In the field of adult and continuing education curricula are less regulated than in other areas of education and participation is usually voluntary (Schrader, 2019). Thus, participation in continuing education is a complex phenomenon which depends on various factors (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009). Boeren (2016), for example, explains participation in continuing education by a multilevel model, which illustrates the interrelationships between factors at different levels. Within this model, organizations and providers of adult and continuing education are recognized as a factor to participation at the meso-level.

The field of continuing education is characterized by dynamic change. Particularly when it comes to program planning, the challenge is to keep pace with social changes and address current needs. Program planning in continuing education has to mediate between the three instances of social needs, addressees, and pedagogical mission (von Hippel et al., 2008). Thereby, it has the task to react on foreseen future problems and awaken new educational needs (Siebert, 2014). Constantly changing socially relevant developments can be understood as uncertainty in the sense of this network’s call.

Against the background of current developments such as differentiation of the continuing education market, competitive pressure, and digitalization, reaching and addressing new or changing target groups is becoming increasingly important (Echarti et al., 2023; Kraft, 2018). The recruitment of participants as an organizational process is therefore a central challenge for continuing education staff (Caffarella & Daffron, 2013; Käpplinger et al., 2017). Course design is one relevant factor in order to attract participants. Without curricular regulations, it is important to constantly adapt the program to current topics, individual needs and interests, as well as to external changes.

Futhermore, the relevance of participant recruitment  is underlined when taking into account the “matthew effect” (Boeren, 2016, S. 24), which refers to the actuality that the majority of people who take part in continuing education are those who already have a higher formal qualification, or as it says in Matthews’s Bible story: Those who already have receive more (Boeren, 2016; Rubenson, 1998). In order to promote educational equality, it is particularly important to make efforts to reach the educationally disadvantaged groups (Boeren, 2016).

For the German discourse, Mania, Ernst and Wagner (2022) point out that there is no established form or category under which participant recruitment is discussed. In their systematic review, they developed and systemized an overview of the current state of German discussion and research on that topic. Accordingly, participant recruitment is merely treated as a subtopic, viewed from different angles, such as the institutional, organizational, and professional perspective, as well as from the perspective of target group research.

Against this background, our intention is to focus on the international state of discussion and research. Up to now there exists no empirical based systematic overviews systematizing the international state of discussion and research on this topic.

Our contribution therefore aims to take stock of and systematize the topic of participant recruitment and outreach strategies in adult and continuing education in the international (research) discourse. Our review will focus on the perspective(s) from which the topic is captured and discussed, and on strategies and concepts for addressing participants that can be identified in the sector of adult and continuing education. Our specific interest is the area of literacy and basic education, this due to its particular importance (to reach educationally disadvantaged) and specifics of the recruitment process (e.g., must go beyond written offers). The conceptual framework of our approach is informed by the procedure of conducting a scoping review (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005).

In order to condense the international current state of research strands on participant recruitment in adult and continuing education, we conducted a scoping review (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005). Scoping reviews are especially suitable for outlining the current breadth of existing literature on a given topic, and thereby identifying key concepts as well as research gaps (Levac et al., 2010; Munn et al., 2018). Our approach is based on the five-stage methodological framework by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), comprising: 1. identifying the research question, 2. identifying relevant studies, 3. study selection, 4. charting the data and 5. collating, summarising, and reporting the results. 1. Against the background of the findings of Mania, Ernst, and Wagner (2022) for the German discourse, our research questions are: How is recruitment of participants in adult and continuing education discussed and researched in the international discourse? Which terms are used to address the topic and target group(s)? Which recruitment strategies are being discussed? What kind of texts are published in the discourse? 2. The specific challenge of present review is to find suitable search terms for compiling the current international discourse Up to now, there are no established or empirical based terms or categories to refer to. Thus, a comprehensive retrieval strategy was needed. After initial tests, we finally developed a combination compiling four retrieval strands with a total of 13 search words. This gave us 96 possible combinations and resulted in 12,867 hits in three databases (ERIC, FIS Bildung and Web of Science) applied to ‘abstract’. After removing the duplicates 2,199 texts remained. To ensure that also texts with no or short abstracts were not excluded, a second search run was conducted along only two search strands and applied to ‘title’. In total and after removing the duplicates 2,396 texts remained, with which we continued our review procedure. 3. In order to select relevant texts, we screened the abstracts of all 2,396 texts, and applied inclusion and exclusion criteria: subject area, theme, language. Finally, the literature corpus of our scoping review included 128 texts. 4. We charted information from the 128 included texts in an analytical framework using the program Microsoft Excel. Thereby we recorded information on each of the included texts regarding the main categories general information, empiric foundation, (conceptual) positioning of the text and given recruitment approach.

Our paper aims at a structures overview of the thematic strands and concrete concepts found in international literature, regarding participant recruitment in adult and continuing education. The analysis shows that the topic of participant recruitment in adult and continuing education has hardly been discussed internationally in the last 20 years, or at best as a subtopic. This is shown, for example, by the fact that the topic is mostly discussed under the term recruitment, often in the combination with the term retention. In addition, recruitment of participants is also considered under the aspects of outreach, marketing, and access. Moreover, it can be said that the discourse is in major parts fuelled by e.g., policy papers, and project reports, whereas empirical studies are rare. This marks a clear research gap. Looking at the strategies mentioned, a variety of approaches are introduced in the discourse, some of which are given here as examples: Besides written communication via brochures, flyers, and program booklets, also recruitment campaigns are discussed that contain door-to-door canvassing, media spots, and forming community networks. Furthermore, the strategy of establishing a professional or voluntary recruiter position emerges from the international discourse. This position is set up to recruit potential participants to adult and continuing education courses. This strategy is not evident from the German findings and is therefore new to the German discourse. Finally, we show that recruitment strategies are particularly discussed with regard to vulnerable target groups as, for example (educationally) disadvantaged adults, illiterate adults, or un(der)-employed adults.

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