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Training that changes lives – a new study on formal adult education has been released

New publication by Günter Hefler of 3s: Taking Steps – Formal adult education in private and organisational life: A comparative view.

22. May 2013

New publication by Günter Hefler of 3s: Taking Steps – Formal adult education in private and organisational life: A comparative view.

Formal adult education definitely exists as a phenomenon, yet few researchers have tried to explain it. Contrary to non-formal education courses, the ‘social charter’ of formal adult educatin allows an adult learner to become eligible for taking steps upwards on educational and career ladders.

Anchored in organisational institutionalism and based on empirical studies in twelve European countries done within a large-scale research project within the Sixth EU Framework Programme (LLL2010), this book explores the link between individual participation, educational provision and employers’ responses to provide the institutional basis for fulfilling one central promise of lifelong learning: support for social mobility. However, societies differe widely in how they institutionalise formal adult education.

This book – as the first monograph on formal adult education – clarifies the concept’s origin, develops a theory on and a typology of formal adulat education, discusses individual participatin patterns and considers its role within companies’ training cultures. Finally, it expores opportunity structures for formal adult education in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France and Japan.

Web link to the publisher

Günter Hefler
Taking Steps
Formal Adult Education in Private and Organisational Life 
Series: Studies in Lifelong Learning
No. 5, 2013, 240 p., EUR 24.90, ISBN 978-3-643-90096-8