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.

Günter Hefler
Taking Steps: Formal Adult Education in Private and Organisational Life
Series: Studies in Lifelong Learning