scholarly journals Collaboration and Networking in Adult Education and Training. A Case Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-157
Author(s):  
Adél Kiss

AbstractThe article discusses the analysis of the available resources in the Pro Educatione Network of Adult Education and Training. The study unveils the provided human resources, economic potential, organizational capacities and relationships as well as the surplus by the network of the 15 adult education organizations. The results show that networking brings access to different resources for network members. Half of the network member organizations affirm intense relationships, i.e. they often call for the collaboration of network member organizations for their adult education and training programmes, and significant co-creation activities are taking place. Despite the fact that several network member organizations have limited resources for the operation of adult education, they achieve significant efficiency; in other words, they can reach out to a considerable number of adult learners through their education and training programmes. The analysis identified passive, moderately active, and very active network members. It also identified areas with deficits in networking.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 389-390
Author(s):  
Abigail Helsinger ◽  
Oksana Dikhtyar ◽  
Phyllis Cummins ◽  
Nytasia Hicks

Abstract Adult education and training (AET) over the life-course is necessary to participate in economic, social, and political activities in the time of globalization and technological advancement. However, little research has been done to identify mechanisms to fund AET opportunities among middle-aged and older adults from a comparative international perspective. Our study aimed to identify strategies to finance AET opportunities for middle-aged and older adults through an international lens, to help identify barriers and facilitators in effort to best support adult learners regardless of education background or socioeconomic characteristics. We carried out a descriptive qualitative study to facilitate an in-depth understanding of funding mechanisms available to adult learners in the selected countries, from the perspective of adult education and policy experts. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 61 international adult education experts from government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and education institutions. Our informants represented 10 countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Data included at least one in-depth phone or web-based qualitative interview per informant in addition to information gathered from written materials (e.g., peer-reviewed publications and organizational reports). We identified three financing options that arose as themes: government-sponsored funding; employer-sponsored funding; and self-funding. We found that government-sponsored funding is especially important for low-skilled, low-income older adults for whom employer-sponsored or self-funding is not available. Our results have implications for lifelong AET policy changes, such as adaptations of successful AET funding programs across global communities.


Author(s):  
Karim A. Remtulla

This chapter produces a socio-cultural critique of the ‘rational training’ workplace e-learning scenario. In this workplace e-learning scenario, workplace e-learning for workplace adult education training is used to justify the workforce through standards, categories, and measures. The alienating effects that arise out of this rush towards technocentric rationalization of the workforce through workplace e-learning are also discussed. These are the unintended and paradoxically opposite outcomes to the effects actually anticipated. An exploratory case study problematizes the unquestioned acceptance of the technological artefacts of workplace e-learning within organizations as credible sources to provide a rationale to justify workforces within workplaces. This approach critiques the presumption of infallibility of the technological artefacts of workplace e-learning; considers the short-comings of the conceiving of workplace e-learning as ‘finished’; and, reveals the ‘underdetermined’ nature of workplace e-learning technological artefacts. Socio-cultural insensitivity from workplace e-learning, in this scenario, comes from the basic, unquestioned assumption that workers are essentially socially flawed and culturally inferior; accountable for overcoming their sociocultural flaws and inferiorities; and, need to be justified by workplace e-learning, through standards, categories, and measures, to meet the expectations of the infallible and commodified workplace. A workplace e-learning that is deployed to justify the workforce, through standardization, categorization, and measurement, all result in a workforce being alienated from: (a) each other (worker-worker alienation); (b) their work (worker-work alienation); and, (c) their personal identities and sense of self (worker-identity alienation). Social rationalization is not the means to social justice in the workplace when it comes to workplace adult education and training, workplace e-learning, and the diverse and multicultural learning needs of a global cohort of adult learners.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-188
Author(s):  
Márcia Aguiar ◽  
Ana Maria Silva

