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JACE: Editorial

This issue of JACE begins with an article from Sweden by Per Andersson concerning the recognition of prior learning (RPL) (or to use the Swedish term validering). RPL, also known as AP[E]L (accreditation of prior [experiential] learning), has a high profile in Europe currently, though the rhetoric probably speaks louder than the practice, and there are relatively few research studies of RPL in action. Here, using an ethnographic approach and Foucauldian analysis, Andersson presents an empirical study that was part of a more extensive project within Swedish non-formal popular education. The results of the study show how mobilising and disciplining are intertwined; how they can be viewed as a process of sorting people. Within the small group studied there was a high dropout rate, and the article poses the question as to how the RPL process could be changed to suit individuals’ needs.

A number of the articles in this issue concern the workplace. The first of these, by Smith and Billet, presents a study of the relations that underpin interdependencies at work and the consequences of these. Their investigation is of the working lives of groups of three workers in each of four different kinds of occupation and workplace: a gymnasium; a restaurant; an information technology support section in a university; and a fire station. The two-year study presents four bases for elaborating interdependencies at work, and the authors argue that their work provides ‘a platform to analyse processes of individual learning and the remaking of work practices and concepts throughout working life’.
The next piece, by Jefferson and Levitan, drawing extensively on Canadian practices and contextualising these more widely, is a reflective article concerning the changing relations between learning and work. The authors argue that changes in ‘technology, in communications, and in the dynamics of human and institutional interactions have created a need to shift relations between the worlds of learning and work’. They suggest that new levers to improve institutional performance and consequently the learning–work relationship that exists between universities, and the world of work.

Salameh and Barbour consider the specific context of the continuing education of nurses in Lebanon, a necessary feature of the changing demands of the profession. Their article is a questionnaire study of over 250 nurses in 17 Lebanese hospitals, and seeks amongst other things to evaluate the status of nurses’ continuing education, their satisfaction and unmet needs. They point to the fact that nurses in the country attend insufficient continuing education sessions and appear in the main not to attribute significant professional development to such attendance that they do make. I should add that the article was written and submitted prior to the recent war in the Lebanon, and one can only reflect in awe at the demands likely to be made on the profession now and in forthcoming years.

We continue with Maclachlan and Tett who consider new approaches to adult literacy and numeracy in Scotland that are situated within a social practices framework. They contend that after years of neglect this area of education is now receiving due attention, and they report upon the experiences of learners, drawing upon a national study undertaken by one of the authors and others in 2006, which draws upon interview data from over 200 individuals.

Ardouin and Gasse also analyse national policy documents, in this case in relation to education and training, so as to compare lifelong education and training in France with eight other European countries. They situate each country within two bipolar axes according to the degree of regulation in the field and the relative emphasis on education for general development as against working know-how.
In an era when increasing numbers of individuals are accessing further and higher education, attention has shifted somewhat from access to retention, and within most institutions within the UK students are provided with learning support programmes. Andrew Smith reports on the experiences of one further education college in England where some students refuse additional learning support. He cites a number of reasons for this phenomenon, including some connected to individuals’ self-esteem and fear of discrimination and others that are linked to ‘institutional pressures created by a need to maximise funding’.

This issue is completed by a reflective piece. Semmar in his review article considers the importance of self-efficacy, self-regulation and motivation and on their ‘synergistic’ effect on adults’ academic achievement in distance learning. He argues that increasing numbers of adults will be taking their studies in web-based programmes in the future and that pedagogical design ‘should consider how to integrate the development or enhancement of self-efficacy beliefs, motivational factors and self-regulated learning’.