Session Information
02 SES 13 C, Overcoming Vulnerability and Enhancing Social Cohesion Through Inclusion, Communication and Active Citizenship in the Context of Adult Education and VET
Symposium
Contribution
It is often pointed out that the deep-rooted popular tradition and equity demands of adult and vocational education drive the teachers’ work in the Nordic countries (here: Denmark, Finland, and Sweden). Nevertheless, the experiences of practitioners and young adult students reveal the dynamics of various and often competing expectations and interests that shape educational practices. In this paper we particularly highlight the role of practitioners working under conflicting pressures of the State policies, the market economy, and the students’ needs. Working with students who find themselves in vulnerable life situations AE professionals develop mediation practices to support young adults’ integration and active participatory citizenship (research in press). The demands of the State, market and humanistic tradition of AE can be analysed through the central themes of employment, language, cultural norms, and activism. This leads us to scrutinise the mediation and communicative practices that adult educators adopt in the intersection of the values and aspirations of official policies, funding agencies, social partners, teaching staff and students themselves. We have analysed two work-related refugee integration programmes in Denmark and Sweden during the aftermath of the year 2015 peak of asylum seekers in Europe. The data consists of interviews, and we use documentary evidence from Finland as a point of comparative reflections.
References
Fejes, A., & Dahlstedt, M. (2017). Popular education, migration and a discourse of inclusion. Studies in the Education of Adults 49(2), 214-227. Morrice, L., Shan, H., & Sprung, A. (2017). Migration, adult education and learning. Studies in the Education of Adults 49(2), 129-135. Toiviainen, H., Kersh, N., & Hyytiä, J. (in press). Understanding vulnerability and encouraging young adults to become active citizens through education: the role of adult education professionals Journal of Adult and Continuing Education. Webb, S. (2014). Using the experiences of skilled migrants to reflect on continuing education policies for workforce and sustainable development. Encyclopaideia XVIII (40), 69-86.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.