In the early 1990s, as the Cold War ended, the European Union offered a new home for emerging democratic market economies: an international organisation combining democratic governance, social welfare, tolerance and the rule of law. At the same time, it adopted lifelong learning as a key priority for adults, ‘essential’ for ‘competitiveness, citizenship, social cohesion and employment’. Today,problems remain: unemployment, migration, AI, inequality, authoritarian ‘populism’. Even on the narrowest criteria (the proportion participating in learning, and their social composition), it has not achieved what its advocates hoped for two or three decades ago.

In what ways has European lifelong learning fallen short of its early ambitions, and why? What has it achieved? How effective are current policies? This symposium presents evidence, arguments and perspectives from a major research project (ENLIVEN: ‘Encouraging Lifelong Learning for an Inclusive and Vibrant Europe’, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, Grant No. 693989), and reported in a book published this year (Holford, Boyadjieva, Clancy, Hefler & Studena 2022).

The dominant response to lifelong learning’s apparent inability to deliver economic and social returns has not been to ask difficult questions, but to seek improved methods of policy implementation (‘delivery’). This symposium challenges such panaceas on normative and analytical grounds.

Education throughout life is fundamental to democratic societies. The education of free citizens is a process to which citizens must contribute freely: they should not be passive recipients of interventions designed by their ‘superiors’, but able to participate actively and democratically, on a basis of equality, in shaping what and how they study and learn.

From this perspective, ‘making policy’ for adult learning presents particular challenges. Social policy is inevitably the product of contributions at multiple levels, and by diverse ‘actors’, even within a single country. This especially true in a complex multinational polity such as the EU, where policy is formally shaped by ‘democratic’ institutions of various kinds: these establish principles and objectives, modes of operation and regulation, and organisations and institutions, for education. Yet adults participate in education (and lifelong learning) not merely as the objects of policy, but as citizens entitled to be (and feel) active subjects in shaping how they learn.

Prodi (2000) proposed ‘more democratic form of partnership’with civil society to address growing distance between EU institutions and citizens: ‘democracy and respect for human rights as well as sound economic policies’ must ‘become the norm’ (cf European Commission 2001). Despite this, the Lisbon process became increasingly ‘top-down’, with lifelong learning expected to focus on economic competitiveness.

In fact, much in European adult education traditions suggests lifelong learning cannot be restricted to delivering a workforce with requisite skills – even leavened with EU aims of equity and social inclusion. Learning in adulthood is an essential part of enabling citizens to play a full and active role in shaping Europe as an educated democracy (Steele 2007, 2016). Adult education is not the product simply of policy developed by governments. Initiatives by emancipatory social movements are also vital (Freire 1971).One weakness of EU lifelong learning has been a conscious distancing from the critical, emancipatory, and often anti-capitalist, heritage of adult education.

We apply the theoretical perspectiveof ‘bounded agency’(Evans, which marries the behaviour and preferences of individuals with institutional and societal structures. This is particularly important for exploring AI-based policy modelling. ‘Real world’ events(e.g. financial crash,pandemic), show the limitations of behaviourally-based models (MacKenzie 2011, MacKenzie & Spears 2014). Institutional and social structures are persistent, pervasive and diverse, and structure how participation in learning and motivation to learn differs within and between social groups.

European Commission (2001) European Governance: A White Paper (COM(2001) 428 final). Evans, K. (2007) Concepts of bounded agency in education, work, and the personal lives of young adults. International Journal of Psychology 42(2), 85-93. Freire, P.(1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Holford, J., Boyadjieva, P., Clancy, S., Hefler, G., & Studená, I.(2022 – in press) Lifelong Learning, Young Adults and the Challenges of Disadvantage in Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan MacKenzie, D.(2011)The Credit Crisis as a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge, American Journal of Sociology 116(6), 1778-1841. MacKenzie, D.,& Spears, T.(2014) 'The formula that killed Wall Street': the Gaussian copula and modelling practices in investment banking. Social Studies of Science 44(3), 393-417. Prodi, R. (2000) Towards a European civil society. Speech at Second European Social Week, Bad Honnef, Bad Honnef, 6 April. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_00_124 Rubenson, K. &Desjardins, R. (2009) The Impact of Welfare State Regimes on Barriers to Participation in Adult Education: A Bounded Agency Model. Adult Education Quarterly 59(3), 187-207 Steele, T. (2007) Knowledge is Power! The Rise and Fall of European Popular Educational Movements 1848-1939. Bern: Peter Lang. Steele, T. (2016) Enlightened publics: Popular education movements in Europe, their legacy and promise. Studies in the Education of Adults 42(2), 107-123.