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The following essay touches on a highly interesting problem for politically sensitive adult education: What are the ‘costs’ of educational advancement? The answer is sought in biographies of three prominent examples: Pierre Bourdieu, Annie Ernaux and Didier Eribon. The data is based on autobiographically oriented reflections of the protagonists – symptomatically not ‘classic’ autobiographies. The concentration on France has to do with the fact that in the French cultural tradition this level of reflection – not least through the works of the selected authors – has gained a particular meaning. The selection itself relates to astonishing differences in the influences of historical times and the relevance of cohort experiences. The result of the analysis is undoubtedly an ‘essayistic dramatisation’, not a hasty generalisation, but it could stimulate scientific discussion and systematic empirical research.

The continuing education sector explicitly regards itself as serving the goals of lifelong learning. In fact, however, it is oriented towards the market and measures its success according to the sales of its products. The article analyses this market orientation from the perspectives of educational sociology and discourse theory and illustrates its consequences using examples from the Swiss continuing education market. The author develops an alternative approach whereby continuing education is measured according to the value it creates for individuals and society. Here, a connection is made with economic value creation theory, enhanced by sociological dimensions of the recognition and valorisation of education. This enhanced value creation concept shows how continuing education generates values, where these values are recognised, in what contexts they are valorised and what players and discourses are involved. The author also outlines a procedure for value creation analysis and, using two continuing education programmes as examples, illustrates the findings that value creation analysis can generate. On this basis, the author calls for a reorientation of continuing education that transcends the limitations of market logic.

This article explores the temporal dimension of the ‘rapport à l’écrit’ (relationship with literacy) in the lives of two young people — Anaïs (aged 19) and Zachary (aged 22) — without a secondary school diploma. The article draws on data taken from a mixedmethods longitudinal study looking at young people’s transitions in Québec (Canada). Process Analysis is used as an analytical framework. The results suggest that young people without a secondary school diploma do not necessarily have a difficult or negative relationship with literacy. By focusing on the relationship with literacy and its evolution over time, it is possible to put emphasis on young people’ positive investment in a number of literacy practices and not be limited to school practices alone. Our findings confirm the relevance of exploring the temporal dimension of the relationship with literacy for policy makers, researchers, and educators. (DIPF/Orig.)

While the origins of the social economy date long before the period of industrialization or the modern state (Shragge & Fontan, 2000), it is growing in importance as we find ourselves in ‘the cancer stage of capitalism’ (McMurtry, 2013). Facing issues such as exponentially growing inequality, the demise of rural communities, an exploding obesity epidemic and jobless recoveries from repeated financial crises, more and more people are turning to the social economy for solutions to their problems (see McMurtry 2010; Mook et al. 2010). This paper reports on a pilot study that focused on the Local Organic Food Co-ops Network, created by people who oppose the industrial food system and want to specialize in local, organic food. Adopting a political-economy lens to understand this opposition through the words of participants, the study employed semi-structured interviews to explore the learning dimensions of this social economy organization. The study found that respondents participated in social learning and learned alterity in the social economy. The paper concludes that social economy organizations need to prioritize social over economic values, and the potential for change associated with social learning is key to making this choice.

In this article we analyze the social economy projects of Avani – a Community Based Organization based in Himalayas and reflect on their potential for enabling a critical pedagogy of place. We use the concept of tactics in a spatial and educational sense to explore Avani’s projects as an intervention within the dominant place logic of capitalism that opens market opportunities and enables new experiences of living and being for hill communities. We argue that these experiences are educational since they invoke, what we want to call, the possibility to verify one’s equality and one’s ability to do something. Our study is based on an ethnographic case approach and combines literature review, staff interviews and documents of Avani along with sensitizing concepts to guide our analysis. ispartof: European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults vol:7 issue:2 pages:1-15 status: published

The study explores learning processes and outcomes inside grassroots innovations that are emerging in post-Euromaidan times in Ukraine. The study analyses the assumption that this non-traditional education space can be adequate for sustainability transition learning and critical consciousness development. First, the study describes, connects, and operationalizes the concepts of critical consciousness, sustainability transition, and grassroots innovations. Then, it analyses two cases of grassroots innovations (two online sharing platforms), using these operationalized concepts. The results show that learning and critical consciousness development inside grassroots niches are much more connected to previous experience, such as participation in the protest event Euromaidan, than to inner niche learning interactions. While, the online platforms keep alive some of the aspirations that motivated people to become a part of the Euromaidan protest. In this sense, such grassroots innovations keep the values and priorities of the participants “alive” and ensure that the critical consciousness that was acquired does not simply slide backwards. Do shocking events like Euromaidan protest have to happen in order to accelerate learning about values of solidarity and responsibility, as well as to develop critical consciousness needed for sustainability transition? Despite the impossibility to completely answer this question, this study gave some tips, suggesting components of critical conscious development needed for this type of learning¾dialog, reflection, action, leading to increase in efficacy and agency.

