A glossary, regardless of which discipline it relates to, constitutes a tool linked to a precise historical period or a current of thought. This is particularly true for adult education. The fact that the first terminologies of the seventies are used today in compiling encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and glossaries is a sign of the times. In all the member-states of the European Union, adult education is leaving behind its image as an underestimated sector, under the care of well meaning people.

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Adult education, gender and monitoring and the evaluation are three separate areas that have undergone redefinition and reconceptualization in the last ten years. Adult education, which is commonly associated with literacy, basic education, and vocational and technical education, no encompasses, among other things, health education, leadership training, and conflict resolution seminars offered by diverse providers, from the state, the corporate world, academe, and NGOs to people’s organisations. Gender, a seemingly neutral concept, which refers to the social construction of the sexes, is...

This publication of this book on women’s non-formal education in Latin America arises from a series of activities jointly organized by the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) in Hamburg and the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) focusing on innovative education processes. A three-year research programme analysed a range of non-formal adult education programmes in countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Vase studies enabled the analysis of specific themes, such as the role of pedagogy, gender, the relations between groups and institutions, and the way in which...

Population education is in the throes of redefinition as the contributions to this book illustrate. Just as the population field itself has been critically reconstructed in the pre- and post- Cairo years of the past decade, so too have the substantive and semantic contents of adult learning programmes. A quick glance at some of the topics relating to the field of population education and contained in this volume underpins this point: sexuality, AIDS education, women’s empowerment, ageing, male involvement, masculinities, inter-generational learning, violence, reproductive rights,...

Although UNESCO has, since its foundation in 1945, been denouncing illiteracy worldwide, and although its efforts were already preceded by the Revolution of October 1917 that initiated the battle to curb it with the organization of a huge literacy campaign in its wake, such campaigns were, for many years, considered to be an end in themselves, integral to the right to education for all human beings, whose founding principle was more formally enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sacrificing considerable resources on the altar of humanity’s cultural emancipation was...

This report brings together five major papers dealing with different aspects in the economics and financing of adult learning. The UNESCO-PROAP four country impact study examines the social benefits of adult learning in developing countries. Roy Carr-Hill discusses the costs and benefits for Over-Serviced and developing countries.

Download: The Economics and Financing of Adult Education: Report of CONFINTEA V (PDF 6,21 MB)

For many months, an armed conflict has been raging in one of the largest countries on the African continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre). This is a country that arouses covetousness on account of its fabulous riches. The misery caused by any armed conflict and the resultant distress are exacerbated by the problems facing most countries in the world today. Thousands of people, especially young people, are living acutely precarious lives because of unemployment. Even when work is available, the sub-human conditions under which it is carried out strip it of any positive...

If adult education, in any or all of its many guises, is intended to open the doors of knowledge and to widen the cultural and intellectual horizons of people who either achieve maturity without having had the benefit of full basic education, or of those who, having been fortunate enough to complete certain levels of formal schooling, still need or desire to obtain further learning or training at a later stage in their lives, then surely the over two hundred million indigenous and tribal peoples who are scattered over the world should be considered prime targets for adult educational...

This book, which was the runner-up for the 1992 International Literacy Research Award of UNESCO, presents a remarkable study carried out in the Nigerian State of Oyo, focusing on a programme combining adult literacy education with indigenous educational methods. Trational African education, as described in this work, is characterized by a holistic approach in which the individual learns through a continuous interaction with the community and with his or her environment. The use of this approach the literacy education has led to a significantly higher success rate than was the case with...

Many ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Babylonians and the Greeks, had different legends as to how they first learnt to read and write. These legends vary in the way that they narrate the origins of reading and writing; however, the majority describe the ability to read and write as a precious gift from the gods. Such legends testify to the immense value that these ancient civilizations placed on reading and writing. In more recent times, the ability to read and write constituted the means by which a person could access humankind’s cumulative knowledge and...