PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ADULT EDUCATION AND LIFELONG LEARNING

**Lifelong Learning, Young Adults and the Challenges of Disadvantage in Europe**

*Edited by* John Holford Pepka Boyadjieva Sharon Clancy Günter Hefler Ivana Studená

# Palgrave Studies in Adult Education and Lifelong Learning

#### **Series Editors**

Marcella Milana Department of Human Sciences University of Verona Verona, Italy

> John Holford School of Education University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK

Tis series explores adult education and lifelong learning, emphasising the tensions between universal models and approaches that value local cultures, traditions, histories, and mutual understanding between diverse communities. Contributions to this series contribute original knowledge and insights in adult education and lifelong learning, based on original empirical research and deep theoretical analysis, and stimulate debate on policy and practice. Books are geographically broad, drawing on contributions from within and without the Anglophone world, and encompass research-based monographs and edited collections, thematic edited collections addressing key issues in the feld, and trenchant overviews designed to stimulate intellectual debate among wider audiences.

John Holford • Pepka Boyadjieva Sharon Clancy • Günter Hefer Ivana Studená Editors

# Lifelong Learning, Young Adults and the Challenges of Disadvantage in Europe

*Editors* John Holford School of Education University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK

Sharon Clancy School of Education University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK

Ivana Studená Institute for Forecasting, CSPS Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava, Slovakia

Pepka Boyadjieva Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Sofa, Bulgaria

Günter Hefer 3s, Vienna Austria

ISSN 2524-6313 ISSN 2524-6321 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Adult Education and Lifelong Learning ISBN 978-3-031-14108-9 ISBN 978-3-031-14109-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14109-6

© Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s) 2023. Tis book is an open access publication. **Open Access** Tis book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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*In memory of Professor Robert (Bob) John, whose enlightened learning and enlivening comradeship showed social scientists that computer science can be humane too.*

# **Foreword**

Adult learning and related eforts to arrange and organise opportunities for adults to continue learning throughout life are deeply embedded in our societies. Tey can be linked to a diverse range of stakeholders in different contexts, each with diferent views and objectives, and hence to diverse opportunities for diferent purposes. If approached from a systemic view and coordinated—with sustained and collective efort among stakeholders to achieve goals of inclusion and quality on the one hand, and to continually defne and redefne their purpose, functioning and efectiveness, on the other—these organised adult learning opportunities have the potential to act as a powerful corridor of communication in the face of complexity. Tey also allow for coping with systematic communicative distortions arising from the unequal social distribution of power and resources.

Individual success aside, at collective levels, the ability to govern and to adapt efectively to change depends, to a large extent, on learning and the opportunity structures for learning. Change is a defning feature of modern life, particularly in dynamic market democracies, and eforts to arrange and organise adult learning opportunities efectively for *all* are worthwhile. Tey have an important role to play, contributing to advanced and democratic forms of communication and governance and involving the daily renewal of political, social, and cultural negotiations.

Despite such potential for adult learning, and despite paying lipservice to wider aims, the strategic rationality of steering mechanisms of power and money—as manifested through commodifcation, markets and the administrative apparatus of the state—over-emphasise the economic dimension of adult learning in policy and practice. Scholarly empirical-analytic and hermeneutic eforts which attempt to move us beyond these narrow forms of interests—such as collected in this book are of immense value to help policymakers and other stakeholders reach a more synthetic view and understanding of adult learning as being a core element of a vibrant civil society. Tis includes the capacity of civil society to hold power to account vis-à-vis both stated goals and aspirations associated with freedom and justice.

Tis more synthetic view and understanding implies the need to encompass and emphasise adult learning's role in enabling the interpretation of meanings that defne practical reason. In so doing, it helps guide action and moral deliberation in social and cultural life—and not least in working life in both public and private sectors. Further, it implies the need to embrace the critical-emancipatory purpose of adult learning: to engage with knowledge about power and the associated normative issues of freedom and justice, which are so central to liberal democratic governance and human rights (e.g. as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Of course, these are not mutually exclusive and together may be indicative of quality in terms of what counts as efective organised learning, including for working life.

Tis book engages thoroughly with a synthetic view of adult learning and its potential role in market democracies. At the same time, it provides a rich source of empirical-analytic knowledge about conditions and circumstances surrounding adult learning in various contexts and at different levels of analysis. In so doing, for example, by enriching the concept of bounded agency, it reveals the complex role of policy and institutions in structurally enabling and/or constraining individuals to learn. It raises key questions and issues, as well as alternatives to consider, in manoeuvring the complexity vis-à-vis stated goals from policy and practice perspectives. Foremost, it elucidates the messy processes involved and, most importantly, the necessity of treating citizens as human beings with fundamental rights and as the key agents of social change in democratic societies.

Department of Education Richard Desjardins University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Los Angeles, CA, USA

# **Preface**

Not so long ago, Europe was 'the future': in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the European Union ofered not only a new home for emerging democratic market economies, but a new kind of international organisation combining democratic governance, social welfare, tolerance and the rule of law. Tirty years on, the European project faces multiple challenges. Te employment problem remains. Economies may have recovered—just about—from the post-2008 crash, but technological change gathers still more pace, and the long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic remains unclear. Migration continues—within the EU and from beyond its borders. Artifcial intelligence threatens even the most skilled workers. Labour markets, welfare systems and political institutions seem ill-prepared for the challenges. Inequality grows. One of the European Union's largest member states (the UK) has turned its back on the project. Forms of authoritarian, nationalist 'populism'—unparalleled since 1945—are on the rise: several EU member states are now governed by such politics.

Tis book focuses on the role of lifelong learning in Europe's present and future. From the early 1990s, the European Commission has woven a new thread into the EU's fabric: lifelong learning. First deployed for its potential contribution to competitiveness and solving the 'employment problem', by the turn of the millennium, it was being ofcially promulgated as 'essential' to 'the development of citizenship, social cohesion and employment'.

Plainly European lifelong learning has not achieved what its advocates hoped for two or three decades ago. Few thought lifelong learning was a panacea, but even the tempered optimism of the 1990s now seems exaggerated. Tis book asks why. Its empirical base is fndings from the Enliven project.1 It poses such questions as: What has European lifelong learning in fact achieved? In what ways has it fallen short? How efective are current policies? How should they change?

Of course, the EU has achieved a lot. Expanding to east and south, its population grew from 350 million to over 500 million, though it has fallen back since the UK's departure. Shepherding 28 or 27 countries with very diferent histories, cultures, populations and wealth—in roughly the same direction has proved far more complex than governing 12 relatively wealthy western European countries. Since 2000, it has developed a remarkable suite of multinational coordination mechanisms—applied to lifelong learning as well as other policy areas.

Yet the problems remain. Lifelong learning is not solving them. In fact, Europe's weaknesses in lifelong learning in many ways refect the Union's social and political challenges. Te dominant response to lifelong learning's apparent inability to deliver the hoped-for economic and social returns has not been to ask fundamental questions about aims, but rather to look for improved methods of policy implementation or 'delivery'. Te challenges involved in maintaining some intelligent overview of policy across so many diverse countries are intense.

Te increasing availability of 'data' has encouraged a belief that many answers lie in information technology and artifcial intelligence. Tis view is subject to several profound critiques. Attempts to govern by the quantifcation of outcomes inevitably over-simplify the complexity of social reality. When targets or measures are set, social actors prioritise what can be measured. And although technological sophistication has greatly expanded the range of quantitative data available about social

1Enliven: 'Encouraging Lifelong Learning for an Inclusive and Vibrant Europe'. Te project and the open access publication of this book were supported by the European Commission under its Horizon 2020 research programme (Grant No. 693989).

behaviour, they remain skewed. In particular, there are much larger (and probably more reliable and comparable) datasets about economic activity than about other aspects of social life. Nevertheless, the quest for technological solutions continues.

Te main focus of this book is young adults—especially those relatively less-advantaged young adults who, on leaving school, do not enter full-time higher education. Tis group has been a central EU policy concern in recent years—not least because, in the wake of the 2008 crash, one in every four Europeans under 25 was unemployed (in some countries, one in two). Unemployment among the young is known to generate long-term 'scarring', not to mention social exclusion and disafection. Tese threaten economic competitiveness, social cohesion, and the European project as a whole.

However, we approach the education of young adults from the perspective of adult education. Tis means it takes a particular normative position. We do not see education and training for young adults as 'preparation' for adulthood: we view education as integral throughout the life course. Education is taken to relate to the full breadth of human life and experience—'life-wide' as well as 'lifelong'—and so the contributors are sceptical of a narrow policy focus on 'employability' and workplace skills. Education throughout life is seen as fundamental to democratic societies. And the education of free citizens is seen as a process to which citizens must contribute freely: they should not be the passive recipients of education designed by their 'superiors' but must be able to participate actively and democratically, on a basis of equality, in shaping what and how they study and learn.

From this perspective, 'making policy' for lifelong learning presents particularly intractable challenges. Social policy is inevitably the product of contributions at multiple levels, and by diverse 'actors', even within a single country. Tis is still more true in a complex multinational polity such as the EU. At many of these levels, policy is subject to formal shaping by 'democratic' institutions of various kinds: these establish principles and objectives, modes of operation and regulation, and organisations and institutions, for education. Yet adults participate in education not merely as the *objects* of policy, but as citizens who are—and perhaps more importantly, often feel—entitled to be active *subjects* in shaping how they learn and are to be educated. Tere are, of course, also actors who think their expertise, professionalism, or bureaucratic role make their contribution to policy particularly important or more legitimate.

Tis book therefore examines lifelong learning in Europe from a critical perspective. It argues, on the basis of a major multinational research project, for the strengthening of informed debate about how lifelong learning should be organised and what Europe's aims in it should be.

Around the turn of the millennium, a critical perspective emerged *within* the European Commission about its own governance. Te very term 'governance' was used to refer to an attempt to reshape EU institutions to address problems of growing distance between the European project—as represented in institutions such as the Commission and the European Parliament—and its citizens. Te Commission's then president spoke of the EU needing 'a new, more democratic form of partnership … between civil society and the other actors involved in governance, … consulting one another on a whole range of issues; shaping, implementing and monitoring policy *together*'. Democracy should be 'much *more direct*, *more participatory*'. Tis was necessary 'to make a success of [EU] enlargement', and so that 'democracy and respect for human rights as well as sound economic policies become the norm' (Prodi, 2000, emphasis in original; see also European Commission, 2001). However, in the same speech, he warned that there was 'no established method of preventing the European agenda from being hijacked by the strongest and most vocal lobbyists'. So it proved: rather than Europe being 'built by the citizens for the citizens', corporate advocates of neoliberal markets took control of the Lisbon strategy.

European adult education traditions and experience show that lifelong learning cannot be restricted to delivering a workforce with requisite skills—even if leavened with aims of equity and social inclusion. Rather, learning in adulthood is an essential part of enabling citizens to play a full and active role in shaping Europe as an educated democracy. We believe our contributors' positioning as adult educators enriches the book. Adult education is seen not simply as the product of policy development by governments but as the outcome of initiative by emancipatory social movements, including educational social movements, many associated with labour and the working class. Te contributors take the view that one of the weaknesses of the EU's approach to lifelong learning has been its conscious distancing from the critical, emancipatory, and often anticapitalist heritage of adult education.

