Whether it is earning a GED, a particular skill, or technical topic for a career, taking classes of interest, or even returning to begin a degree program or completing it, adult learning encompasses those beyond the traditional university age seeking out education. This type of education could be considered non-traditional as it goes beyond the typical educational path and develops learners that are self-initiated and focused on personal development in the form of gaining some sort of education. Essentially, it is a voluntary choice of learning throughout life for personal and professional development. While there is often a large focus towards K-12 and higher education, it is important that research also focuses on the developing trends, technologies, and techniques for providing adult education along with understanding lifelong learners’ choices, developments, and needs. The Research Anthology on Adult Education and the Development of Lifelong Learners focuses specifically on adult education and the best practices, services, and educational environments and methods for both the teaching and learning of adults. This spans further into the understanding of what it means to be a lifelong learner and how to develop adults who want to voluntarily contribute to their own development by enhancing their education level or knowledge of certain topics. This book is essential for teachers and professors, course instructors, business professionals, school administrators, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the latest advancements in adult education and lifelong learning.

This volume contains a series of papers written for a symposium entitled "Adult Education and Allocation Policy in Sweden." Intended to provide a broader framework for analyzing allocation policy in adult education, the first paper is organized around the assumption that the effects of allocation policy both on participants and society are greatly determined by institutional roles defining who gets recruited to what kind of adult education and to what extent different programs and self-directed learning contribute to the creation of resources. Discussed next is the allocation policy in various Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden). The next paper, which examines recruitment in the context of allocation policy, focuses on the ways in which changes in the occupational structure over time can illustrate long-term effects of education. Also presented is a study of dropouts in municipal adult schools in the context of allocation policy. Finally, an analysis is made of the municipal adult education teaching process in the context of allocation policy. (MN)

This book discusses the current state of the art in research on the education and learning of adults, and how such research has been transformed through contemporary policy and research practices. Gathering contributions from leading experts in the field, the book draws on previous research, as well as new findings in order to provide a map of this research field and its contemporary history. The chapters address a number of questions, including: What constitutes this research field? What theories and methodologies dominate within the field? What “invisible colleges” are active in shaping this academic field, in marking out its contours and in transforming its contemporary battle zones? Who is publishing in the field and who is deemed worth citing? What is the relationship between the shift in state policy on adult education and the research that is conducted on the education and learning of adults? How has the research field changed over time in various western countries? What do these meta-reflections of the field tell us about possible future research endeavours? Rather than speaking from within the field, this is a book about the research field. The diversity of the chapters provide a fascinating resource for anyone interested in research on the education and learning of adults.

The 13 papers in this yearbook discuss 4 broad subject areas: questions of competence, evaluating quality, professional cultures, and learning and trends in adult education. The following papers are included: "Human Resource Development (HRD) Practitioners Analyzing Their Work"(Tuija Valkeavaara); "Life Competence in a World of Change" (Margaretha Balle-Petersen); "Different Schools, Different Priorities" (Heidi Engesbak, Odd Helge Lindseth); "Learning from Change?" (Glenn Hultman, Alger Klasson); "Quality of Adult Learning" (Seppo Kontiainen, Jyri Manninen); "The Modernization of Minds--Qualification and Adult Education in the Transformation of the Welfare State" (Kirsten Weber); "Different Access to Education and Training in Mother Tongue Reinforces Differences between Professional Cultures" (Anne-Lise Hostmark Tarrou);"Learning in Order to Control" (Jan Holmer); "The Challenge to Working Life Education" (Bengt Petersson, Per Olof Thang); "Work and Learning" (Palle Rasmussen); "From Philanthropy to Deinstitutionalisation" (Paul N. Gooderham, Sigvart Tosse); "Knowles' Andragogy, Pedagogy, and Self-Directed Learning" (Bjorn-Emil Madsen); and "Knowledge and Democracy--Old and New Social Movements as Learning Environments in the Post-War Welfare State" (Lars Arvidson, Jorun M. Stenoien). (YLB)

Can adult education and learning be understood without reference to community and people’s daily lives? The response to be found in the chapters of this volume say emphatically no, they cannot. Adult learning can be best understood if we look at the social life of people in communities, and this book is an attempt to recover this view. The chapters of this volume reflect ongoing research in the field of adult education and learning in and with communities. At the same time the work of the authors presented here offers a very vital reflection of the work of the ESREA research network Between Local and Global – Adult Learning and Communities. The chapters showcase the broad range of professional practice, the variety in both methodology and theoretical background, as well as the impressive scope of field research experience the authors bring to bear in their papers. The first section provides the broad view of research into adult learning and community development emphasising how social movements are at the heart of local and global change and that they are critically important sources of power. The second section focuses in on the practice of educators/mediators working in local and regional contexts in which the tensions of the wider policy and discourse environment impact on adult learners. The third section privileges the view at the close level of research inside local communities in the field. International researchers and practitioners, particularly young researchers, who are active in adult learning and in local/global communities will be interested in this book. The emphasis of the chapters is on participatory and emancipatory social research. Empowerment of women in rural communities, involvement of communities in social and environmental movements, power-sharing in community research projects and the exposure of hegemonic, globalising forces at work in ethnic communities are among the themes developed in this volume.

The authors argue that the aim of research should be to improve practice through a process of critical reflection. Focusing clearly on the everyday concerns and problems of practitioners, they emphasize the importance of practical knowledge. Their definition of ‘practice’ is wide, and includes the generation of theory and the doing of research as well as front-line teaching. They show how notions of ‘adult learning’ and ‘the adult learner’ have been constituted mainly through theory and research in psychology and sociology, and examine action research as a mode of understanding. They conclude by looking at the curriculum implications for the teaching of adult education as reflective practice.

"Scholarship on adult education has fueled a high level of methodological creativity and innovation in order to tackle a diverse range of issues in a wide range of settings and locations in a critical and participatory manner. Adult education research is marked by the desire to do research differently and to conduct critical research with rather than about people which requires theoretical and methodological creativity. This entails a particular approach to how we seek to know the world in collaboration with people, to rupture hierarchical relations and to create new collaborative spaces of learning and research that encompass the diversity of people's life experiences. Doing Critical and Creative Research in Adult Education brings together both leading and emerging scholars in adult education research in order to capture the vitality and complexity of contemporary adult education research. This includes contributions on biographical, narrative, embodied, arts and media-based and ethnographic methods alongside the critical use of quantitative and mixed methods. This distinctive and rich methodological contribution has a general relevance and usefulness for all researchers and students in the social science and humanities, which draws attention to the importance of critical and creative participatory learning processes in human life and learning"--