Conference Agenda

Adult Learning Systems (ALS) represent a mass of organised learning opportunities available to adults along with their underlying structures and stakeholders that shape their organisation and governance (Desjardins, 2017, 2023; Desjardins & Ioannidou, 2020). This analytical framework includes not only participants (demand side) and providers (supply side) of adult education and training but also institutions and stakeholders, e.g., states, trade unions, professional associations and firms, as well as policy measures more or less aiming to regulate interactions between them. Finally, the framework contains fundamental coordination problems and constraints connected to adults’ access to organised learning opportunities that are responsible for efficacy, efficiency and inequality inside these systems. Well-developed, open and flexible ALS able to solve coordination problems are considered a precondition for wide and equal participation of adults in organised forms of learning (Lee & Desjardins, 2021), which is a key policy aim of many international organisations (e.g., EC, 2020, OECD, 2019; UNESCO, 2022) and national governments.

While the subject of ALS has garnered growing scholarly interest in the past decade (Boeren, 2019; Desjardins, 2017, 2023; Desjardins & Ioannidou, 2020; Rees, 2013; Saar et al., 2013; Schemman et al., 2020; Verdier, 2018), there is a gap in the literature regarding a comprehensive examination of the current, post-COVID-19 status and historical development of ALS in Europe since the 1990s. In other words, how are they responding to current societal challenges?

Relatively little theoretical and empirical work has been done on the diachronic/historical perspective of ALS (Saar et al., 2013; Schemman et al., 2020; Verdier, 2018), specific institutional patterns of these systems and their recent development during the 2010s and the early 2020s. Although the period of the “Eurozone crisis” after 2010, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have brought new societal challenges, like austerity measures, disruption of job markets and new directions within political economies of European states (Garritzmann et al., 2022; Hall, 2022), we have limited knowledge of how they have affected the institutional setting of ALS.

Following this research gap, this discussion panel propose a presentation and discussion of the key institutional changes and current developments in three European ALS: (1) the United Kingdom, (2) Germany and (3) the Czech Republic. These three countries are considered paradigmatic representatives of three different models of ALS: (a) liberal, market-oriented (UK), (b) continental/Christian-democratic, stakeholder-oriented (Germany) and (3) post-socialist, mix-model (Czechia). The panel discussion will provide an overview of the evolution of these three diverse ALSs throughout the last three decades (the 1990s to the early 2020s), showing their unique paths of institutional building and how they face current societal challenges.