In the book, we also apply an innovative theoretical perspective: 'bounded agency'. Tis provides a theoretical basis for marrying analyses of the behaviour and preferences of individuals with the institutional structures which comprise the societies in which they live. Tis is particularly important if we are to explore the viability of Artifcial Intelligence- (AI-) based policy modelling in lifelong learning. Behavioural approaches (e.g. from economics and psychology) are often seen as providing a suffcient basis for modelling and accurately predicting human behaviour particularly when combined with computer-based technologies. Many computational social scientists recognise that the use of AI in addressing social problems is at an embryonic stage, while 'real world' events, such as the fnancial crash, not to mention the recent pandemic, periodically expose the limitations of behaviourally based models (MacKenzie, 2011, MacKenzie & Spears 2014). Te present book is informed by an attempt to apply AI in lifelong learning policy, but to do so on the basis of interdisciplinarity, informed by social structural as well as behavioural perspectives. Lifelong learning research has shown that institutional and social structures across the nations of Europe are both persistent, pervasive and diverse, and also structure how participation in learning and motivation to learn difer within and between social groups.

Bounded agency enables us to locate behavioural data within an institutional-structural framework, making policy debate and decisionmaking more realistic, grounded and relevant to the diverse stakeholders in European societies. Agency is seen as socially situated, infuenced but not determined by social structures and environments (Evans, 2002, 2007; Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009). Te concept sees actions in the contingencies of the present moment as infuenced by past habits, by what people believe to be possible for them in the future, but also by subjective perceptions of the structures they have to negotiate, the social landscapes which afect how they act (Evans, Schoon, & Weale, 2013). Bounded agency is used in various ways across the research: for instance, in analysing policy, we have applied it through the method of policy trails, which allows us to see both the agency of actors and the structures within which they act.

Te book is organised in four parts. Te frst, 'Lifelong Learning for an Inclusive and Vibrant Europe', comprises two chapters, sets the scene and outlines the main concepts and approaches used. Te second, 'Policies, Programmes and Participation', is made up of seven chapters. Tey explore how European policies have conceptualised young people (especially those regarded as 'vulnerable'), and why and to what extent diferent groups participate in lifelong learning in Europe. Tey also include chapters on adult education and empowerment from the perspective of the capability approach, on how media use of PIAAC data has shaped debate about lifelong learning, and about some of the challenges faced in using artifcial intelligence to inform policy in this area. Te six chapters in Part III, 'Young Adults' Learning in the Workplace and Beyond', explore how workplaces contribute to lifelong learning, especially for young adults: they show that how employing organisations shape the workplace plays a vital part in who has an opportunity to learn, and what they have an opportunity to learn. Tey also show that what people learn in the workplace is important not only for what they do at work: it also afects the character of social and political life. Te fourth part, 'Conclusion', consists of a single chapter: 'Adult Education, Learning Citizens, and the Lessons of Enliven'.

Te research on which this book draws, and the costs of open access publication of this book, were supported by the European Commission; we acknowledge this with warm thanks. Te project was conducted by teams from ten institutions. Most of these were in Europe, but colleagues from the University of Melbourne, Australia, were also invaluable. Te research also received rich contributions from three Danish scholars. Our work was also enriched and challenged by an advisory board comprising experts from the scientifc and policy communities. Te members of the Enliven team and advisory board are listed in Appendix 3. Without their professionalism, expertise and general enthusiasm, neither the project nor this book would have been completed: our gratitude cannot be suffciently expressed.

Tough it seems invidious to single out individual members of such a strong team, we conclude by mentioning two. Ruth Elmer proved an exceptionally able project administrator, guiding our work throughout, ensuring that we fell into none of the legion pitfalls that European funding regimes present; and she did it all with good cheer.

One of the challenges the Enliven project faced was that of combining the talents of two very diferent scientifc tribes. Social scientists and computer scientists seldom talk: we were to discover that when they do, they often fail to understand one another. Fortunately, our team included Professor Bob John, not only a leading computer scientist but a gifted communicator. Sadly, this charming, committed and congenial man who grasped what matters in adult educational research and enriched our work—was to die shortly after attending the project's fnal conference. We dedicate this book to his memory.

Sofa, Bulgaria Vienna, Austria Günter Hefer Bratislava, Slovakia Ivana Studená

Nottingham, UK John Holford Sharon Clancy Pepka Boyadjieva

# **References**

# **Contents**

# **Notes on Contributors**

**Maite Aurrekoetxea-Casaus** is Associate Professor in the Faculties of Social and Human Sciences and of Law at the University of Deusto, Spain, and a member of the Social Values Research Team. She holds a PhD in Sociology (University of Westminster) and an MA in Behavioural Science Research (National Distance Education University, Complutense University of Madrid and Autonomous University of Barcelona). She is an expert in the application of qualitative methodology and her research focuses on equality and vulnerable groups. ORCID: 0000-0003-3047- 7355

**Ellen Boeren** is Professor of Education at the University of Glasgow, UK. She holds a PhD from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and specialises in participation studies in lifelong learning. She is an editor of the *Adult Education Quarterly* and of UNESCO's *Fourth Global Report on Adult Learning and Education*. Her book, *Lifelong Learning Participation in a Changing Policy Context* (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), won the Cyril O. Houle award in 2017. ORCID: 0000-0002-2285-5814

**Pepka Boyadjieva** is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Honorary Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on higher education, educational inequalities and lifelong learning. She is a member of the NESET and principal investigator in the project 'Dynamics of Inequalities in Participation in Higher and Adult Education: A Comparative Social Justice Perspective' (2020–2024). ORCID: 0000-0002-0561-6942

**Ulrik Brandi** is Associate Professor of Organisational and Workplace Learning at Aarhus University's Danish School of Education, Department of Educational Studies. He is director of the research programme on Learning, Innovation and Sustainability in Organizations (LISO). His recent research has focused on workplace learning, innovation management, organisational learning and sustainable development. ORCID: 0000-0001-7361-8432

**Sofe Cabus** is a research lead at the Brussels ofce of international organisation VVOB – Education for Development, and an afliated researcher with Universities of Leuven and Maastricht, Belgium. In 2013, she obtained a PhD in the Economics of Education at Maastricht University. She focuses on evidence-based research in education and lifelong learning in OECD and low- and middle-income countries. ORCID: 0000-0001-6719-5824

**Sharon Clancy** is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Management at the University of Nottingham, UK, and was a senior research fellow on the Enliven project 2016–2019. She is also the Chair of the Raymond Williams Foundation and completed her PhD in 2017, examining a historic adult residential college. Her writing focuses on class, culture, critical and political education and social justice issues. ORCID: 0000-0001-7350-905X

**Jolien De Norre** is a sociologist and has worked on numerous projects in the feld of education and lifelong learning in the Research Institute for Work and Society (HIVA), a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in scientifc policy-oriented research at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. ORCID: 0000-0002-4725-7220

**Fernando Díez** is associate professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Education, a member of the research team on Education, Regulated Learning and Assessment (ERLA), and Director of the Agency for the Promotion and Management of Research and Publications, at the University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain, and Deputy Director of the Deusto Foundation. His research is in leadership, human resource management, organisational behaviour and education. ORCID: 0000-0002-7522-5189

**Iciar Elexpuru-Albizuri** is a professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Education and a member of the education research team (eDucaR) at the University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain. Her research focuses mainly on the development of human values and on improving teaching and learning. ORCID: 0000-0003-3138-7650

**Ana Estévez** is Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the Department of Personality, Psychological Assessment and Treatment at the University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain. She directs the master's degree programme in general health psychology and has received several international and national research awards. ORCID: 0000-0003-0314-7086

**Denisa Fedáková** is Director and a senior researcher at the Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology and her research interests are in worklife balance, gender studies and social attitudes. She has been the national coordinator of the European Social Survey since 2018. ORCID: 0000-0001-6816-1802

**Günter Hefer** is a senior researcher and project manager at 3s (www.3s. co.at), Vienna, Austria. His research includes cross-country comparative studies on lifelong learning and continuing vocational training and the impact of Europeanisation on education and employment policies. He is author of *Taking Steps: Formal Adult Education in Private and Organisational Life* (2013). ORCID: 0000-0002-7716-2601.

**John Holford** is Robert Peers Professor of Adult Education at the University of Nottingham, UK, and was coordinator of the Enliven project. He is an editor of the *International Journal of Lifelong Education*. A sociologist, he has been an adult educator in England, Scotland and Hong Kong. His recent research has focused on the politics of adult education in the European Union and the UK. ORCID: 0000-0003-1666- 4525

**Petya Ilieva-Trichkova** is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She holds a PhD from the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland. Her research interests cover educational inequalities, lifelong learning and graduate employability. Her recent publications include *Adult Education as Empowerment* (Palgrave Macmillan 2021). ORCID: 0000-0002-2889-0047

**Alesia Khadatovich** is graduate student in sociology at the School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, Estonia. She holds a degree from Belorussian State University in international relations. Her research interests include theoretically informed critical analysis of working conditions and employee empowerment, and culturally specifc social constructions and spatial meanings of death in the context of burial grounds.

**Vassil Kirov** is Professor of Sociology (Digital Transformation and the Future of Work) at the Institute of Philosphy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and a visiting professor at Sciences Po, Paris, France. He specialises in the sociology of work, employment relations, labour markets and digital transformation. He has been a researcher in several large EU-funded research projects, a member of the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on the Digital Transformation of Labour Markets and an external expert for the ILO, Eurofound and Cedefop. His recent publications include *Policy Implications of Virtual Work* (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). ORCID: 0000-0001-9004-1604

**Gosia Klatt** is an Associate Professor in the Continuing Vocational and Educational Policy hub at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. Her published work covers youth transitions, vocational education, education system transitions, education policy and governance across secondary schools, vocational training and adult education. She is particularly interested in decision-making processes within multi-level governance systems such as the European Union and Australia, and in how policy decisions and discourses are shaped within such complex systems. ORCID: 0000-0002-0207-2548

**Anne Larson** is Associate Professor of Educational Sociology at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her main research interests are education policy, lifelong learning and adult education, including the relationship between transnational and national policy and practice; what infuences the political agenda in relation to (adult) education; and social inequalities and adult education, combining a background within political science and educational sociology. ORCID: 0000-0002-2950-8583

**Alan Mackie** is a Lecturer at the University of Dundee, Scotland, where he teaches community education. Alan's primary area of research involves seeking to understand the lives of marginalised youth, working at the interface between youth sociology, education and community engagement. ORCID 0000-0002-3724-1313

**Concepción Maiztegui-Oñate** is a tenured Lecturer in the Department of Social Pedagogy and Diversity, Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain, and senior researcher in the Intervention: Quality of Life & Social Inclusion research team. Her research areas focus on social participation, non-formal learning and citizenship, migration and social justice issues, and participatory methodologies. ORCID: 0000-0001-9366-2983

**Liisa Martma** is an early stage researcher and doctoral candidate in the School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, Estonia. She is participating in the Horizon 2020 project 'Technological Inequality: Understanding the Relations Between Recent Technological Innovations and Social Inequalities'. Her research topics are vocational education, labour market outcomes and lifelong learning. ORCID 0000-0002-9703-0606

**Marcella Milana** is an Associate Professor at the University of Verona, Italy, Honorary Professor of adult education at the University of Nottingham, and Editor-in-chief of the *International Journal of Lifelong Education*. She researches the politics, policy and governance of adult education and learning, from comparative and global perspectives. Her recent publications include *Europe's Lifelong Learning Markets, Governance and Policy: Using an Instruments Approach* (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). ORCID: 0000-0002-3068-3530

**Álvaro Moro Inchaurtieta** is a Lecturer at the University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain, where he teaches research methods in the Faculty of Psychology and Education and is a member of the Quality of Life & Social Inclusion research group. His PhD was on educational innovation and lifelong learning. He works with the Deusto Institute for Drug Dependency on the experiences, expectations and challenges of people in diferent situations of vulnerability. ORCID: 0000-0003-0167-6048

**Claire Palmer** was a postdoctoral research fellow for Enliven in the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, UK, she is now a Research Associate at Loughborough University. Her interests include computational social science, artifcial intelligence, knowledge-based decision support systems, knowledge acquisition and data mining. ORCID: 0000-0002-4139-1373

**Edurne Bartolomé Peral** is an Associate Professor at the University of Deusto's Department of International Relations and Humanities. Most of her research and publications have been on the study of political culture, political values and attitudes in comparative perspective, political support and trust, and the application of experimental models. She is Programme Director for Spain of the European Values Study. ORCID: 0000-0003-0109-366X

**Francesca Rapanà** is a postdoctoral fellow at University of Verona, Italy, where she is researching school-community collaborations and improving students' civic engagement. After completing a PhD on the meanings of citizenship among second-generation migrants, she worked in teacher education and prison education. Her research interests include citizenship education, adult education and qualitative research methodology. ORCID: 0000-0002-9415-4902

**Palle Rasmussen** is Emeritus Professor of Education at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has published widely in research areas, which include education policy, comparative education, lifelong learning, adult education and higher education. He has led or participated in several research projects on adult education, and he has been active in several European research networks. ORCID: 0000-0001-6923-7071

**Maaris Raudsepp** is a senior research fellow at the Institute for International and Social Studies in the School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research interests include value change and intergroup relations, semiotics and sociocultural psychology. She has published on intergroup trust, acculturation processes, the regulative role of values, forms of group identity, ethnic self-esteem, social representations of human rights and equal treatment, and autobiographical memory and personal meaning construction.

