Qualification, socialisation and/or subjectification – three international organisations’ prioritisation of the purposes of adult education and learning from the 1970s to the 2010s

ABSTRACT

This article examines the purposes UNESCO, OECD and EU historically have attributed to adult education and learning. The aim is to explore changes in international adult education and learning policies from the 1970s until the present day and outline how different international organisations have pushed for specific conceptualisations of what ‘adult education and learning is good for’. The analysis draws on Biesta’s domains of educational purpose to demonstrate how the functions of adult education and learning have changed as the welfare state has transformed into a neoliberal competition state. Based on an analysis of key policy documents, the article shows how each of the organisations has sought to set an agenda in line with its founding visions. UNESCO pushing for an agenda centred on su bjectification and the aim of empowering the individual, but also including strong elements of both qualification and socialisation. OECD, on the other hand, having a more narrow understanding, seeing the purpose of adult education and learning as qualification for the labour market as part of a growth ideology. Finally, EU pushing both socialisation of European citizens and labour market qualifications. The analysis shows how, over the decades, adult education and learning policy has narrowed to focus on a primarily instrumental purpose, which creates new attributed meaning for both the purpose of socialisation and subjectification.

KEYWORDS:

• Adult education
• lifelong learning
• adult education policy
• biesta’s domains of educational purpose

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We use the concept adult education and learning as a broad term when referring to policy across timespans and organisations, while when referring to the policy of a specific organisation at a specific time, we use the concept(s) used by that organisation at that time.

2. In spite of a significant interest in the principle of recurrent education by many OECD member countries in the 1970s, according to Schütze and Istance (1987), the barriers preventing a full-scale adoption of the principle were huge, not least in light of the economic crises in the 1970s and 1980s that replaced the widespread optimism of the 1960s. Nevertheless, elements of recurrent education were implemented in the 1970s and 1980s, especially in the Nordic and developed socialist countries (Tuijnman, 1991). In light of economic challenges, including widespread youth unemployment, qualification for the labour market gained increased attention at the expense of other purposes of adult education. Studies of the implementation of ‘recurrent education’, however, point at the dominance of vocationally oriented education programmes with a direct skills and employment orientation by the end of the 1980s (Tuijnman, 1991).

3. The EU’s understanding of lifelong learning encompasses education and learning from ‘cradle to grave’, and adult education is thus no longer the policy’s exclusive focus (Holford et al., 2014). To some extent, it becomes everything and then diffusely nothing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Larson

Anne Larson is associate professor in educational sociology at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. Her main research interests are education policy and lifelong learning/adult education, including the relationship between transnational education policy and national policy and practice.

Pia Cort

Anne Larson is associate professor in educational sociology at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. Her main research interests are education policy and lifelong learning/adult education, including the relationship between transnational education policy and national policy and practice.

Pia Cort is associate professor in vocational education and training at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. Her main research interest is the relationship between education policy and practice within the fields of vocational education and training, lifelong learning/adult education, guidance and counselling counselling.