European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults 5 (2014) 2, S. 195-207, The demands laid on the individual by increasingly fragmented life-wide learning imperatives lead to constant pressure on adults of ‘migratory background’ to display agency and take up a position vis-à-vis cultural-ethnic ‘belonging’, while around them an integration/assimilation debate continues to rage in German public discourse. The focus of this paper will therefore be the experiences of transition and transformation in learning biographies which are often experienced as self-‘translation’. The paper will address agency, inclusion/exclusion in the learning biographies of young adults who straddle the precarious identity of German-Turk/Turk-German. I use here talk elicited in the learning biography of a student of Turkish origin. The assertion of agency-in-diversity is given voice in uneven ways. The extracts allow us to listen closely to the workings of agency in the subjective, shared experience related in auto/biographical narratives. (DIPF/Orig.)

European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults 5 (2014) 1, S. 111-126, This contribution is based on a recently finished study. It gives an important place to the empirical dimension and proposes the analysis of two life-paths in the artistic field set against a broader analysis of the whole of the corpus produced as part of this research. The methods of analysis are situated at the intersection of the narrative and the sociological fields. This contribution examines the passage from initial training to the world of work. It reconstructs the ordeal represented by this passage and shows the way this ordeal fissures identity and human agency. It conceptualises in particular the possible links between identity and agency and the social environment. It then proposes an analysis of the process of bifurcation. The failure of intended artistic projects gives way to a bifurcation. The analysis locates this process at the intersection of self-improvement and the search for social roots. Bifurcation gives way to the emergence of a new polarisation of action and to the reconstruction of a new system of networking with the environment. This contribution looks back at the whole of the analysis through the spectrum of low human agency. (DIPF/Orig.)

European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults 2 (2011) 2, S. 193-208, In this article, we look at three photographs that each (re)present a space of citizenship and community. In examining each photo, we question our assumptions about adult education and community building practices. In each of the three cases, we adopt the same approach. We start by focusing on a particular place where present-day citizenship nowadays takes shape and observing what is to be seen at this location. This observation forces us to view that particular place in sharp focus and to direct our attention to the specific citizenship practice emerging there. This is an exercise in paying attention, which helps us to take notice of the singular way in which citizenship and community play a role in that particular context. In line with this, we also formulate some critical observations regarding a number of mainstream concepts in policy discourse such as social cohesion, active citizenship, lifelong learning, etc. These terms often represent programmes that close off the space in which an original contribution to adult education can be developed rather than opening it up. In analyzing these three images, we do not aim to construct a fully-fledged theoretical framework nor to develop a method. Rather, we wish to open the possibility of seeing things differently and altering our way of thinking. (DIPF/Orig.)

European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults 2 (2011) 2, S. 129-133, In the past decade, the issue of community has become an important social and even political theme. Researchers and politicians share a concern about an observed loss of social cohesion. (...) Many authors dealing with the issue of social capital are rather pessimistic about present-day social developments and call for a renewal of the social fabric, often by looking back to (alleged) forms of association in the past. This position is shared by many European scholars who also consider processes of individualisation as one of the main causes of what they consider the breakdown of the social fabric. More recently this analysis is being complemented by a critical analysis of the challenges posed by multicultural society. The authors represent two sets of three papers in this volume. (DIPF/Orig.)

European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults 2 (2011) 2, S. 209-225, The first section of this paper is a discussion of the paradoxes contained in definitions of the word ‘community’ and deliberately foregrounds and makes problematic conflicting meanings before arguing for a third definition and practice of community. This third definition and practice celebrates and even transcends contradictions within an active learning model of education in the community, aimed at tackling inequality and prejudice. The second section offers an autocritical narrative account of an education in the community project that illustrates how such a practice of community making can be achieved within an educational framework in which pupil is teacher and teacher is pupil and in which an imaginative, creative approach is deployed to construct a community making practice. The paper draws on understandings from community development, inclusive and creative education, emancipatory action research, postcolonial and post-structuralist theory. (DIPF/Orig.)

European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults 2 (2011) 2, S. 181-192, In this paper, I describe our ongoing international project in engaged educational ethnography and participatory action research with young adults and consider its relevance for a discussion on the community-building role of adult education in a globalized context. I use the example of our case study to suggest that adult educators can generate viable communities by creating learning spaces that nurture critical consciousness, a sense of agency, participation and social solidarity among internationally and culturally diverse young adult learners. Furthermore, I argue that participation in international learning communities formed through this educational process can potentially help young adults become locally and globally engaged citizens. International learning communities for global citizenship thus present a proposition for conceptualizing the vital role of adult community education in supporting democratic global and local citizenship in a world defined in terms of cross-cultural and longdistance encounters in the formation of culture. (DIPF/Orig.)