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JACE: Editorial

This is the first editorial for some time that has emanated from the University of Glasgow, where JACE and its predecessor publications had their origin: this return to roots is not a change due to a change of editor, but because of a change of location for the editor. Given this university’s broad-ranging links within the field of adult education, and its continuing commitment in the area, it’s gratifying that this issue contains pieces with a strong international dimensions and which reflect international perspectives in scholarship and research.

Roberta Piazza considers the role of the University of Catania in Sicily in the development of a learning city/region. We know that the opportunities and challenges for the engagement of universities with their communities are substantial, as Puukka (2008) has recently outlined in the context of the OECD’s work in this field. In Sicily the challenges are particularly great given the relatively low awareness of concepts associated with lifelong learning. However, whilst the emphasis put on traditional miss ions of research and teaching rather than external linkages with other stake - holders militates against the latter, this tendency is by no means unique, certainly with in the western world.

It would be difficult to move further into the community than into men’s sheds. These grassroots organizations are, like many beasts, indigenous to Australia, and refer to workshop spaces and community-based programmes typically for retired, unemployed or isolated older men. Barry Golding has in recent years highlighted these activities in a number of publications and here considers the role of the in - formal learning in these sheds in enhancing wellbeing of the participants.

The two following articles, by Susan Geertshuis and Judith Walker, consider different aspects of post-compulsory education in New Zealand. Geertshuis reports on the vanishing species of the adult learner within non-credit based provision, making reference to comparable provision in university continuing education in the UK and the US. In analysing her survey of almost 1000 participants in four university centres in New Zealand, she argues for the value of such provision particularly in the context of supporting ‘knowledge workers and members of the knowledge society who wish to update or broaden their skills and knowledge’. Similar arguments were of prevalent when such provision’s eligibility for funding council support in the UK in the 1990s (Gray and Williamson 1995), and are being harnessed again as in Eng land in the context of the Equivalent or Lower Qualification (ELQ) debate. Internationally, the literature concerned the role of the private sector in adult and vocational education is limited as is illustrated in forthcoming reviews commissioned by the European Commission. Hence, Judith Walker’s article is welcome. It focuses on a particular aspect of the neoliberal reforms in New Zealand in the 1990s which allowed private training establishments (PTEs) to provide second chance opportunities for adults. Her study of educators and directors in four PTEs illustrates the complexity and contradictions of the work of such organisations, which although part of a market do not necessarily reflect the ideology or intentions of the reforms.

Håkan Sandberg’s article traces the transition in Sweden of the training of health professionals from being short-cycle, work-based education to becoming university based provision leading to professional validation and a bachelor’s degree, and a movement in the reverse direction. Through intensive interviews with practitioners who have been subject to these changes he explores what contexts, including those that involve collaboration, are ‘most productive for the learning processes necessary for health professionals’.

The final article in this edition by Krishna Regmi and Sharada Regmi is one of few that have considered adult learning opportunities in Nepal. It concludes that there are considerable challenges because of the lack of coherent policy in the country, although considerable opportunities that are not recognised as such in the informal system. They point out to traditional hierarchical systems of power that limit access to learning opportunities and that ‘overcoming and changing the traditional attitudes of how adult education is perceived in society will be problematic and slow’. Perhaps these are traditional problems in a non-traditional context for many readers.

References
Gray, F. and Williamson, W. (1995) ‘Liberal Adult Education’. In R. Taylor and D. Watson (eds.) ‘Continuing Education in the Mainstream: The Funding Issues’, Papers arising from a UACE seminar, 11 September 1995.

Puukka, J. (2008) ‘Higher education and regional development’. In L. Doyle, D. Adams, J. Tibbitt and P. Welsh, Building stronger communities. Connecting research, policy and practice. Leicester: NIACE.

UCU (Universities and Colleges Union) (2008) Funding for equivalent or lower qualifications (ELQs) – Submission to Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee, http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/docs/j/m/ucu_elqevidencefinal_jan08.doc