Educational Mediation is an emergent field, namely, regarding to the contexts of Adult Education and Training. As the result of the new educational models developed in the field of Adult Education and Training (AET), in Portugal and in France, during the last decade, new professional profiles have emerged: the Mediators of the Courses of Education and Training of Adults (EFA Courses), the Specialists of Diagnosis and Referral (SDR), the RVC Professionals (PRVC) and the Specialists of Validation des Acquis de l’Expérience (VAE). One of the dimensions under discussion in this area refers to the competences that these Professionals must have to succeed in the pursuit of their work and they really have had to develop a set of specific skills to deal with the challenges ahead of them in a daily basis. Indeed, the concept of competence in Educational Mediation has been much substantiated, studied and discussed and in this article we will present some of the results of a predominantly qualitative multi- case study carried out in Portugal and France and discuss the data related to those skills and the role of the figures of Mediation in these challenging processes.


Author(s):  
Karim A. Remtulla

This chapter looks at the socio-cultural implications of universalized education for workers. A universalized education for workers by workplace e-learning happens through hypermedia-centric, constructivist-based workplace e-learning that configures technologies, constructivism, and instructors, for a knowledge-based workplace. Workplace e-learning for workplace adult education and training has changed over the past decade with respect to the changes and complexities of the learning process. This is especially true given the growing prevalence of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Distance education in the tertiary sector is looked at to see what is revealed from workplace adult education and training encounters with workplace e-learning. This raises questions about workplace e-learning for a global workforce. Workplace e-learning epitomizes a constructivist practice in the workplace; heavily based on European and Western industrialized values; and, remains unconcerned with the culturally specialized adult learning needs and goals of a diverse, global, and multi-facetted, cohort of adult learners. Looking primarily at the constructivist turn in distance education, perspectives of epistemology, ontology, and pedagogy, are referenced that support this trend. The universalizing ramifications of this hypermedia- centred, constructivist trend in workplace e-learning for workplace adult education and training are concerning for a global and diverse cohort of adult learners, who will come to represent the workforce in the future. Technique is increasingly used as the omnibus answer for all learners’ needs and goals. ‘Technology’ increasingly replaces epistemology and ontology as the singular perspective for authentic learning. Some of the unseen, conformist, and persuasive effects of technology, constructivism, and instructors, are now problematized for a global workforce.


Author(s):  
Rebecca Ye

AbstractThis paper addresses the question of how higher vocational education and training programmes socialise participants for future work, where the occupational pathways they are to embark on are weakly defined. The analysis focuses on organisational rituals as a means to understand individual and collective transformative processes taking place at a particular intersection of education and labour markets. Building on organisational and sociological theories of rituals, as well as drawing empirically from a longitudinal qualitative interview study of a cohort of students in Swedish higher vocational education for work in digital data strategy, I explore how rituals are enacted in a vocational education and training setting and what these rituals mean to the aspirants who partake in them. The findings illustrate how rituals initiate, convert, and locate the participants in a team. These repeated encounters with rituals socialise, cultivate and build vocational faith amongst participants, despite the nascency and unstable nature of their education-to-work pathways. However, while rituals can serve as a catalyst to ignite processes of collective identification and vocational socialisation, they are not always successful. The paper discusses implications of faith-building in weak-form occupational pathways when the labour market is strong and conversely, when the economy is in recession. The text concludes by advocating the need for examining the power of educational institutions in shaping transitional experiences of participants in vocational education.


Proceedings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Ourania Areta ◽  
Karel Van Isacker

Digitalization has transformed all aspects of life, from social interactions to the working environment and education, something that accelerated with the emergence of COVID-19. The same stands for education and training activities, where the use of digital tools has been gradually advancing and become merely online because of the virus. This brought forth the need to discuss further the applications, benefits, and challenges of digital tools within the framework of the education and training process, and the need to study examples of successful applications. This study aims to support both these requirements by presenting the case study of REFUGEEClassAssistance4Teachers project and its outcomes.


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