**Triin Roosalu** is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute for International and Social Studies and the School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research interests include social constructions and embodiments of social inequalities in work, education and lifelong learning across institutional contexts and over time, working lives, understanding and managing change, organisational practices and policies, and gender diferences. ORCID: 0000-0001-5862-8448

**Eve-Liis Roosmaa** is a researcher and Lecturer in Sociology at the Institute of International Social Studies and the School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research interests are in cross-country comparisons in adult education and training with an emphasis on inequalities and barriers to participation. She is participating in a Horizon 2020 project 'Technological Inequality: Understanding the Relations Between Recent Technological Innovations and Social Inequalities'. ORCID: 0000-0001-8058-5739

**Ellu Saar** is Professor of Sociology in the Institute of International Social Studies and the School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, Estonia. Her main research interests are educational inequalities, lifelong learning, social stratifcation and mobility. She is participating in a Horizon 2020 project 'Technological Inequality: Understanding the Relations Between Recent Technological Innovations and Social Inequalities' and in a Twinning project 'Life Course Perspectives in Studying Youth Transitions to Adulthood: Bridging Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches'. ORCID: 0000-0002-9682-448X

**Eva Steinheimer** is a researcher at 3s (www.3s.co.at) in Vienna, Austria. She holds a master's degree in Scandinavian Studies and Political Science and completed the European Studies programme at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. At 3s she is involved in project management and in research projects at national and European levels in the feld of lifelong learning, adult education systems and evaluation of lifelong learning policies. ORCID: 0000-0002-2006-4322

**Rumiana Stoilova** is a Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where she was formerly director of the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge. She is chair of the Bulgarian Sociological Association and author of *Gender and Stratifcation* (2012), *Inequalities and Community Integration* (2001) and over 100 articles. ORCID: 0000-0003-3615-5111

**Ivana Studená** is a researcher at the Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. Her research interests include labour market adjustments, adult learning and skills policies, organisational and adult skills development, and workplace learning. She provides expert consultancy to public and non-government institutions in the area of lifelong learning and adult education policies, adult skills development and inclusiveness of lifelong learning policies. ORCID: 0000-0002-1174-2056

**Marti Taru** is a researcher at Tallinn University, Estonia. Active in the areas of youth work, youth policy and youth participation in labour market, nonformal learning, education focusing on assessing public policies for more than a decade, he was elected a member of the pool of European Youth Researchers in 2010 and has contributed to youth work and policy processes at the level of European institutions. ORCID: 0000-0002-2415-5096

**Sandra Vatrella** is a research fellow at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Research and specialises in prison ethnography, the sociology of education and adult education. Her recent publications include *Europe's Lifelong Learning Markets, Governance and Policy* (Palgrave Macmillan 2020). ORCID: 0000-0001-7145-2205

**Lourdes Villardón-Gallego** is a Professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Education at the University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain, and the main researcher of the Deusto education research team (eDucaR). Her research focuses on the development and evaluation of competences and on improving teaching for human learning and development. ORCID: 0000-0001-7011-2444

**Janine Wulz** is a Lecturer and researcher at the University of Victoria, Canada, and at 3s in Vienna, Austria. She is working on an interdisciplinary PhD in Teacher Education and Holocaust Studies. She is interested in critical approaches to adult and higher education, policymaking, historicpolitical education, and language education. ORCID: 0000-0001-9326- 3050

# **List of Figures**

**xxxiii**

#### **xxxiv List of Figures**

# **List of Tables**

#### **xxxviii List of Tables**

# **Part I**

**Lifelong Learning for an Inclusive and Vibrant Europe**

# **1**

# **Lifelong Learning, the European Union, and the Social Inclusion of Young Adults: Rethinking Policy**

**John Holford**

It was in the early 1990s that the European Union endorsed 'lifelong learning' as an instrument of policy. Several international organisations embraced the idea at around this time; an emerging global consensus saw lifelong learning as an essential element in responding to technological advances, globalised production and trade, and labour market fexibility. Te EU's position was, however, unusual, even unique, among them in that it has a strong, institutionalised, and in some respects direct, role in shaping the policies of the states which comprise it. In relation to education, this had been given a legal basis by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which for the frst time specifed that the EU activities should include 'a contribution to education and training of quality and to the fowering of the cultures of the Member States', and this was given an organisational

J. Holford (\*)

University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
J. Holford et al. (eds.), *Lifelong Learning, Young Adults and the Challenges of Disadvantage in Europe*, Palgrave Studies in Adult Education and Lifelong Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14109-6\_1

basis when, in the early 1990s, the European Commission established a directorate-general with responsibility for education.1

Although lifelong learning has never become a principal objective of EU policy,2 it soon became a key mechanism for achieving other aims. Tese other aims have changed over time and have often also been in tension. Lifelong learning was frst embraced as an element of competition policy. When EU expansion became a major feature in the 1990s, with it came a concern to cement democracy in member states formerly 'behind the iron curtain'; associated with this—though also with a concern to create some European identity and to overcome problems of EU institutions being seen as distant, unresponsive and 'bureaucratic'—was the idea that lifelong learning might foster a more engaged European citizen. Under Romano Prodi's presidency of the European Commission (1999–2003), it was briefy enrolled in pursuit of a more democratic, complex multinational polity, engaging the EU with its citizens with a stronger role for 'active citizenship'. (His predecessor's Commission, beset by allegations of fraud, had 'imploded in ignominy and mass resignation' (Tomkins, 1999, p. 744).)

Te Lisbon Strategy, adopted in 2000, however, became essentially a matter of centralising policy objectives and bolstering them with topdown implementation mechanisms (notably, such 'soft-power' features as indicators and benchmarks). Tese were operationalised through the Open Method of Co-ordination, whose prescription of discussion and consultation with social partners (or stakeholders) in shaping policy aims lent centralisation a democratic cloak. (It was seized on by some educationalists within the European Commission as a potential basis for a new and more democratic 'European educational space' (cf Hingel, 2001; Lawn, 2006; Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002).) Nevertheless, as it turned out, the Open Method of Co-ordination's centralising and implementation elements proved much more salient—in education and lifelong learning, as elsewhere (cf Gold et al., 2007)—than any 'space' it allowed to citizens in the formulation of policy aims.

1Formally, a directorate-general for education came into being only in 1995, though in practice this was the culmination of growth over the previous decade. See (Pépin, 2006)

2Tere was, however, a brief period in the early years of the Lisbon strategy when a small group of educators and educational policy-makers was optimistic that it might become so.

#### **1 Lifelong Learning, the European Union, and the Social…**

Te chief reasons for this were twofold: on the one hand, the EU's enlargement; on the other, global economic competition (or at any rate a growing fear of it). Politically, the EU expanded from 12 member states in 1995 to 27 in 2007; its population grew from roughly 350 million to over 500 million. Te countries were highly diverse. Four had over 60 million people each; 13 had populations smaller than London's (then the EU's largest city). Ten had a recent 40-year experience of state socialist government and lacked deeply embedded democratic institutions and cultures. Tis generated vast challenges of governance. In parallel, politics in several more long-standing member states—where political institutions had seemed quite strong—were threatened by the growth of farright, authoritarian populism. (Te decline of the political left, and social democracy in particular—associated with industrial restructuring and the post-1990 ideological crisis of socialism—was also signifcant.) From around the turn of the millennium, European right-wing populism donned 'Eurosceptic' clothes, and—from toppling the Constitutional Treaty in 2004 to Brexit in 2016—threw up a series of existential threats to the 'European project'.

At the same time, Europe was facing intensifed economic challenges. With revolutions in information technology and capital accumulation, industrial production became increasingly mobile and markets increasingly global. Europe's economic and political leaders saw competition from North America and Asia as posing a twin threat: structural, longterm unemployment and social exclusion. One of the attractions of lifelong learning was that it addressed both economic and social policy aims: competitiveness and inclusion. In the 1990s, Western economies generally prospered; the threat seemed relatively distant. Many felt optimism that a transformation into a 'Europe of learning', a 'knowledge economy' and a 'learning society' could be achieved, and clearly in any of these lifelong learning would be central (Archibugi & Lundvall, 2002; Commission of the European Communities, 2000; Green, 2002; Lundvall & Borrás, 1997).

It was in this spirit that the Lisbon Strategy set the aim of making Europe 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world' by 2010 (Council of the European Union, 2000). In the event, however, the globalised economy threw up unexpected—as well as anticipated—problems. Te late 1990s' 'dot com bubble' burst in early 2000; economic advance faltered. In 2007 and 2008 came the fnancial crash; a massive and global recession followed; in Europe, it threw its shadow over the following decade. Many felt its ill-efects. Some countries sufered more intensely than others—Greece's travails stand out but in all countries, the young were particularly hard-hit. Te narrative of the previous decade had been one of hard work and educational achievement, leading to good jobs and career opportunities; the reality all-toofrequently turned out to be unemployment, or insecure, lower-skilled, jobs for which they were educationally 'over-qualifed'. Te allure of the 'gig economy' was strongest for those with no need to earn a living from it.

Economic competitiveness has been a key aim of the nation state under neoliberalism, and one warmly embraced by the EU on behalf of its members. When, therefore, the Lisbon Strategy's achievements began—rather soon—to fall short of its ambitions, action was taken in short order. Te Commission appointed a 'High Level Group' chaired by a former prime minister of Te Netherlands, Wim Kok. Tis group acknowledged the problem, but recommended, essentially, more of the same. Te Lisbon Strategy was 'even more urgent' because 'the growth gap with North America and Asia has widened, while Europe must meet the combined challenges of low population growth and ageing. Time is running out and there can be no room for complacency'. Its recommendation: 'Better implementation is needed now to make up for lost time'. Tere should be 'a radical improvement' in 'delivery', to be achieved by sharper focus on a reduced number indicators and benchmarks, with the Commission 'praising good performance and castigating bad performance—naming, shaming and faming' (Kok, 2004, pp. 6, 42–43).

