic education (n = 13), central reasons for drop-out are identified and characterised along individual, life-contextual and institutional factors.
Jan Kalenda
Participation in Non-formal Adult Education in the Czech Republic from 1997 to 2020
Non-formal adult education (NFE) encompasses a broad spectrum of organised learning activities for adults outside the formal educational system, including on-the-job training, workshops as well as individual lessons. Both governments and international organisations have regularly highlighted the importance of high participation rates in NFE as a precondition for the successful establishment of a lifelong learning society. Despite this claim, countries around the world vary a great deal in terms of overall participation of their population, social groups involved, and factors that influence access to NFE. This paper focuses on the long-term participation in NFE in the Czech Republic by investigating the development of adult participation in NFE between 1997 to 2020. We aim to present (1) the main long-term trends in participation in NFE, (2) changes in the critical socio-demographical factors that have influenced the involvement of adults in NFE. For this purpose, we analyse data from international surveys (IALS, PIAAC and AES) as well as from the CZ-ALE, a national survey focused on adult education and learning. Our analysis has found that although participation in NFE significantly increased between 1997 and 2016, it sharply decreased in 2020. In addition, while participation inequality between lower and higher educated adults declined from 2011 to 2020, inequality based on economic activity increased during the same period. Finally, occupational class position has played an important role in the likelihood of participation in NFE, but the influence of this factor has not been as significant as that of employment status.
Tim Vetter, Gwennaëlle Mulliez & Eva Bonn
Between Anything Goes and Methodical Rigor – An Empirical Analysis of Systematic Literature Reviews in Adult Education Research
Within the past two decades, the use of systematic reviews (SRs) in the context of adult education research has increased against the backdrop of the debate on evidence orientation. Following on from this, this paper examines the implementation of the method within the discipline. Based on an integrative review (IR), 57 adult education SRs were identified and subsequently analyzed using a differentiated coding system. The findings point to varying degrees of methodical grounding in the application of the SR method. The article forms the starting point for further methodological reflection on SRs in adult education research.