Adult Education and Lifelong Learning in Southeastern Europe

136 Pages·2017·2.21 MB·English

by  George A. Koulaouzides,Katarina Popović (eds.)

AdultEducationandLifelongLearninginSoutheasternEurope
INTERNATIONAL ISSUES IN ADULT EDUCATION
Volume 24
Series Editor:
Peter Mayo, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

Editorial Advisory Board:
Stephen Brookfield, University of St Thomas, Minnesota, USA
Waguida El Bakary, American University in Cairo, Egypt
Budd L. Hall, University of Victoria, BC, Canada
Astrid von Kotze, University of Western Cape, South Africa
Alberto Melo, University of the Algarve, Portugal
Lidia Puigvert-Mallart, CREA-University of Barcelona, Spain
Daniel Schugurensky, Arizona State University, USA
Joyce Stalker, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand/Aotearoa
Juha Suoranta, University of Tampere, Finland

Scope:
This international book series attempts to do justice to adult education as an ever
expanding field. It is intended to be internationally inclusive and attract writers and
readers from different parts of the world. It also attempts to cover many of the
areas that feature prominently in this amorphous field. It is a series that seeks to
underline the global dimensions of adult education, covering a whole range of
perspectives. In this regard, the series seeks to fill in an international void by
providing a book series that complements the many journals, professional and
academic, that exist in the area. The scope would be broad enough to comprise
such issues as ‘Adult Education in specific regional contexts’, ‘Adult Education in
the Arab world’, ‘Participatory Action Research and Adult Education’, ‘Adult
Education and Participatory Citizenship’, ‘Adult Education and the World Social
Forum’, ‘Adult Education and Disability’, ‘Adult Education and the Elderly’,
‘Adult Education in Prisons’, ‘Adult Education, Work and Livelihoods’, ‘Adult
Education and Migration’, ‘The Education of Older Adults’, ‘Southern
Perspectives on Adult Education’, ‘Adult Education and Progressive Social
Movements’, ‘Popular Education in Latin America and Beyond’, ‘Eastern
European perspectives on Adult Education’, ‘An Anti-Racist Agenda in Adult
Education’, ‘Postcolonial perspectives on Adult Education’, ‘Adult Education and
Indigenous Movements’, ‘Adult Education and Small States’. There is also room
for single country studies of Adult Education provided that a market for such a
study is guaranteed.
Adult Education and Lifelong Learning
in Southeastern Europe
Editedby
George A. Koulaouzides
Hellenic Open University, Greece
and
KatarinaPopovic´
UniversityofBelgrade,Serbia
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Critical Thinking, Empowerment & Lifelong Learning Policy 1
Katarina Popović and George A. Koulaouzides
2. Critical Reflection and Empowerment in Adult Education Practice: An
Attempt to Create an Understanding of Two Frequently Appearing
“Guest Stars” in Adult Education Policy Documents 17
George A. Koulaouzides
3. Pedagogical Dimensions of Participatory Democracy: Learning through
Self-Organized Communities and Participatory Budgeting in Maribor 27
Marta Gregorčič and Sabina Jelenc Krašovec
4. Community Empowerment through Labor Education: The Case of
Women Unionists of the General Confederation of Greek Workers 41
Konstantinos Markidis and Ira Papageorgiou
5. Europeanization and Policy Instruments in Croatian Adult Education 53
Tihomir Žiljak
6. Adult Education as an Alternative Medicine: A Critical View of Adult
Education Policy Development in the F.Y. Republic of Macedonia 65
Zoran Velkovski
7. The (In)Sufficiency of Legal Regulation Regarding Adult Education in
Bosnia and Herzegovina 75
Snježana Šušnjara, Sandra Bjelan-Guska, Lejla Kafedžić and
Lejla Hodžić
8. Adult Education in Cyprus: Current Affairs, Challenges, and Future
Prospects 89
Christina Hajisoteriou
9. Participation Rates in Lifelong Learning: Why is Romania not
so Successful? 101
Simona Sava and Anca Luştrea
10. Becoming European: Serbian Adult Education Policy Discourse
through the Decades 115
Sanja Djerasimović and Maja Maksimović
About the Contributors 131
v

KATARINA POPOVIĆ AND GEORGE A. KOULAOUZIDES
1. CRITICAL THINKING, EMPOWERMENT &
LIFELONG LEARNING POLICY
INTRODUCTION: SETTING THE SCENE
In its various facets, adult education has played an important role in different
epochs. Adult education has been more or less organized and structured, for
progressive or conservative purposes and being used and misused by Left and
Right. Nevertheless, its potential to transform societies and individuals was often a
tool for shaping development and has contributed to the civilizational and
humanistic enlargement of the idea of education.
The popular belief which considers that adult education emerged from a
political attempt to broaden access to education and provide a second chance of
educational upgrade to underprivileged adults is not so close to the genuine start-
facts. A different social scenario is closer to truth: adult education emerged from
the needs of adults to bring about social change, to improve their life, to solve
actual problems and to understand social reality. Therefore it is not strange that
adult education is historically connected with the principles of democracy,
community and social justice. The main philosophical approaches that influenced
adult education were humanism, progressivism and radicalism. According to Mayo
(2015, p. 66) even when it was perceived in the context of labor, it had a specific
function:
Adult education has, however, another tradition to observe in the sphere of
work, that of providing workers with the means of critically understanding
different facets of the mode of production. Such workers’ education
programmes are intended to facilitate worker empowerment, to render
workers active beings, rather than objects of the production process and
society in general.
The list of historical personalities, great philosophers and activists, who saw the
main functions of adult education coming from the need of social change, political
progress and democratization, is very long. The 20th century provided deep
theoretical foundation and conceptualization of this approach, resulting in a wide
range of engaged individuals, groups and policy papers expressing the same
determination: The famous Report 1919 (British Ministry of Reconstruction, Adult
Education Committee, 1919) saw adult education in the context of social change;
working class needs for education were the main driving force for the massive
University Extension Movement; Picht and Rosenstock (1926) in Germany
introduced the term ‘andragogy’ for the science of adult education, distinguishing
it clearly from ‘demagogy’; Lindeman saw adult education in the context of social