All bureaucracies have an appetite for policy centralisation; in few is it sated; after the fnancial crash of 2007–2008, little else appeared on the EU menu. Yet the politics of national inequality also mattered. In 2010, Germany accounted for nearly 20% of EU GDP; 85% of EU GDP came from the 12 countries which had been EU members before 1995. Greece, though one of these, accounted for well under 2%. When the Greek economy ran into serious trouble, it became a sacrifcial lamb: the Euro was by then iconic. But the Europe 2020 strategy, inaugurated in 2010, was essentially Lisbon laced with Kok. In policy terms, the aims and top-down implementation were endorsed, but should be further intensifed. Some indicators and benchmarks were promoted (to be key indicators); others were efectively demoted. Most important, however, the introduction of the European Semester enabled the Commission to oversee and intervene in national policies, particularly economic policy, on a regular basis—informed by the array of 'data' increasingly available, particularly through Eurostat. Of course, the Commission's capacity to intervene is subject to the general—legal commitment to 'subsidiarity', and in practice, the nature and degree of intervention has varied from country to country: it is easier for the Commission to intervene in Malta than in Germany, Estonia than in France. Nevertheless, the European Semester has become a profoundly important mechanism which, though strictly speaking focussed on economic policy, can in practice address 'recommendations' across a wide range of policy concerns—including lifelong learning, especially as linked to labour markets and training.

It was with this mindset and model that the EU grappled with the fnancial crisis and its aftermath. Tis book is, of course, concerned mainly with adult education, or lifelong learning, and particularly with how these shape the lives of young adults. Te Lisbon objectives—and particularly the Kok readjustment—may have been driven by fear of international competition (the global or 'neoliberal imaginary' (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010), but this was seen as key to 'sustainable economic growth', providing 'more and better jobs and greater social cohesion'. With young adults particularly hard-hit—and experience from a century and more pointed to the social impact of unemployment (Beveridge, 1909; Jahoda et al., 1972; Rowntree & Lasker, 1911)—delivering outcomes for the Union's youth became the focus for European social and economic policies. Lifelong learning policies were no exception: what emphasis there had been on learning throughout life—from cradle to grave—was elbowed aside by the pressing demands of a displaced generation.

# **Origins of the Enliven Research**

Tis was the background to the project on which this book is based. Some explanation of its nature and background is therefore in order. 'Enliven' is an acronym, the short title of a research project formally entitled 'Encouraging Lifelong Learning for an Inclusive and Vibrant Europe'. Te project was funded by the European Commission's Directorate General for Research and Innovation's Horizon 2020 programme; its main work was conducted over a three-year period beginning in October 2016.

Enliven responded to a 'call' for research proposals on 'lifelong learning for young adults: better policies for growth and inclusion in Europe'. Inevitably, it refected thinking in the Commission, and for that reason if no other—merits some discussion. Te call asserted that it was 'obvious' that investment in lifelong learning would 'contribute to overcoming the economic and social crisis and meeting the Europe 2020 targets on employment, poverty reduction, education, sustainability, innovation' and that the 'need and markets for adult education (after initial education and training)' were therefore 'likely to rise in the coming years'. Yet 'despite sustained attention over the years, adult education in Europe remain[ed] inadequate'. Tere were two particular concerns. First, 'those who are more in need of adult education, such as young, unemployed, low skilled, disabled and vulnerable workers, actually beneft less … than other more advantaged groups'. At the same time, there was an imbalance between public and private investment (the costs of adult education were borne largely by enterprises, individuals and families, rather than by the public). (European Commission, 2014, p. 25).

Te research specifcation suggested potential areas for investigation. For instance, while addressing adult education in general, it should focus particularly 'on young adults and vulnerable groups … after entry into working life'. Te relationship between public policies and the 'dynamics of private markets' was a concern. Programmes which improve learning outcomes, particularly for 'young adults at risk of social exclusion and other vulnerable groups', were to be identifed, as was 'the learning potential and innovation ability in workplaces'.

#### **1 Lifelong Learning, the European Union, and the Social…**

A particularly intriguing element was to 'investigate the feasibility [of] and possibly develop an Intelligent Decision Support System (policy mak-

ing modelling) for simplifying the access to information and support policy making in the diferent phases of the policy cycle'. Tis would facilitate 'access to scientifc evidence for policy making', help correct 'distortion of the adult education and continuing training market', show how barriers to access could be reduced, and identify fnancial measures to support individuals and companies, 'ensuring efective and fair distribution of resources, reduce[d] mismanagement and corruption' (European Commission, 2014, pp. 25–26). Research specifcations ('calls', in the Commission's terminology) do not, of course, emerge from nothing. Tey refect, albeit with distortions and misunderstandings, the priorities, preconceptions and prejudices of their authors—typically corporate authors—and of their time. It is, perhaps, in order to contextualise some of the emphases in this call. Many were very much responses to overriding concerns we have already mentioned, above all, the economic crisis that engulfed Europe (and much of the world) following 2007, its impact on young people in particular, and the political challenges of European enlargement. Some, however, refect beliefs about the causes of political, economic and social problems and where solutions to them should be sought—in short, they are ideological. Tus problems of adult education were located in market 'distortion'—more perfect markets would, presumably, deliver better lives for excluded youth, greater global competitiveness and the other aims of lifelong learning policy. Applying 'various psychological and behavioural sciences outcomes' was encouraged—many in policy communities were in thrall to the counter-intuitive scientifcity of behavioural economics, popularised by authors such as Taler and Sunstein (2008) and Pinker (2011), and Europe's leaders were no exception (Troussard & van Bavel, 2018; van Bavel et al., 2013, 2015; Zuidhof, 2019).

Much of this thinking was transmitted in an important report commissioned (in 2012) by the Directorate General for Research and Innovation and based on analysis of 'fnal reports, working papers and published articles from research projects funded by the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation under the sixth and seventh framework programmes'3 (Federighi, 2013, p. 3). A Foreword by Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General for Research and Innovation at the Commission, explained the 'link' between his brief and 'continuing adult education'. It was

because investment in continuing education increases the innovation capacity of companies. More generally, of course, continuing education helps workers keep their skills up-to-date and reduces the likelihood of labour market exclusion. It plays, therefore, a fundamental role to achieve the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy, as regards both growth and inclusion. (Federighi, 2013, p. 6)

Tat the Commission had 'bought in' to discourses of innovation as essential and benefcial hardly surprised us—they are more or less universal. Neither did its valuing of continuing adult education in terms of returns to productivity, efciency and competitiveness: Commission common-sense had long framed even social exclusion as solved by employment and economic growth. What stood out rather more was a degree of bureaucratic vanity. 'Policy makers' needed to 'understand which strategies will lead to more efective governance of adult and continuing education, to help them shape dynamic learning environments adapted to diferent sectors, education levels and enterprise size'. Governments (and consultancies) across the world worshipped at the mantra of 'evidence-based policy making'; the European Commission was no exception. Yet, ironically, there was evidence in abundance. Te Labour Force Survey, the Adult Education Survey, other work by Eurostat and outputs of friendly organisations (such as the OECD's PIAAC— Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) meant the Commission was awash with information, much of it quantitative. Increasingly there was also 'big data': 'large, diverse, and heterogeneous datasets, often by-products generated from business and Internet transactions, email, social media, health care facilities, and various sensors and instruments' (Hoferth et al., 2017, p. 8).

3Te 'sixth and seventh frameworks' were the European Commission research programmes covering 2002–2006 and 2007–2013 respectively. 'Horizon 2020' (2014–2020) was, in efect, a rebranded eighth framework.

#### **1 Lifelong Learning, the European Union, and the Social…**

Te problem was how to process the information to render it useable, an assistance in framing policy, rather than allowing it to swamp the corridors of power. Tis is no new difculty: states' collection of new forms of information and development of scientifc—not least statistical techniques to manage and analyse it stretch back centuries, even millennia: the complex inter-relationships between governing citizens (or subjects), and the techniques for collecting, handling, and measuring data about them, have been extensively discussed by historians and sociologists of knowledge (e.g. Burke, 2012; Desrosières, 1998; Prévost & Beaud, 2016). Clearly, in the 'internet age', radical advances should be on the cards. If Amazon and Google know our shopping preferences before we do, surely governments could fnd ways to do likewise to the public good? As academic policy scientists argued:

Developments in information technology ofer an unprecedented opportunity to collect diverse data at fne-grained spatial and temporal scales, and present a remarkable chance to change the way social science is conducted and to greatly expand the questions that can be addressed. … Tis is an opportune time to rethink the primary ways in which data are collected, gathered, coded, curated, documented, archived, and disseminated …. [For instance,] spatially referenced administrative data, GPS-enabled cell phone data on the movements of individuals through their day, social media data, remotely sensed and observational data such as Google Street View, and survey data … [might be linked] to administrative data or to other characteristics of communities in which individuals live [using] … cutting edge approaches such as data trawling and web scraping [that] will produce detailed accounts of movement, social networks, and other forms of community building … (Hoferth et al., 2017, pp. 8–13).

If such data could be mastered, the scope for 'behavioural insights' seemed well-nigh infnite. Behavioural economics provided, or appeared to provide, a theoretical underpinning for this renewed outbreak of bureaucratic self-regard. Rather than policy-makers assuming that 'people act 'rationally', making choices that lead to the best possible outcome for them', in behavioural science literature 'deviations from rationality in decision-making are well documented'. What was required was 'specifc empirical observations' of behaviour in particular situations: 'proper understanding of human behaviour requires reality checks'. Tis would ensure that 'policy-makers rely on evidence, not assumptions' (van Bavel et al., 2013, p. 8).

With this background, Federighi's report for the EU's Research and Innovation Directorate General was predictably bullish. 'Policy-making processes do not make use of all the resources available', he asserted, but their 'building intelligent decision-support systems devices' would simplify 'access to information through … the policy-making process in its various phases'. (Federighi, 2013, p. 79)

Research carried out on a worldwide level has generated sufcient knowledge and know-how to foster policies of adult and continuing education which deliver the desired results. New devices, refned by research in the feld of artifcial intelligence, can give policy-makers easier access to available scientifc knowledge and the possibility of foreseeing the impact of the policy measures that have been adopted.

Research should produce an *intelligent decision-support system* that facilitates the impact analysis ex-ante of the policy measures for adult and continuing education by gathering and analysing evidence, identifying and diagnosing problems, proposing possible courses of action and evaluating the proposed actions. (Federighi, 2013, p. 89; bold and italics in original)

Such was the background to the call to develop an Intelligent Decision Support System: a system which, in the policy imagination, would permit 'policy making modelling … simplifying the access to information and support policy making in the diferent phases of the policy cycle'. (European Commission, 2014, p. 26)

# **Rethinking the Problem**

We responded to the 'call'—frst of all—by reframing the problem. It was very true that adult education in Europe was 'inadequate'. Under the label 'lifelong learning', it has been a key element of EU policy for 25 years—initially adopted as a response to the employment problem. Te EU's mechanisms for multinational policy co-ordination and measurement were in many respects world-leading. Yet when we designed the research in 2014, one in every four Europeans under 25 was unemployed—in some countries, it was one in two. Many were not in employment, or education, or training. An important report of 2012 had found one in fve 15-year-olds across the EU lacking the literacy skills to function successfully in a modern society and 73 million adults with low levels of education and literacy: 'if Europe achieved its current benchmark of functional literacy for 85% of 15-year-olds, this could lead to an aggregate GDP gain of EUR 21 trillion over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010' (High Level Group on Literacy, 2012, p. 26). Clearly, Europe's 'educational markets' (to adopt the term favoured by the Commission) were failing to ensure its citizens—particularly its younger citizens, though not them alone—had the education and training they required for their own prosperity and welfare. Tat had implications for society as a whole. Social exclusion, disafection and long-term 'scarring' presented risks for economic competitiveness, social cohesion and the 'European project'.

