This article focuses on how 'problems' regarding quality in adult education are constituted as particular sorts of 'problems'. The analysis takes its point of departure in a poststructural analytic strategy called 'What's the problem represented to be?'. The material analysed consists of various policy documents concerning contemporary Swedish…

Despite previous critical studies on the method, Suggestopedia has re-emerged as a popular method for second language teaching and learning in Sweden. In this article, we focus on what characterises Suggestopedia teaching in Swedish as a second language for adult migrants. Taking a sociocultural perspective, specifically regarding the concepts of…

The role of education in citizen training has been well mapped out in youth education. What has been less studied is how this role comes into being in adult education. By providing illustrative empirical examples from a recently completed study of adult students enrolled in adult education, this article aims to offer a theoretical response to the…

The aim of this article is to analyse the ways in which migration plays out in adult students' narratives about their occupational choice and future, focusing on three individual narratives of adult students with various experiences of migration to Sweden. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's conception of orientation, our results show how the adult students'…

The aim of this article is to problematize the ways class and gender are played out in adult students' narratives about their occupational choice and future. Drawing on Beverly Skeggs, we analyse how students think about future occupations, what motivates them towards these and how they are able to form their future in relation to them. Taking on…

The marketisation of education is a global phenomenon and has attracted increased interest during the last three decades, not least in terms of research on school choice and its consequences. However, while much research has been conducted on the marketisation of schooling, less attention has been directed at adult education. In this paper, focus…

We argue that municipal adult education (MAE) can be seen as a place for displaced and abnormal citizens to gain temporary stability, enabling their shaping into desirable subjects. Drawing on a poststructural discursive analysis, we analyze policy texts and interviews with teachers and students. Our analysis illustrates how two distinct but…

This article focuses on the idea of the educable adult subject in Sweden and the ways this idea has re-emerged in different practices during the twentieth century. It's a policy analysis where official documents from the twentieth century and early twenty-first century concerned with adult education in Sweden are analysed based on the Foucauldian…

This article focuses on the recognition of prior learning and the figure of thought it represents in Swedish policy on adult education. It can be seen as a technique for governing the adult learner and a way of fabricating the subject. We are tracing this thought back in time to see how it has changed and what it consists of. The material analysed…

This paper explores the ways in which the adult learner has been governed in recent years and whether the techniques for doing this have changed over the last 50 years. The focus is first on which adult subject (adult learner) is constructed in the material analysed. What kinds of subjects are governed? This is followed by an analysis of what…