This paper draws on longitudinal birth cohort data for Britain to analyse participation in learning activities by people in their 30s and 40s. People in this age group have received less attention than either young adults or people in retirement. Yet technical change and the need for new skills make it important for them to engage in learning to…

Despite increasing demand in distance education, relatively little is known about the demographic and socio-economic characteristics as well as basic skill levels of adult distance education participants at the national level in the U.S. This study analyzed the U.S. data from 2012/2014 and 2017 Program for International Assessment of Adult…

Using Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging data, we examined the influence of older adults' individual characteristics (i.e. marital status, health and economic status) on life satisfaction, with the mediating effect of older adults' active participation in lifelong learning. As a result, some individual characteristics appeared to significantly…

This study intends to explore the relationship between goal orientation, information literacy self-efficacy and lifelong learning outcomes of the adult learners. This study focuses on adult learners as they are actively participating in the development of the country socio-economy and recognized as the potential contributors towards the generation…

Lifelong learning is receiving greater attention due to population aging in modern societies. Lifelong learning benefits individuals by supporting their physical, psychological, social, and economic well-being. However, older adults generally have lower motivation for learning than younger adults, and facilitating long-term participation in…

Developing educational programs for older adults who are highly educated and healthy is necessary in order to meet the learning needs for this specific group. One response to this demand for educational programs is the Learning in Retirement Organization (LIR). LIR began in New York City in 1962 as an educational program for retired professionals.…

The New Opportunities Initiative (NOI) is a Portuguese flagship programme to recognise and accredit prior learning (RPL, APL) and to endow low-skilled adults with upper secondary qualifications, which is defined as the minimum entry threshold to the exercise of a full citizenship in a knowledge-rich society. NOI's major achievement has been its…

Analysis of education and training histories of 1,104 adults in Wales identified patterns of participation as lifelong trajectories. Key predictors of participation emerged: period when born, place of birth, gender, family background, and initial schooling. Results called into question the rhetoric about progress toward a Learning Society and the…

A path model of lifelong education was developed using longitudinal data from a cohort of 671 Swedish men. Instead of a reduced gap between initially poorly and well-educated people, a cycle of accumulation exists, in which the quality of earlier educational experience predicts the quality and quantity of subsequent participation in adult…

Factors influencing 834 Swedish men to participate in organized adult education programs on a life-long basis were studied. Indicators of social origins, cognitive ability, formal youth education, occupational status, job satisfaction, and attitudes toward education collectively explained little of the variation in participation. Factors possibly…

This working paper is a product of a regional study in industrial South Wales of the determinants of participation and non-participation in post-compulsory education and training, with special reference to processes of change in the patterns of these determinants over time and to variations between geographical areas. This paper describes the…

This paper considers the social and structural determinants of adult participation in education and training. Section 1 deals with 11 lifetime learning trajectories identified from a systematic stratified sample of 1,104 education and training histories collected from respondents aged 15-65 in industrial South Wales. For the purposes of the paper,…

A study investigated the contribution of adult education in complementing and mediating the effects of early formal schooling on life chances, job satisfaction, and general well-being. Data collected for the cohort of Swedish men followed up in the Malmo study from 1938 to 1988 were examined. The study used measures of home background, disposition…

The following papers are presented in this book: "Self-Directed Learning: Consensus and Conflict" (Long); "Challenges in the Study and Practice of Self-Directed Learning" (Long); "A Conceptual Model of Autodidactism" (Tremblay, Theil); "Functional and Dysfunctional Uses of Self-Directedness in Adult…

Science plays an extremely important role in predicting the future of social phenomena, including pedagogy and andragogy. Research in these areas must be based on an interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, systemic, and structural approach that is based on the assumption that upbringing and education are specific phenomena in which human…