But reframing the problem and stressing its gravity were only the starting-point for more thorough-going Enliven reconceptualisation. Of course, research needed to review lifelong learning policies and programmes across the EU. It must examine the nature of adult participation in learning, particularly among 'disadvantaged' groups in society. It must look at how learning is organised in workplaces, and how this contributes to efciency and 'competitiveness'. Analysis must be based on evidence. But the research also had a distinctive theoretical framing. Te Enliven researchers come from two main backgrounds. Most are social scientists, but of a particular kind: adult educators, informed by a common body of theory. (Te Enliven team, because we were asked to develop an IDSS, also included computer scientists.) Of course, no group of scholars is theoretically homogeneous, but 'Enliveners' could relate to and exchange views not only by reference to the common resources of sociology, political and economic science—theories in the traditions of Weber, Marx and so forth. Tey also shared familiarity with major traditions in adult education theory. Te ideas of Dewey, Freire, Gelpi, Jarvis, Lindemann or Tawney difer in many ways, but all have a vision of learners as active, powerful, engaged and ethically important subjects in learning processes and the social construction of knowledge.

Such premises prejudiced us to look at people not as the objects of policy but as subjects; not as subjects of the state but as intelligent, thinking citizens; not as consumers of learning products but as creative designers of learning processes; not as atomised, eternally excluded individuals but as self-governing and inventive adults entitled to contribute in educated democracies. Tis has, of course, a utopian dimension, but adult education has always been bound up with collective movements for human self-improvement. Self-improvement is very often against the odds: we are far from believing that people shape their own destinies untrammelled by their environment. To take a very specifc case, Europe's Youth Guarantee both empowers and constrains its benefciaries (Dingeldey et al., 2019; Milana et al., 2020). Social theorists have long argued, and social research has shown, that structures and institutions shape our lives; they shape how we think of ourselves, what we hope for and what we think realistic and expect. Of particular importance, structures and institutions refect, reproduce, organise and transmit the social distribution of power.

# **Bounded Agency**

We were therefore attracted by attempts to use the notion of 'bounded agency' in the analysis of lifelong learning. Without engaging in a 'genealogy' of the idea, two important contributions stood out. Both developed the concept, deploying it with powerful explanatory efect. Evans' (2007) focus is on the lived experience of young people. She and her collaborators used the bounded agency concept to explore 'how young adults experience control and exercise personal agency' in the 'extended and multiple transitions' they experience in youth and early adulthood (p. 88). She wants to emphasise young people as 'having a past and imagined future possibilities, which guide and shape actions in the present, together with subjective perceptions of the structures they have to negotiate, the social landscapes that afect how they act' (pp. 92–93). Evans' focus is on how individual young people navigate the complex and changing environments within which their lives are led.

Rubenson and Desjardins (2009) employ bounded agency a little differently. Teir concern is why, in some 'welfare state regimes'—a notion they take from Esping-Andersen (1989, 1990)—participation in adult education is much higher than in others. In their view, 'although individuals have a degree of agency with regard to their learning behaviours, they are also bounded by structures and contexts and by features of the self that constrain choices' (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009, p. 192). Public policy, they suggest (which is represented for them by diferent types of welfare state regimes) not only 'directly afect[s] the contextual (structural) conditions that individuals face (on the job, in civil society, at home)' but also shapes, indirectly, 'individuals' subjective rationality and view (disposition) of their opportunity structure'. Drawing on Sen (2000), they see these subjective or 'dispositional barriers' as important constraints on 'a person's capability and hence freedom to participate' in adult education.

Tis perspective places policy at a premium. People's agency operates within particular institutional frameworks. Te origins of these institutions are complex, but in some sense they can be regarded as the outcome of public policy—conscious and accidental, historic and current. Just as important, these institutions also play a part in shaping our subjectivity—our agency. Tis 'interplay between structure and individual' generates a 'conditioning of values and subjective rationality' (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009, p. 196). Such 'bounded agency' suggests, for our purposes, that the structure of social and educational institutions not only provides incentives or barriers to adults who do wish to participate in education but also afects whether and how they wish—develop a desire—to do so. Here the capability approach plays in. Te decision to participate is a function not only of the adult education available (and related factors such as how difcult it is to take part) but also of the subjective processes by which a person formulates the desire and takes action—makes the decision.

Individuals' capabilities can play a part in 'defning structural conditions', notably 'situational ones such as job and family' but also institutional ones through forms of collective action (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009, p. 196). Tis 'structure-agency interaction' means that public policy can infuence adults' take-up of learning. For our purposes, it is important that adult education itself 'can be instrumental in fostering capabilities' (p. 196): adults who take part in education develop broader capabilities, including those which encourage and enable them to learn and study more. But more broadly, they argue that the 'Nordic welfare state' has a number of features that encourage adult participation in education. In short, these are: frst, close integration of adult education and active labour market policies, based on 'the full employment concept'; second, highly developed corporatist industrial relations structures, allowing strong trade union voice and infuence; third, civil society encompassing a strong 'publicly supported sector of adult popular education in the form of folk high schools and adult education associations'; and fourth, an 'emphasis on equity' that has 'a deep impact' on funding regimes (p. 198).

Te 'major diference between Nordic and non-Nordic countries', according to Rubenson and Desjardins (2009), is 'not the existence of barriers to participation but the conditions that allow a person to overcome these'. Tey question how useful it is to try 'to understand barriers by focusing solely on how individuals interpret the world'; instead, we should analyse the interaction between structural factors and individual dispositions. A welfare state regime 'can afect a person's capability to participate through the way it constructs structural conditions and helps individuals overcome both structurally and individually based barriers' (p. 203). In short, the structure of a 'welfare state regime' is vital in generating (or not generating) capability; and in certain circumstances such as the Nordic example—adult education itself seems to play a part in this.

Te bounded agency concept throws explanatory light on a widespread fnding of recent comparative research in lifelong learning: the persistence, pervasiveness and diversity of institutional and social structures across the nations of Europe, and their signifcance in structuring diferences within and between social groups in participation in learning and motivation to learn (Blossfeld et al., 2014; Boeren et al., 2012; Saar et al., 2013). While others (Busemeyer & Trampusch, 2011; Desjardins, 2017; Hall & Soskice, 2001) have used the language of 'political economy', in Enliven, we have generally referred to 'welfare state regimes'. Perhaps, we have tacitly associated welfare states with popular and social movement activity and with the historical legacy of adult education as associated with democratic social movements. Te diference in language, however, is more normative than analytical: Nordic welfare states may have the features Rubenson and Desjardins enumerate, but several European 'welfare state regimes' in our typology do not—indeed, in some welfare can seem very much at a discount.

Te Nordic example also shines light on why the concept of bounded agency is useful. From a 'behavioural' viewpoint, Nordic welfare states appear as relatively fxed structures; they are contexts which shape people's decisions. In general, statistical models such as those advocated by behavioural economists and psychologists will be based on how people have behaved within the institutional frameworks they set. Yet these frameworks—labour markets, trade unions, industrial relations systems, adult education institutions and so forth—are not simply 'given'. Tey are the outcomes of 'agency' by people and by the organisations and movements people create. Nordic welfare states refect the social and political histories of Scandinavian countries; the welfare state regimes or political economies of other countries similarly refect the historical interaction of various social forces. For our purposes, this illustrates that while institutions must for some purposes be taken as 'given' or 'fxed', they are themselves the product of agency—the activity, over generations, of people and their organisations.

Tis is not, of course, in itself a very original insight. 'Men make their own history', Marx famously wrote, '… but under circumstances … given and transmitted from the past' (1969/1852, p. 398). 'Contingency theory' in the sociology of organisations and management stems from the insight that structures infuence, even determine, the behaviour of organisations and the people who work in them (Burns & Stalker, 1961; Child, 1972; Woodward, 1958). For neoliberal economics, markets bring efciency, but almost more importantly, they shape morality (Bowles, 1998; Hayek, 1944; Rodrigues, 2013). Nevertheless, bounded agency is an important corrective to over-enthusiastic adoption of behavioural approaches (particularly in economics and psychology) for modelling and accurately predicting human behaviour—particularly when combined with increasingly sophisticated computer-based technologies. 'Real world' events periodically provide cautionary tales of the limitations of behaviourally based models, however technologically sophisticated; the 2007 fnancial crash is a case in point (Mackenzie, 2011; MacKenzie & Spears, 2014)—as, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic has proved.

# **Making and Analysing Policy**

Public policy has been a central concern of the Enliven research, as of its funders. Politicians and civil servants, of course, regard themselves—too often, themselves alone—as 'policy-makers'. Enliven researchers had to work with, and deliver results to, civil servants for whom this self-image was sheer common sense. Tey looked to us for fndings, insights and technologies so they could make better decisions. For us common sense cannot be taken for granted. Assumptions about how policy is formulated and implemented, and who plays a part, have now been explored, empirically and theoretically, over several decades (cf Ham & Hill, 1984; Lipsky, 1980; Sabatier, 1986). Our own normative theoretical roots told us we should think of citizens as active subjects in policy processes, not as mere objects of policy made by those appointed to govern them. Of course, some voices and interests have more traction than others in policy processes, and over the years, scholars have developed a range of concepts and models to explore this: policy communities, policy networks, policy cycles and so forth. A principal concern has been to map the myriad 'policy actors', the parts they play and their relative signifcance. For us, this was made more complex by the multinational and multi-level nature of governance in the European Union.

We approached this challenge from two directions. From one, we developed and tested an Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS). From the other, we sought to investigate policy processes analytically, working with the concept of 'policy trails'. Tese were very diferent approaches, and there was a continual—though generally productive tension between them. Te frst involved a close collaboration between social scientists and computer scientists; the second was very much a matter of social scientifc inquiry.

#### **1 Lifelong Learning, the European Union, and the Social…**

As we have seen above, we were asked to develop an IDSS 'for simplifying the access to information and support policy making in the diferent phases of the policy cycle' (European Commission, 2014, p. 26). Developing an IDSS is a matter of engineering design; in order to begin, our computer scientists needed answers to apparently straightforward questions. Who would use the IDSS? What policy problem did they want to address? What policy interventions had worked? It soon became clear that we required a clear and bounded area on which to focus: 'lifelong learning' was both too large and too vague. Discussion—much favoured among critical social scientists—about the complexities of what 'policy' comprises, who is involved in making it, how they interact, who defnes what 'works' or 'succeeds' and so forth, muddied the waters. In efect, much social scientifc research on policy was beside the point so far as IDSS design was concerned—though it took time to grasp this reality.

Our computer scientists needed to know who the 'end-users' of the IDSS would be; the answer, of course, was 'policy-makers'; if this begged the question, it was also a basis for practical progress. For largely pragmatic reasons, we found a boundary for our IDSS by focussing on young people not in employment, education or training: that section of humanity to whom the label 'NEET' is now commonly attached. Te team adopted this focus after some discussion but without great controversy. It seemed a relatively bounded issue. Being NEET had become a clear problem and policy priority, across Europe; researchers had worked on it; there had been many interventions of various kinds to address the problem. We anticipated that many of the interventions—having been funded by the EU—would have been subject to formal evaluations. Altogether, it was a matter of key public concern, and the sources of data about interventions seemed likely to be rich. In the event, while the former presumption proved valid, the latter was more problematical. While there had been many interventions and a good number of evaluations, we were to discover that the consistency and quality of the latter are very variable: of that, more in later chapters.

