In municipal adult education (MAE), adults are offered a second chance to complete secondary or upper secondary studies. This article examines how special educational support was organised within MAE in a Swedish municipality, focusing on students’ needs, the learning environment, and the resources available to teachers. It highlights the diverse needs of adult learners and how the physical learning environment interacts with teachers’ interpretations of those needs. Actor-network theory (ANT) serves as the theoretical framework, with the concept of translation guiding the analysis. Semi-structured group interviews with teachers and special educational needs teachers were conducted repeatedly during the first year of a three-year project on special needs education. The findings identify three translations of support: pedagogic group-oriented collegial learning, special educational individual-oriented support, and health promotion in a student health team. The article discusses dilemmas related to who receives support, who provides it, and where it can occur.

We live in appalling times, in which it is almost impossible to remain hopeful; for radical adult educators, it is difficult to know what we should do in response. In this article, I draw on two theorists for possible inspiration. Jack Mezirow’s perspective transformation theory is one of the most widely used of all adult learning theories, but also continues to be critiqued as a theory of social change. Alain Badiou’s theory of the event has not as yet been considered within adult education. I consider whether and how these might help us think through our role in current times.

The falsification of the results of the 2020 presidential election in Belarus produced a movement of peaceful civil disobedience and resistance. Civil activism furthered radical change embracing broad democratic participation and created new political subjects. Biographical interviews conducted with Aliaksandra, a young Belarusian adult, look at the learning situation of the individual and open a space in which the search for individual meaning-making in times of biographical transition can be heard. The interviews showcase interactions in time and space between an individual and her wider out-of-frame interactions, and on the effects of social and political conflict and crisis on her biographical narrative. The concept of ‘biographicity’ is employed to describe the dynamics of ongoing biographical learning, and Raymond Williams’ understanding of the processes of social transformation provides the theoretical backdrop of the transformation of lived lives in this paper.

Due to increasing precarisation, trade unions face challenges of organising young and precarious workers. Although research informs of innovative union strategies in this regard, there is a gap in understanding the role of learning and education in trade union efforts to organise young and precarious workers. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on industrial relations and adult education scholarship to examine a case study of innovative strategies of the Trade Union Youth Plus (TUYP) that has since 2011 operated in Slovenia. Findings show that dialogical approaches to education played a crucial role in the establishment and development of TUYP and its innovative proactive fieldwork and communication tactics, which increased unions’ dialogical capacity to engage with, organise and unionise young and precarious workers, and ultimately also led to the transfer of knowledge from TUYP to the wider trade union movement. The article shows that dialogical approaches to education are a necessary prerequisite for organising and unionising young and precarious workers and for revitalising trade union organisations.

This scoping review maps empirical research on motivation in adult education and learning, analysing 95 studies published between 1971 and 2024. Drawing on data from Web of Science and Scopus databases, it delineates key thematic areas, geographical patterns, and methodological orientations. The findings highlight a marked increase in publications since 2016, with a pronounced focus on specific learner populations – including non-traditional students, low-skilled adults, and second-chance learners in adult basic education. Research activity is heavily concentrated in European and Anglophone contexts, pointing to the need for broader cultural representation. While quantitative methods dominate, many studies employ instruments lacking validation. Notable gaps emerge in the use of mixed-methods and longitudinal designs. Overall, the review calls for more inclusive and methodologically robust inquiry to deepen our understanding of adult learner motivation across diverse educational landscapes.

This article addresses the underexplored issue of professional trajectories among educators of older adults within Poland’s non-formal education sector. Based on a qualitative analysis of 17 in-depth interviews, three distinct entry models into the profession were identified: adaptive, pragmatic, and mission-driven. The trajectories of the educators proved to be diverse, non-linear, and often shaped by external factors, chance events, or personal experiences, rather than long-term career planning. The study also highlights the absence of formal qualifications, fragmented institutional support, irregular employment conditions, and ambivalences regarding professional identity. It expands the existing knowledge about this group and points to the need for establishing frameworks of support, training systems, and formal recognition of this profession within educational policy, particularly in the context of an aging society.

This study investigates the organisation of adult education in Swedish prisons and examines how education is integrated into a highly regimented environment. Using documents as empirical data, the study applies template analysis and the theory of practice architecture to explore the conditions shaping education in prison. The findings show that security concerns impede students’ learning opportunities and development of digital literacy. In addition, due to a lack of resources, prisoners’ right to education becomes conditioned, with some individuals excluded from participation. At the same time, efforts are made to turn the prison into an educational space through design choices, employment of non-prison staff, and language use. Furthermore, participation in education has recently been linked to the opportunity for parole. This has the potential to increase participation and completion rates through coercion, thus increasingly embedding education into the system of control and sanctions that is inherent in prisons.

It is widely emphasized that there are existing gaps between parents who understand themselves as residents and parents who are positioned as immigrants or even ‘perpetual foreigners’. This qualitative study illustrates how unconscious and unintended raciolinguistic attitudes position some groups of parents and keep them excluded despite the programmatic idea of school-based parent cafés, legitimized by governmental strategies of better inclusion. The theories of raciolinguicism and monolingual habitus are further explored to understand intertwined mechanisms of creating groups. The analysis was planned and carried out using the Grounded Theory based on interviews. As the main findings, it is argued that German is understood as the language that leaves parents with another first language languageless with no or just limited communication skills. In certain school-related contexts, the monolingual habitus of German can be replaced by another dominant language. The study also showcases the phenomenon of (self)othering that can occur unintendedly in parent cafés.

Public policies in adult education have been shaped by two generations of human capital influence, each reflecting different assumptions about the relationship between education and the economy. While the first generation, emerging in the post-war decades, has received little scholarly critique, the second has faced extensive criticism for its neoliberal orientation. Tracing these lines of thought internationally, we emphasise the need for a broader historical-institutional perspective to understand what was at stake and why the world of work remains a central component of contemporary Adult Learning and Education (ALE) policy. Using historical institutionalism and the concept of pressure points, we analyse Swedish adult education policy from the late 1950s onward. We show how its adult education system, shaped by both economic and social demands, emerged and has remained largely intact despite grand societal changes and political shifts. At the same time, evolving policies have paved the way for private providers within welfare services, hybridising the Swedish welfare-state-model.

The aim of this study was to identify how young adults position themselves in relation to family stories for better understanding the dynamics of continuity and discontinuity in the process of becoming adults. The qualitative research was conducted in Poland. Author’s family narrative sheet was used for data collection. A total of 54 participants aged 19 to 25 were enrolled. Three types of family narratives were recalled by participants, which correspond to the levels in the ecological systems model by Robyn Fivush and Natalie Merrill. Four strategies of self-positioning towards them were identified: construction, co-construction, negotiation, and rejection. The results could be used to support families in deepening relationships through encouraging storytelling. On the other hand, they could help in avoiding idealization of family storytelling and the recognition of young adults’ freedom to re-position themselves towards family stories, myths and legends in order to build their own ideas, values, identities.