Adult Learning and employability: International research and practice

Adult education on the one hand and employment contexts on the other have been understood long as oppositional contexts in society. Whereby adult education seems to follow pedagogical principles which intend to develop people according to their individual abilities and interests, employment contexts seem to follow firstly economic principles of profit maximation. This dichotomy perspective is nowadays quite difficult in heterogeneous societies in which individual interests and lives are interdependent with different contexts of societies. Whereby school education allows in principle creating room and space out of real life for several years, adult education is classically much closer embedded into “real life” and peoples’ “Lebenswelt”. Adult education offers have shorter time-perspectives (sometimes just a few hours), the interests of transition of skills into life and working contexts are frequently immediate and financial resources also frequently shows the need of making links. Furthermore, employment contexts are rather diverse. Not only the economy is acting as employment context. Also public bodies and civil society are providing employment contexts. That means that interdependencies of between adult education on the one hand and employment contexts on the other hand are high – and adult learning and adult teaching as central activities within adult education – are expected to be high. It is expectable, that these interdependencies are different in different international contexts. Target of this volume is to identify these interdependencies as well as similarities and differences in different international contexts. This will allow the identification of joint international interdependencies on the one hand and differences in different contexts as well.