Nevertheless, we pressed forward to develop the IDSS. Consultations with a range of potential 'end users' helped our computer scientists identify the essential features needed and design the user interface. However, the poor documentation of cases—often spread inconsistently through several databases and sparse even when in a single document—and the enormous variation in how interventions were described, made largescale comparison virtually impossible. Te team tried to overcome these problems by generating a common repository (after considerable labour, this contained 222 items) and a similarity measure to index and retrieve relevant policy and evaluation documents. Teir strategy drew theoretically on Schardt et al. (2007)'s use of the PICO (Patient problem, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome) framework to perform metaanalyses of clinical evaluations. Te IDSS incorporated a matching algorithm based on the similarity measure so that 'most similar' interventions could be retrieved from the knowledge base; it also used natural language processing techniques to semi-automate the task of maintaining the knowledge base.4

# **Policy Trails**

Policy trails, frst developed for an earlier European research project on lifelong learning, seemed to us to provide a theoretical basis for fruitful empirical investigation of policy, particularly in the European setting. With contemporary society being highly 'globalised' and interconnected, the power of nation states has reduced in many, though by no means, all ways (Dickinson, 2016); policies often emerge through complex processes in 'transnational and globalized work spaces' (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 22), before being fltered through national contexts. Late twentieth and early twenty-frst century globalisation has been closely associated with neo-liberal perspectives on economy and business, and with the organisation of public services through forms of 'new public management'. Public policies today are therefore often intimately bound up with the activities of private enterprises, which both 'deliver' many services and have an interest in shaping how this is done. Te boundary between

4Hosting and maintaining software such as an IDSS requires ongoing expenditure; as funding was available only for the lifetime of the project, and the Enliven IDSS having been delivered (and demonstrated) to representatives of the European Commission, it is no longer publicly accessible. For a summary of this work see Enliven Policy Brief 10; fuller explanation is provided in three reports (D 8.1, D 8.2 and D 9.1). Detailed references and links are given in Appendix 4.

private and public sector is therefore blurred and constantly in fux. As Wiesel and Model (2014, p. 201) argue, 'longitudinal analyses of the manoeuvring of multiple actors in and around individual organizations' is needed as a way of examining the 'alignment of interests' and 'to fully grasp the complex interplay through which potential conficts are muted or amplifed'.

European multi-level governance blurs other boundaries: public policy is formulated and carried through in an interplay of EU, national and local governments. EU agencies (the Commission, executive agencies, parliament, courts and so forth) must work with the governments of countries varying in size from Germany (83 million) to Malta (440,000). All have constitutions, laws and structures of internal government—often complex in themselves. North Rhine-Westphalia, for instance, the most populous of Germany's 16 states (Länder), is larger than 21 EU members—including Belgium and the Netherlands, which it borders. Bremen, Germany's smallest state, is half as big again as Malta. 'Policy' is key to organising—governing—Europe; yet how policy is made, what policy consists of, who does what with a policy, and who and what are afected, remain complex and in some respects open questions.

Te challenge was to fnd an approach which, in relation to EU policy and its role, provides a framework for providing 'penetrating' understanding of 'messiness and complexity', while delivering the simplicity and neatness which allow analysis to be applied in (and lessons to be generalised from) a range of difering contexts. A pointer was the concept of 'governance' (Holford & Van der Veen, 2006, pp. 27–29), which 'gained ground in order to capture the changing relationship between actors in the policy process' (Cort, 2014, p. 128). Tis highlights policy processes, increasingly transcending national boundaries, and the growing national and supra-national infuence in education and lifelong learning of non-governmental actors (individuals and organisations) and private sector interests. Te idea that policy can be 'trailed'—or mapped and followed across a landscape—recognises 'the complex nature and consequences for both political structures and agency of the prominent multi-scalar model of lifelong learning governance within the EU' (Melo et al., 2015, p. 11). Policy trails acknowledge that policy is shaped, negotiated and contested, in formulation and in application, and that those engaged in this shaping include not only 'the state' (itself far from simply unitary) but also individual, organisational and collective actors from teachers to trade unions, and from bureaucrats to businesses. From the perspective of lifelong learning in Europe, they allow for the importance of actors at diferent levels and from diferent sectors.

Te idea of a policy trail incorporates a spatial metaphor: policy moves across terrain, a range of social, political and economic environments. Te methodology of studying a policy trail entails adopting a position of seeking to map 'the terrain the policy travels through rather than the policy itself, analysing how the policy is shaped through its journey' (Holford & McKenzie, 2013, p. 1). Tus we know that policy in lifelong learning is strongly infuenced by felds such as business and economic policies (hence the prominence of 'competitiveness') and social policy (hence social cohesion, social inclusion and the like). In each of these, a range of actors share (but also struggle over and through) language, ideas, modes of working, common sense. Further, a policy is enacted not only in a 'policy' feld—by 'policy makers'—but also in felds of practice. So 'non-policy actors' play a part in shaping policies, and particularly how they are carried into efect.

In practice, mapping policy trails involved developing contextualised policy case studies, covering the adoption, or non-adoption, of policy options, contributions by diferent actors in varying ways to shaping policies, and so forth. Trails can be mapped using various methods, including analysis of documents and interviews with actors (or those excluded *de facto* or *de jure* from being actors). Tey open, as it were, the messiness of policy to social scientifc analysis, investigating the efects of policy when it connects locations and people at diferent levels. In the context of their work with enterprises, Melo et al. (2015, p. 13) found the policy trail approach valuable not only for gaining 'insights on the enterprise governance environment from a broader perspective than that of the enterprise itself but also for pinpointing the moments when the enterprise plays an infuential role as a governance actor in its public sphere'. Policy trailing is also particularly useful for investigating the interaction between policy agendas and how they actually play out 'on the ground'.

In Enliven, the 'point of entry' to the trail was education and training programmes: we sought to uncover the fow of policy relating to the organisations and to identify those aspects of public lifelong learning policy with which the organisation interacted. To achieve this, we interviewed informants in each country involved in forming and enacting policy related to two programmes: one funded under the EU's Youth Guarantee initiative (supporting disadvantaged young people into employment), the other funded under the EU's Upskilling Pathways programme (helping disadvantaged young people overcome barriers as part of the transition into education, employment or training. We treated these as focusing on 'employment' and 'empowerment', respectively, though accepting that these labels were rough-and-ready. Our interest was in young people (under 30) who do not continue into academic or general upper secondary or tertiary education: low qualifcation levels reduce opportunities to access secure employment but may also result from disadvantage.

We examined how policy in the relevant area (employment, empowerment) fows through to specifc providers active in these areas, how this afects the programmes designed, how educators and support staf working on the programmes experience their involvement, and the opinions and experiences of the learners themselves. We combined insights from interviews, documents and contextual data and tried to be alive to interactions and mutual infuences among diferent 'actors' in each policy trail. Informants included policy makers, regulators, funders at the policy level, managers of education and training programmes, facilitators, teachers and trainers working on the programmes, and the adult learners themselves.

Te policy trails provided evidence for several aspects of our inquiry: for example, we used them to study the experiences of disadvantaged learners and how funding schemes work. Tus they showed—in relation to particular groups of young people, and programme and provider settings—the dispositional, situational (including fnancial) and institutional barriers adult learners had to overcome, the problems they encountered, and their successes; this helped us to understand the processes of active interpretation involved when policy is linked to practice.

# **The Book**

Te results of a project as large and rich as Enliven cannot be confned to a single book, even quite a long one. Members of the research team have already written about many of our fndings and used them to develop new ideas and theories.5 Nevertheless, in this book, we attempt to give some overall sense of the purpose, shape, methods, fndings and implications of the research.

Our book is divided into four parts. Part I introduces the work. It comprises the present chapter and one other. In Chap. 2, *Bounded Agency in Policy and Action: Empowerment, Agency and Belonging*, Sharon Clancy and I explore theories of bounded agency and what we think they ofer the study of lifelong learning for young adults. We do this partly by theoretical discussion (enriched by the recent work of two Enliven colleagues (Boyadjieva & Ilieva-Trichkova, 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2021)) but also through a qualitative case study of a personalised youth employability project which places the young people's personal experience centrally as 'experts' in their own lives. Teoretically, we discuss the relationships between such concepts as agency, empowerment and belonging. Te case study illustrates how important belonging can be to adult learning, particularly among the most socially and politically excluded young adults, for whom social isolation and mental ill-health can compound preexisting social and structural barriers.

Part II, comprising seven chapters, digs deeper into the nature and efect of lifelong learning policies, how they are made, and how this shapes what they contain and how they are implemented. Focussing especially on young adults, it addresses questions such as how the EU's lifelong learning policies have conceptualised 'vulnerability' and 'exclusion' over the last quarter century, how policies and fnancial systems are used to co-ordinate European adult education, and who participates in adult learning (and why they do or do not). It discusses limitations in the data currently available (and used) for policy-making in adult education,

5Te 'ofcial' outputs from the project can be found at www.h2020enliven.org. Publications by members of the Enliven team are too numerous to be listed here but include Milana, Klatt & Vatrella (2020).

and what can be learned from an attempt to strengthen policy-making using Artifcial Intelligence.

Chapter 3, *Vulnerability in European Lifelong Learning Policies 1992–2018: Seeing Young People as a Problem to be Fixed?*, takes a dynamic view of the nature of vulnerability. Trough critical discourse analysis drawing on a corpus of 68 European lifelong learning documents over 25 years, Concepción Maiztegui-Oñate, Triin Roosalu, Alvaro Moro-Incaurtieta and Marti Taru explore the conceptual foundations and rationale of lifelong learning policies that treat young people as a vulnerable group and show how lifelong learning has tried to address the challenges of vulnerability among young people. Te chapter shows how young people, especially in vulnerable situations, have been constructed primarily as a category that is, or should be, economically active—needing lifelong learning to equip them with the right skills for the labour market. Tis approach has overshadowed other visions—of citizenship and social participation—implicit in lifelong learning. Te chapter also shows that human capital perspectives dominate European lifelong learning policies, underpinning a narrow view that misunderstands the causes of vulnerability and generates incomplete policy objectives for socially excluded youth.

In Chap. 4, *Participation in Adult Learning: System Characteristics and Individuals' Experiences*, Ellen Boeren, Sofe Cabus and Alan Mackie build on the body of research that compares the macro- and micro-level factors underlying participation and inequality in adult education and training. Several 'system characteristics'—the organisation of education and labour markets, modes of production within frms, the quality of child care, the level of economic development, the cost of courses—play a key role. In particular, they restrict young adults with low levels of education from access to lifelong learning. Tis chapter focuses on what advantages an inclusive policy on lifelong learning has for society as a whole. However, although structural barriers mean that the opportunity (or desire) to take part in lifelong learning is not equally spread, small percentages of low-educated adults do so; from them we can learn how barriers to access can be lowered. Te chapter therefore analyses initiatives under the EU's Youth Guarantee and Upskilling Pathway programmes in nine countries. Te countries represent diferent welfare regimes and take signifcantly diferent approaches to adult education: their levels of provision vary, as do their active labour market policies and other system characteristics. Learners' experiences, however, and staf experiences, are broadly similar across programmes and countries. Participants' motivation and confdence levels are key to success; young adults with low levels of education need *individual* support.

Chapter 5, *Participation of Vulnerable Young Labour Market Groups in Job-Related Training: Te Efect of Macro-Structural and Institutional Characteristics*, by Ellu Saar, Eve-Liis Roosmaa and Liisa Martma, focuses on why two groups of disadvantaged young adults (the low-educated and those working in low- or medium-skilled occupations) participate—or do not—in job-related, non-formal education and training. Teir analysis suggests that, across occupational groups, job content is the core mechanism that keeps young adults away from training. Tey also fnd that institutional context is important: when unemployment rates are high, inequality in participation between occupational groups increases. Te chapter shows that during the post-2008 recession, investment in active labour market policies and similar measures reduced the 'training gap' between high-skilled occupations on the one hand, and low- and medium-skilled occupations on the other. When labour market conditions are more favourable, strong employment protection legislation appears to reduce inequalities in job-related, non-formal education; during the economic crisis, however, it seems to have increased them.

