Recognition of Prior Learning policy, practice, and assessment are central to advancing redress, equity, access, and lifelong learning within the post-school education and training sector in South Africa. However, despite strong policy frameworks, RPL implementation within higher education institutions are often constrained by bureaucratic, compliance-driven approaches that undermine its transformative potential. Drawing on an autoethnographic, practitioner-informed methodology, this study critically examines how RPL is enacted within institutional contexts, with particular attention to practitioner agency, autonomy, and accountability. The findings reveal persistent tensions between policy intent and practice, including limited professional autonomy, managerial accountability structures, insufficient institutional support, and a lack of sustained post-admission engagement. The study proposes a human-centred, justice-oriented framework for RPL transformation based on four interdependent pillars: autonomy, accountability, empathy, and sustainability. These pillars provide a conceptual and practical basis for reimagining RPL beyond procedural compliance towards relational, contextually responsive, and inclusive practice. By foregrounding practitioner experience and institutional dynamics, the study contributes new insight into how RPL can function as a meaningful mechanism for social and epistemic justice within higher education.
This paper analyses backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education through employing the concept of intersectionality to demonstrate the post-truth foundations and political logic of such backlash. Its research design is that of a quantitative case study based on two sources of data: statistics from the 2021 Canadian Census showing median incomes and educational attainment among intersectional sub-populations; and electoral results from the 2021 federal Canadian election. This distinctive methodological approach was selected to overcome gaps in existing scholarship and because quantitative analysis helps demonstrate the erroneous assumptions underpinning backlash discourse and the political interests being fostered by those who mobilise such discourse. The paper finds that sexism, racism, and nativism are significant features of Canadian labour markets, that White non-immigrant men are substantially less likely to obtain university degrees than most other sub-populations, and that electoral outcomes correlate strongly with the intersectional characteristics of the population in each electoral district. In the 2021 federal election, conservative parties won electoral districts primarily in places where proportionally few immigrant, racialised, or highly educated Canadians lived. This paper concludes that intersectional analysis is an important component of anti-sexist, anti-racist, and anti-nativist forms of analysis and activism in lifelong education.
Adult secondary education has become an increasingly important pathway for young people whose schooling has been interrupted, yet little research examines how these transitions are shaped by contemporary education governance or how persistence is sustained under conditions of social and institutional vulnerability. This article investigates transitions from regular secondary education into adult secondary education (EJA) in Bahia, Brazil, drawing on semi-structured interviews with students and focus groups with teachers in three public schools. Transitions are conceptualised as structurally mediated pathways shaped by the interaction of biographical disruption, institutional arrangements, and governance logics regulating age-grade progression and system performance. The analysis shows that persistence is not an individual attribute but a relational and institutional achievement, dependent on recognition, pedagogical flexibility, and material support. While EJA functions as a mechanism of educational repair, it also operates as a regulatory space through which education systems manage irregular trajectories produced by structural inequality. By locating persistence within institutional mediation and governance arrangements, the article extends lifelong learning theory beyond participation frameworks towards a systemic understanding of sustained educational engagement in accountability-driven education systems.
The European Union wants to increase participation in continuing education across Europe by 2030. Current data shows that a significant proportion of the European population does not participate in (non-)formal continuing education, raising pressing questions about educational equity. This article takes a competence-theoretical approach to explain (non-)participation in continuing education in order to focus on those barriers that could be overcome through targeted educational activities. An exploratory study investigated the question of what competencies people need in order to make an informed decision for or against participating in (non-)formal continuing education courses. To this end, 21 continuing education counsellors from Germany were interviewed using guided problem centred interviews. The results obtained using structured content analysis show that continuing education choice competence is based on five competency facets: Knowledge about the adult education system; reflective knowledge about one's own adult education-related self-concept (e.g. learning preferences); adult education-related self-efficacy expectations; motivational factors; and self-regulatory skills. The model will be further developed using quantitative item construction in order to further examine its reliability and ultimately, at the individual level, to encourage self-determined decisions about continuing education courses and to help to make participation in continuing education more equitable.
This article considers the disengaged understanding of the human self as problematic in adult education. This article aims to highlight the significance of the socio-political constitution of the human self in adult and lifelong education. We examine the thoughts of two thinkers with distinct concerns, namely Charles Taylor and Antonio Gramsci, to explore the socio-political constitution of the self and its relevance for lifelong education. In Taylor, we argue that the human self is shaped by the influences of the public sphere and the political realm. In Gramsci, the self is constituted through the hegemonic relations in civil society and political society. Drawing on Taylor and Gramsci, we will argue that the development of humans in the socio-political context is significant in adult education. The complementary aspects of individual and social development are significant for adult education. We will reaffirm the understanding that civil society engagement is a key component of adult and lifelong education. We will argue that distinctively human capacities are formed in sociopolitical contexts. Adult education must sustain, develop and transform societal practices and institutions to form emancipatory human beings.