G. A. Koulaouzides & K. Popović (Eds.), Adult Education and Lifelong Learning in Southeastern
Europe, 1–15.
© 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
K. POPOVIĆ & G. A. KOULAOUZIDES

action and social justice; one of the foremost philosophers of education, P. Freire
said (Freire & Macedo, 1987, pp. 24): “From the critical point of view, it is
impossible to deny the political nature of the educational process as it is to deny the
educational character of the political act”.
Moreover, scholars of the Frankfurt School (e.g. Habermas) conceptualized the
critical approach as the foundation and main characteristic of true education
together with many authors who place themselves within Mezirow’s transformative
learning theory. The real roots of modern adult education may be found in popular
movements that emerged in Scandinavia and England. The most important adult
education movements and institutions in modern times were informed by
humanistic, liberal and critical approaches (e.g. the Workers Educational
Association in UK, with their motto A better world, equal, democratic and just, the
Folk High Schools in Denmark, the Highlander Centers in USA). Under the broad
definition of adult education many operational paradigms have been developed and
discussed: continuous education, permanent education, recurrent education,
lifelong education and more. The end of seventies however, marked the beginning
of a triumphal march of neoliberalism, strongly supported by the increased global
nature of economy. The Breton Woods mechanisms and the Keynesian economics
were abandoned, Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US,
reduced significantly welfare state and changed the role and function of education
and adult education, turning it to a tool for economic growth and development, an
instrument for the adaptation to the changing society and the exploding
technological improvements.
This was the birth hour of what has been called “lifelong learning”. Welcomed
by the civil society due to its focus on learners, its individualized approach and its
flexible character, it was embraced universally. It did bring some benefits to the
field, but harmed much more (Orlović-Lovren & Popović, 2017). Lifelong learning
became a hegemonic discourse, riding on the wave of the globalisation discourse
(Fairclough, 2006). The tension was clear. On the one hand education as a public
good, with shared (at least) responsibility, which lasts for some time and where the
process matters, and on the other hand learning as the responsibility of the
individual learner (including the financial dimension of it), which happens no-
matter-when-and-how and where only the outcome counts. This tension was
resolved by the influence of neoliberal discourse, in favor of the later one. Walker
(2009, pp. 2–3) summarizes this situation carefully when she states that
Lifelong learning becomes a way to help citizens adapt to an already-existent
world; it has been given no real role in re-imagining an entirely different
world order where the free market or corporate profits no longer remain an
unexamined ‘good’ … Indeed, ‘learning’, unlike ‘education’, individualises;
it does not connote infrastructure or even educators. This makes it cheaper.
The idealistic character of adult education, linked to solidarity, envisioning social
change and aiming at emancipation, was defeated by the entrepreneurial character
of lifelong learning. Mezirow’s (2014, p. 2) criticism was clear:
2
CRITICAL THINKING, EMPOWERMENT & LIFELONG LEARNING POLICY
Rather than being led by the collective vision which illuminated earlier
program efforts, the adult education movement … has become market driven,
preoccupied with issues of increasing worker productivity and getting people
off welfare. Its highest social value has become the bottom line.
Discussing Gramsci’s position, Mayo (2015, p. 155) explains:
Gramsci is calling for a more classical balance between the ideals of what can
easily pass nowadays as emancipatory education, as exemplified by Freire in
the best traditions of critical pedagogy and in contrast to neoliberal education,
and ‘old school’ values …
such as discipline, rigor, the acquisition of basic skills, vocationalism, and warns:
We would do well to heed his warnings to avoid the sort of overzealous
approach that might lead us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Short
of doing so, our quest for an ostensibly ‘emancipatory’ education might well
result in having the contrary effect. The effect can well be that of
disempowering students rather than enabling them to develop as self and
collectively disciplined subjects, equipped with the broad knowledge,
intellectual rigour, critical acumen, social conscience and dialogical/
participatory attitude necessary to assume the role of social actors.
Boshier’s criticism is also brutal (1998, p. 4): “Lifelong learning is recurrent
education or human resource development (HRD) in drag … If lifelong education
was an instrument for democracy, lifelong learning is almost entirely preoccupied
with the cash register”.
It’s not difficult to present examples from the modern world to illustrate that it’s
not only the economic crisis that challenges the modern world; we’re facing
various crises (social, cultural, crisis of values, crisis of representative democracy,
crises of European identity); wars and conflicts, terrorism; myths of unlimited
growth which are destroying the planet, climate changes, huge social gaps and
unlimited consumerism. Apparently, education or learning offering skills needed
for technological progress, employment and adaptation are far from enough; they
become obsolete sometimes even before their application and definitely they
cannot boost innovative economies, green industries and sustainable growth. Even
more important – it can not resolve any of the other problems of contemporary
world. Arguing for the kind of adult education that will foster the democratic social
change, Mezirow (2014, p. 3) said:
Learners who critically reflect upon their beliefs and assumptions frequently
come to challenge taken-for-granted social practices, ideologies and norms
which they discover have been impeding their development. Adult education
cannot ethically abandon these learners who have achieved insights impelling
them to act upon what they have learned.
Adult education should empower, emancipate, and critically reflect social practices
and ideologies, if we believe that the concern for the future development is real. A
3