In Chap. 6, *Gender Gaps in Participation in Adult Education in Europe: Examining Factors and Barriers*, Rumiana Stoilova, Ellen Boeren and Petya Ilieva-Trichkova investigate the barriers which prevent men and women from participating equally in adult education. More specifcally, they ask what factors and barriers play out diferently—in relation to lifelong learning—between (a) men and women, and (b) women from diferent class and ethnic backgrounds. Building on previous research and using data from the European Social Survey and the Adult Education Survey, they confrm that social origin presents a signifcant structural barrier, afecting how likely men and women are to participate in adult education. Tey also draw attention to the role of intersectionality: of multiple simultaneous disadvantages including gender (for women), social origin (for those whose parents have only basic or lower levels of education), and having an ethnic minority or migrant background. Tere are also diferences between the probability of men and women receiving fnancial support to participate from their employers—this tends to be lower for women. However, women are more likely to receive fnancial support from public institutions. Te negative efects of ethnic minority status are stronger for women than men. Tey also conclude that Mediterranean and post-socialist welfare regimes are less able to reduce the efects of intersectionality than social-democratic regimes.

Chapter 7, *Adult Education as a Pathway to Empowerment: Challenges and Possibilities*, outlines a theoretical framework for conceptualising the role of adult education in individual empowerment from a capability approach perspective and provides empirical evidence on how adult education can contribute to individuals' empowerment. Pepka Boyadjieva and Petya Ilieva-Trichkova argue that adult education should be regarded as both a sphere of and a factor for empowerment. Tey see empowerment through adult education as embedded in the institutional structures and socio-cultural contexts available and as having both intrinsic and instrumental value. Tey also argue that the process of empowerment through adult education is not linear or unproblematic, so that only in some cases do the benefts of adult education lead to empowered agency. Adult education's empowerment role is revealed in expanded agency; this enables individuals and social groups to gain power over their environment as they strive towards individual and societal wellbeing. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, the chapter shows that participation in non-formal adult education can be a means of empowering individuals through increasing their self-confdence and their capacity to fnd employment and control their daily lives.

Te media actively contribute to the production of knowledge, and the knowledge produced and circulated in the media contributes to governing adult education and learning. Tis is the focus of Chap. 8, *Governing Adult Learning through Infuencing Public Debate: How the Media use PIAAC Data in Denmark, Italy and the United Kingdom*. Te authors, Marcella Milana, Sandra Vatrella, Gosia Klatt, Palle Rasmussen and Anne Larson, examine how visible the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is in widely read newspapers in Denmark, Italy and the United Kingdom, and how those papers use PIAAC data. Teir fndings are based on analysis of 83 articles, editorials and opinion pieces, following a common protocol. Tey show that the information about PIAAC conveyed in the newspapers tends to confrm general standards for adult learning. Data generated through PIAAC, and its 'implicit' benchmarking of Level 3 in adults' performances, support European standard setting in adult learning; and when national governments ask international organisations to do 'objective' evaluations, the latter enhance their power. Te media contribute to knowledge production, and this is one way they may exert infuence. How PIAAC data are used by diferent newspapers varies not only between countries but also according to the role each newspaper plays within national debates.

In Chap. 9, *Policy, Practice and Praxis: Computer-Aided Decision Support to Enable Policy Making in Lifelong Learning*, Sharon Clancy and Claire Palmer explore some of the issues that arise in applying Artifcial Intelligence to policy-making in lifelong learning. As we have seen, the Enliven project was asked to develop a prototype Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) to this end. Tis focused on young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs). To support new developments (particularly those aiming to beneft groups disadvantaged in terms of gender, ethnicity, culture and other factors), the IDSS provides a repository of information about existing projects. Tis means that new initiatives can be based on knowledge of what measures been used and which have worked, and that they can be evaluated against suitable criteria. Te chapter refects on issues involved in the collaborative, crossdisciplinary and inter-sectoral work required, describes how the Enliven IDSS developed, and provides insights into what was learned in the development process. It also discusses the limited nature of the information available and the ways in which computer-based responses to complex social problems are constrained.

Part III is devoted to the pivotal role of workplace learning in organisational life and in learning during what has been called 'emerging adulthood' (Arnett, 2014). In this period of life (roughly from late teens to early thirties), young people need access to gainful work not only for income but for learning and development. Some workplaces provide rich opportunities to learn; others restrict it. Organisations shape workplace learning potential, and how they allocate work signals how their agency is used to develop learning potential. Te chapters also explore the interaction of individual and organisational bounded agency in workplace learning, and the role of early career workers' agency in youth-led social movement organisations.

In Chap. 10, *Te Interplay of Organisational and Individual Bounded Agency in Workplace Learning: A Framework Approach*, Günter Hefer and Ivana Studená set out the framework that Enliven researchers used to investigate the interplay of 'organisational' and individual agency in workplace learning. Te framework guided the research on 17 organisational case studies across three economic sectors and nine countries, and it underpins all the chapters in Part III. Agency lies at its centre, enabling us to understand why individuals take up learning opportunities in diferent dimensions of their lives over the life course. Te concept is, of course, often deployed in the study of individuals' behaviour, but Hefer and Studená argue for treating agency as relational: actors' choices are bound—enabled and restricted—by their environments. Tey also explain how the framework goes beyond individual agency, treating the organisation as a specifc type of actor with its own agency: whether workplace learning actually occurs is the outcome of interaction between individual and 'organisational' agency. Some of those who fnd that their workplace ofers limited opportunities will no doubt seek a more learningconducive job; others will look to learn outside work—policies should promote meaningful learning across society. But poor workplace organisation is a key barrier to making lifelong learning a reality for all.

Chapter 11, *Working and Learning in the Retail Sector: A Cross-Country Comparative View*, by Ulrik Brandi, Jolien De Norre, Triin Roosalu, Maaris Raudsepp and Alesia Khadatovich, compares workplace learning opportunities in the retail sector in Belgium, Denmark and Estonia, analysing conditions for workplace learning as experienced by early career workers. Across Europe, the retail sector provides early career workers with a frst entry into gainful employment, yet also employs a large proportion of young adults on a part-time and/or temporary basis. Using in-depth case studies, the chapter shows that workplace design can limit early career workers' opportunities for day-to-day workplace learning. However, there are important variations within and across the cases studied. Early career workers respond in diferent ways when retail organisations limit their meaningful learning and career development. Teir responses are shaped by their evolving life structures and organisational settings. Tey may fnd working in retail 'right' for the time being even though, overall, it creates only restrictive workplace learning opportunities. Given the size and dominant role of the retail sector, employers enjoy considerable leeway and can often deviate from the labour standards generally expected in a given country—an important consideration when we seek to understand the role of organisational agency.

Chapter 12 examines *Organisational and Individual Agency in Workplace Learning in the European Metal Sector.* Vassil Kirov, Ana Isabel Estevez-Gutierrez, Iciar Elexpuru-Albizuri, Fernando Díez, Lourdes Villardón-Gallego and Maite Aurrekoetxea-Casau compare the evolution of day-to-day, informal, workplace learning and work-based training arrangements in Bulgaria and Spain's Basque region. Although Bulgaria and Spain are respectively located in the post-communist and Mediterranean welfare groups, the Basque region's advanced, industrialised economic model, requiring efcient skills provision, makes it rather diferent from other Spanish regions. In the Basque country, institutions successfully link vocational education with labour market needs, but Bulgaria's state educational system is poor at delivering skills. Te cooperative sector is important in the Basque region, and the chapter studies two co-operatives in depth. Having developed in a global value chain, Bulgarian companies (both domestic and subsidiaries of multinationals) have recently introduced some in-house training to cope with a defcit of qualifed labour. Using qualitative methods and working on underresearched countries, the authors go beyond what relatively static macrodata show about lifelong learning in the sector, revealing how organisational and individual agency provide space for informal workplace learning and what outcomes this has for early career workers.

Te adult learning sector is particularly diverse, and evidence on how employees in adult learning organisations access workplace learning is very limited. In Chap. 13, *Work and Learning in the Adult Education Sector: A Cross Country Comparative View*, Sharon Clancy, Günter Hefer, Francesca Rapanà, Eva Steinheimer and Ivana Studená, therefore fll an important gap. Te chapter focuses on learning by early career teaching staf, using evidence from eight case studies across four countries (Austria, Italy, Slovakia and the UK) and covering diferent sub-felds of adult education—from organisations providing basic skills training to those specialising in management courses in the corporate sector. Te research reveals that despite employees' high levels of skill, conditions for young or early career teaching staf vary signifcantly across and within subfelds. In general, adult learning teachers' jobs have a strong emphasis on self-directed learning and professionalism. Novice teachers' career pathways are characterised by poorly structured career opportunities. However, how conducive the work available is to learning varies signifcantly. Tis cannot be attributed to the type of services provided alone: it refects organisational agency. How work and HR practices are organised makes a real diference to teachers' learning experiences in adult education, not only early in their careers but beyond.

Despite the undeniable legacy of labour movements for adult learning worldwide, the interplay of industrial relations with lifelong learning remains outside mainstream lifelong learning research. Learning from activism is, moreover, usually informal and therefore rarely recognised. In Chap. 14, Maite Aurrekoetxea- Casaus, Edurne Bartolomé Peral, Günter Hefer, Ivana Studená and Janine Wulz focus on activism, not only as an important component of the industrial relations system but also as a major learning source for individuals, organisations and society. Young workers who feel they lack support from existing employee interest organisations may try to create their own. Based on case vignettes of social movement organisations in three diferent countries with highly diverse industrial relations systems (Austria, Spain's Basque Region and Slovakia), the chapter presents a framework for analysing and comparing the position of novel social movement organisations within countries' specifc industrial relation systems. Each social movement organisation was founded because of particular challenges that the national system did not adequately address. Learning from activism enables young people employed in workplaces unfavourable to learning—or unemployed—to compensate for what a better workplace might have ofered. Youth-led social movement organisations are thus laboratories producing important knowledge and practical skills; they challenge established organisations, including trade unions; and they renew and enliven industrial relations structures for representing interests and developing strategy.

Workplace learning is the dominant source of learning for adults, but opportunities are closely linked to the type of job an individual has. In addition, while some people make good use of the opportunities at hand, others do not. Learning opportunities do not, therefore, translate automatically into learning: individuals also need to apply themselves, to take advantage of them. In Chap. 15, Günter Hefer, Denisa Fedáková, Eva Steinheimer, Ivana Studená and Janine Wulz present a novel approach to investigating the role of individual agency in workplace learning. Tey study the individual agency of early career employees in three sectors (Retail, Metals and Adult Education) across nine countries. Tey develop accounts of 71 workers' learning, constructing between three and eight individual learning biographies across 17 organisations. Teir approach means they can investigate workplace learning as embedded both in the organisational context of the job and in an individual's wider life structure. Te chapter shows that when an individual's agency in workplace learning is considered in isolation from its context, agency in workplace learning cannot be properly explained. Other areas of life add to and/or limit individuals' learning opportunities and agency in learning: gainful work is an integral part of an individual's life structure, and always interacts with what happens in other parts of life.

