The debate on intergovernmental organisations and adult learning and education policies: intersections between the political and scientific fields

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the scientific debate that has been held in the International Journal of Lifelong Education (IJLE) over the past four decades concerning intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) and adult learning and education (ALE) policies. Drawing upon a field-analytical perspective comprising the political and scientific fields, this discussion is based on a systematic literature review of published articles in the IJLE and qualitative content analysis. The main findings stress the relative autonomy of the scientific subfield of ALE; however, the need to strengthen critical reflection to avoid interpretative perspectives imposed by IGOs’ policy discourses and concepts is also emphasised.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergovernmental organisations
• adult learning and education
• political field
• academic field
• Bourdieu

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Following UNESCO’s (2015) definition, in the current article, we will use the concept adult learning and education to identify what has also been referred to by several authors as adult learning or adult education. This decision is made because UNESCO’s definition of adult learning and education includes a wide range of policies, practices and research approaches that can be found in the articles analysed for the present article.

2. Although the debate about ALE as an academic discipline or field of practice throughout the twentieth century is well known, we share the view of Bron and Jarvis that see ALE as a ‘young scientific discipline’, usually a ‘sub-discipline of education/pedagogy’, where the ‘learning of adults in formal, non-formal and informal settings constitutes a specific field of research’ (2008, p. 38).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by: CIEd – Research Centre on Education, Institute of Education, University of Minho, projects UIDB/01661/2020 and UIDP/01661/2020, through national funds of FCT/MCTES-PT; UIDEF – Unidade de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Educação e Formação, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, project UIDB/04107/2020, through national funds of FCT/MCTES-PT; and by Slovenian Research Agency under Grant P5-0174.