The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was a disruptive event in the life of individuals and collectives that caused economic and social crisis on a global scale. Consequently, since 2020 policy work by international organizations and governments has been oriented to mitigate the detrimental effects of the pandemic. Side-by-side mitigation policy, also broader policy strategies have been (re)oriented to respond to new problematizations about the future. Long-term responses in the education sector point at three substantial areas: the digitalization of the educational system, educational inequalities, and teachers’ development (Zancajo, Verger, & Bolea, 2022). In this socio-political context the education ministers of the European Union (EU) adopted a Council Resolution on a new European agenda for adult learning 2021-2030 on 29 November 2021. This Resolution, in the words of the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU, “will not only benefit individuals, but society as a whole, bringing us closer to the Europe we want: inclusive, sustainable and socially just.” 

This paper examines the policy process and agenda-setting behind the 2021 Resolution, by paying attention to who was involved, through which means, and to what effects. On this ground this paper also considers whether and to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic has (re)oriented the European agenda on adult learning.

We take a point of departure on that the EU constitutes a political system with own policy capacity (Costa and Brack, 2019), which has implications for adult learning policy. Albeit a clear-cut separation between executive and political powers is hard to establish among EU institutions, the European Council can be seen as “a collective Head of State” (Ibid., 2019, p. 76), the Commission as a government with its central administration, while the European Parliament and the Council of the EU as “a kind of bicameral parliament” (Ibid., p. 116). Notwithstanding the EU’s supporting competences in education (including adult learning), member states have ostensibly relaxed their embrace of the principle of subsidiarity and resistance towards the involvement of EU institutions. We recognize, though, that neither EU institutions nor member states are monolithic actors, and that EU cooperation in education has intensified at an extraordinary pace thanks to countless interactions among a plurality of actors; interactions often prompt, mediated, or coordinated by EU institutions (Krick & Gornitzka, 2019; Milana, Klatt, and Tronca, 2020). So, to account for the complexities of political mobilization and agenda-setting that led to the 2021 Resolution, we draw on theories of the policy process (Sabatier, 2019).

As Milana and Klatt (2019) argued, when the Council of the EU approved the first ever resolution on adult learning back in 2011, political authority escalated from the Commission to the Council of the EU. Ever since, we assume the existence of a ‘policy sub-system’ (Sabatier, 2019) at EU level, based on a substantive dimension (e.g., adult learning) over a territory (e.g., the 27 EU countries), which includes different actors with strong beliefs on adult learning, which they want to translate into actual policy (e.g., legislators, officials and staff from governing and administrative bodies and civil society organizations active at EU and national levels). Participants to this policy sub-system may distance themselves from others or form coalitions based on ontological assumptions (deep core beliefs), adult learning policy-related beliefs (policy core beliefs), or beliefs that are narrower in scope (secondary beliefs) (Ibid.). Finally, we also assume that a ‘focusing event’ (Kingdon, 2014), such as the COVID-19 pandemic, represents an ‘external shock’ to the adult learning sub-system, and a path for belief and policy change (Weible & Nohrstedt, 2012).

Policy work leading to the 2021 Resolution was initiated in late 2020, under the coordination of the Slovenian Ministry of Education, well before the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU (July-December 2021). By ‘following the policy’ (Ball, 2016; McCann & Ward, 2012) we attempt to trace the ‘whos’, ‘wheres’, ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ involved in this year-long process. Methodologically, we first engage with what we call a soft version of network ethnography (Howard, 2002; Hogan, 2016), as we created a network view of our ‘field’, encompassing the individual and corporate actors that were involved in this year-long process, and their positions, departing from first-hand knowledge that we gained as occasional participants to moments of interactions (‘wheres’) and access to policy artifacts and debates (‘whats’), namely through cover research (cf. Milana, 2021). Then, we combined and integrated this knowledge with internet searches. Building on both sensitive and public data, an initial visualization of the field, by use of the Gephi software, mapped the actors involved, their relations and degree of centrality. On this ground, we identified key people and organizations on which to focus selective attention through expert interviews and additional internet searches. Overall, our knowledge of actors’ relations, activities, and histories in the adult learning policy field, the connections that join-up these actors, and the ‘situations’ in which knowledge has been mobilized and assembled since the drafting of a background paper by the Slovenian Ministry of Education (December 2020) up to the 2021 Resolution (November 2021) rely on three kinds of sources: 1) official documents, press releases, and working documents (sensitive data) by EU institutions; 2) websites and public profiles of key organizations and people; and 3) interviews with key individuals representing corporate actors in consultative meetings and other events. Finally, we intend to complement this analysis with an examination of both policy core beliefs and secondary beliefs of key actors within the field, and whether and to what extent they have changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we adapt the methodology in use in political science (e.g., Markard, Suter, & Ingold, 2016). Specifically, policy core beliefs will be examined through a qualitative content analysis of publications by the Council of the EU and other key organizations, whereas data on secondary beliefs will be gathered through ad hoc questions during the expert interviews.

This work is in progress. Thus far we are refining our map of the actors involved, their relations and degree of centrality, drawing on both sensitive and public data, to soon move to the next steps of data gathering and analysis. But we anticipate that this work will contribute to knowledge creation in different ways. From European studies, we adopt a perspective that recognises the EU as a political system with own policy capacity; from education policy sociology, we recognise that multiple actors interact in such a system, contributing to both problematizations and policy solutions in the education sector. But we draw on both strands of literature to examine a policy sub-system (e.g., adult learning) that is growing in authority at EU level, despite its difficult framing from a public policy perspective. Moreover, our examination of policy mobilization and agenda-setting that occurred in this sub-system at time of a disruptive event (e.g., the Covid-19 pandemic), will complement knowledge on how exogenous shocks can impact on changes in policy actors’ beliefs and agenda-setting in the education sector. Lastly, by exposing how knowledge mobilized and assembled at EU level is also made-up ‘locally’ (to some extent) by the Slovenian Ministry of Education, we also contribute to deepening understandings of the implications of the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU for education policy developments.

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