Part IV comprises a single, concluding, chapter. In it, Chap. 16, Pepka Boyadjieva, Sharon Clancy, Günter Hefer, Ivana Studená and I—the fve editors of the book—refect on *Adult Education, Learning Citizens, and the Lessons of Enliven.* We begin by emphasising the importance of a rich adult education and how this resonates with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the body of international law developed in the wake of the Second World War. Tis envisaged adults as citizens, playing an active part in society and government, and saw this is one reason why adult education matters. We discuss how viewing adults as agentic citizens—while also objects of state policy—relates to the notion of bounded agency. We summarise important lessons of the Enliven project and discuss their implications. Tese include the need for a rich and broad education throughout the lives of adults and the limiting efect (especially for the 'socially excluded') of framing the education for adults through the language of 'markets'—we advocate listening to the voices of those most excluded. Tey also include the importance of work, workplaces and labour markets to adult learning, and how organisationally stunted workplaces impoverish their workers' learning.

## **The Message**

A project as wide-ranging as Enliven can be reduced neither to a single nor to a simple message. At one level, our conclusion is that adult learning is complicated; as in other areas of social life, many of its problems are intractable; easy solutions seldom work. More profoundly, yet also oversimply, we argue the profound value of adult learning to civil society and democracy, to community and organisational life, to fulflled and healthy lives. Our fndings refect central traditions of adult education and—for which we should be thankful—a succession of important policy statements from UNESCO (e.g. Delors et al., 1996; Faure et al., 1972; UNESCO, 1947). Tey will surprise no-one who has been an educator of adults.

Yet they contrast sharply with the approaches that have dominated over the past three decades. Policies from most international organisations have implied that adult learning can be stripped of its richness and complexity, and 'targeted' at key economic and social problems (OECD, 1996, 2019). Foremost among these problems have been training and retraining for an ever-changing world of work, particularly—and ironically, given that it is typically labelled 'lifelong' learning—for young adults seen to have 'failed' in school, to have been born into a deprived neighbourhood or social group, or grown to 'working age' during an economic 'downturn'.

Te Enliven perspective is informed by wider visions. Our advisory board often reminded us of the breadth and depth inherent in the idea of *Bildung*; one way of framing our message is to argue that European adult learning should reappropriate this and similar concepts. Many countries have their own traditions, which could inform and enrich what the EU does. Few Britons, for instance, know the meaning of *Bildung*, but the British Ministry of Reconstruction argued a century ago that adult education 'is an inseparable aspect of citizenship, … should be both universal and lifelong', and 'spread uniformly and systematically over the whole community' (1919, p. 5). Yet:

One of the oddities of international lifelong learning over the past couple of decades has been the European Union's enthusiastic distancing of itself from what Europe has contributed – through education – to western civilisation. Tat this has coincided with the EU's coming of age as an educational agent makes it all the odder. (Holford, 2017, p. 176)

We propose reimagining—reappropriating—adult learning as central to democratic society, rather than as servant of business competitiveness or a tool to address social exclusion. Adult education enables communication and knowledge development among citizens entitled equally to voice their views, to infuence public policies and to enjoy full, rich and healthy lives. It is a vital way in which communities—local, national, European, global—can collectively think through and generate creative responses to the problems facing the human race today; it builds social capital, civil society, tolerance and community resilience. Europe's response to the Covid-19 pandemic has shown the fragility of societies robbed of embedded educational institutions for adults. Yet at the same time, it has shown how adults, allowed the freedom—and given the resources—to do so, can invent new collective ways of learning and use them to shape their own worlds.

# **References**

**Open Access** Tis chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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# **2**

# **Bounded Agency in Policy and Action: Empowerment, Agency and Belonging**

**Sharon Clancy and John Holford**

# **Introduction**

Since the inception of the European Employment Strategy (the Luxembourg Strategy) in 1997, if not earlier (Field, 2006), policies developed in Europe have re-confgured adult education in favour of lifelong learning for the economy – responding to fears of unemployment, social exclusion, marginalisation of the unemployed and under-employed, and anxieties about an emerging two-tier society. A critical feature has been a blurring of boundaries between conventionally separate policy felds: youth education, adult education, the labour market. Adult education has been increasingly conceived as compensating for failures in the school system – evidenced by high drop-out rates, poor learning outcomes, lack of employment opportunities, and skills mismatches. A key element in justifying this has been a discourse of 'learning to be productive'" (Biesta,

University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

S. Clancy (\*) • J. Holford

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J. Holford et al. (eds.), *Lifelong Learning, Young Adults and the Challenges of Disadvantage in Europe*, Palgrave Studies in Adult Education and Lifelong Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14109-6\_2

2006, p. 171), reiterated continuously since the 90s by national, European, and international organisations.

Seeing lifelong learning as developing human capital lay at the heart of this. One participates in learning in order constantly to update one's skills for the changing global economy (OECD, 1996). Te Luxembourg Strategy shifted the discourse of 'disadvantage' to the individual ... from the aim of employment to a new one of employability: the ability to become employed, rather than, necessarily, the state of employment itself. Tus, individualisation became linked with the concept of employability: a state of constant becoming, of readiness for employment. (Brine, 2006, p. 649)

Tis emphasis on employability marked a signifcant shift in discussion of vocational learning. Te concept of employability now conferred the responsibility for *becoming employed* to the individual, rather than focusing on the *state of employment*. Constant readiness for the labour market was required: this was to be achieved through repeated training and retraining, and to develop the new economic identity – even when labour market conditions made fnding employment virtually impossible. Employability became the 'private trouble of constant retraining' (Cofeld, 2007, p. 8).

Broader defnitions of adult learning were available: for example, UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning emphasises 'learning and education across the life-course' and the variety of ways – formal, nonformal, informal – in which learning can be acquired. It also stresses the need to focus on disadvantaged people: 'adults and young people who are marginalized and disadvantaged' (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2016, p. 28). Yet the policy mainstream has focused resolutely on skills and employability, taking a 'human capital' approach which

postulates that the bigger the investments in education, the greater the income people receive, and economic growth will follow suit. Within this theory, the main responsibility for (non) participation in any form of education as well as its benefts is placed on the individual. (Boyadjieva & Ilieva-Trichkova, 2021, p. 47)

Such an approach avoids examining power dynamics and conceptions of knowledge, and their impact on inequality, and has the net efect of blaming the individual for failure to fourish within this system:

Te theory of human capital, like the rest of neoclassical economics, ultimately locates the sources of human happiness and misery in an interaction of human nature (preferences and 'abilities') with nature itself (technologies and resources). Tis framework provides an elegant apology for almost any pattern of oppression or inequality … for it ultimately attributes social or personal ills either to the shortcomings of individuals or the unavoidable technical requisites of production. (Bowles & Gintis, 1975, p. 82)

Within Enliven, we have argued that improving policy implementation has become the default response among European 'policy makers', enabling them to ignore deeper consideration of the aims of lifelong learning. It also avoids asking whether the structures we use to manage the crisis in educational markets are the right ones, and how far we have individualised the problem.

# **From Bounded Agency to Empowerment and Belonging**

Bounded agency can be seen as an application of the long sociological debate over structure and agency: individual, group or organisational agency is exercised within particular institutional and societal frameworks, and within national and international policy contexts. As a theoretical paradigm, it allows for multilevel approaches to understanding participation in education. As Evans expressed it, "agency is a socially situated process, shaped by the experiences of the past, the chances present in the current moment and the perceptions of possible futures" (Evans, 2002, p. 262). Bounded agency points to the complex interplay between personal, or individual, motivation and the social and territorial structures in which individual adults are located when they decide to engage in forms of learning: 'structural factors are centrally involved in individual motivation, since a person's sense of their ability to actively construct their life is shaped by the economic, social and cultural resources they are able to mobilize' (Róbert, 2012, p. 88). Te theory argues that the broader structural and cultural conditions in which individuals are raised – specifcally the institutional and labour market settings and the social support available – are as important in shaping their responses to work, to education, and to future life chances and opportunities as dispositional factors, internalized conceptual frameworks or personal agency. In other words, as Evans has expressed it, bounded agency requires a 'reconceptualisation of agency as a process in which past habits and routines are contextualised and future possibilities envisaged within the contingencies of the present moment' (Evans, 2007, p. 86).

Rubenson and Desjardins focus on how structural and individual factors shape adult participation in learning, drawing on data about *welfare state regimes*. Teir bounded agency model

is premised on the assumption that the nature of welfare state regimes can afect a person's capability to participate. In particular, the state can foster broad structural conditions relevant to participation and construct targeted policy measures that are aimed at overcoming both structurally and individually based barriers. (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009, p. 188)

Despite this, policies remain dominated by mantras of economic productivity and human capital. In EU and national policies, employability is emphasised as the single most important outcome for education. Tis is part of a wider discourse that work-related measures and outcomes are the only relevant objectives of skills-oriented interventions, and the only way to evaluate impact (Bowles & Gintis, 1975). Tis circularity discounts any other means of judging human value. Yet 'good jobs' may be beyond the reach of young learners in vulnerable positions.

'Every society,' Narayan (2005, p. 3) remarks, 'has local terms for autonomy, self-direction, self-confdence, self-worth.' Te literature of adult education, as Koulaouzides (2017) points out, often refers to 'empowerment'; Enliven researchers see this notion as a basis for new thinking about adult education. Empowerment, Narayan argues, 'refers broadly to the expansion of freedom of choice and action to shape one's life. It implies control over resources and decisions.' Tis freedom is 'severely curtailed' for disadvantaged people 'by their powerlessness in relation to a range of institutions, both formal and informal', continuing with this defnition:

Empowerment is the expansion of assets and capabilities of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, infuence, control, and hold accountable institutions that afect their lives. (Narayan, 2005, pp. 4–5)

Empowerment is thus about the ability to take action and to work towards change, not necessarily only for oneself, but also for the wider community.

Marmot started with concerns about health but came to see education as a critical means of taking some control over one's life. Health outcomes, he has found, are signifcantly more infuenced by social than by clinical determinants (Marmot et al., 2020, 2010); he has highlighted the social gradient of health inequalities and the damaging impact of lower social and economic status on individuals' overall health (Marmot, 2015). Health inequalities, he argues, arise from a complex interaction of factors – housing, income, education, social isolation, disability – all of which are strongly afected by an individual's economic and social status. To address them, empowering individuals – and communities – is essential. And 'education,' he writes, 'is not a bad proxy for empowerment' (Marmot, 2015, p. 153).

Marmot draws strongly on Sen's model of human capability, which challenges mainstream *human capital* theories. Te latter, Sen writes, focus on 'the agency of human beings – through skill and knowledge as well as efort – in augmenting production possibilities'. Capability, however, emphasises the 'ability of human beings to lead lives they have reason to value and to enhance the substantive choices they have'. For example, when education makes someone more productive, it enhances human capital; but

even with the same level of income, a person may beneft from education, in reading, communicating, arguing, in being able to choose in a more informed way, in being taken more seriously by others, and so on. Te benefts of education, thus, exceed its role as human capital in commodity production. (Sen, 1997, p. 1959)

For Sen, human capability is about creativity and agency, but he also describes how individuals in deprived circumstances form 'adaptive preferences' in response to their restricted power and limited options. Agency is interlinked with power structures: 'what citizens can or cannot do, or feel allowed to do'; people act in contexts 'marked by a constant interplay of autonomy and domination, of liberating forces and structures of control, of possibility and limitation' (Schugurensky, 2006, p. 72). For Evans, this echoes Sen's capability approach: 'an individual's capabilities feed back into defning structural conditions, especially situational ones such as job and family'. As with Sen's notion of 'positive freedom', this is a dynamic relationship, combining 'the idea that people are free to defne, choose, and control what is good for them' with awareness that 'they can only be really free if they have the basic level of capability needed to defne, choose, and control what is good for them' (Evans, 2002, p. 197).