Chapter 4: Skills and adult learning

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Overview and highlights

This chapter embraces an expanded understanding of adult learning by examining participation in organised forms of adult education and training as well as engagement in informal learning. Findings on adult education and training participation for ALL are presented and compared, where possible, to the results from IALS. Thus one can assess whether the increased importance given to adult learning by policy makers, the business community and other sectors of society has translated into increased readiness by adults to actively engage in various forms of learning. This is followed by an analysis of some key characteristics of participating adults, and whether these have changed in the intervening years. This permits an assessment of whether inequalities in adult learning patterns are shifting. Next, patterns of informal learning are compared, and in particular, an analysis of active versus passive modes of informal learning is presented. Finally, the role of employers, governments and individuals in financially supporting adult learning is considered.

The analysis on adult learning presented in this chapter offers some interesting and clear messages, including:

There is a broad and growing acceptance of the principles of lifelong learning in most countries, as evidenced by a marked increase in the rate of participation in adult education and training between the IALS and ALL survey periods.

A large proportion of adults with poor foundation skills are still not being reached by organized forms of adult education and training. But there are significant differences in participation patterns among countries, which suggest that differences in adult learning policy do matter.

Engagement in passive modes of informal learning is an almost universal activity while active modes of adult learning, although frequent, are more unequally distributed both within and between country populations. This suggests that there are important factors contributing to certain forms of informal learning. In particular, levels of formal education and adult skills of the type measured in ALL are strongly related to the extent of active engagement in informal learning.

Employer financing plays a central role in supporting opportunities to engage in lifelong learning in all countries but countries differ markedly in the share of the total adult learning effort which is employer supported. Furthermore, the levels of worker engagement in literacy and numeracy practices on the job are strongly associated with the likelihood of benefiting from employer-sponsored adult education and training.