Hamburg (Gemany), July 16 - Paul Bélanger, head of the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) in Hamburg, welcomed participants in the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA) yesterday to the launching of two publications he co-edited, which are published by Pergamon Press in cooperation with the UIE.
Both books, Mr Bélanger explained in his presentation, reflect a new approach, examining adult education by profiling the adult learner population. "We hope this can be pursued in all countries of the world to see who participates in adult learning and who doesn't," he said.
The first book, "The Emergence of Learning Societies: Who Participates in Adult Learning?" is a joint analysis with Spanish researcher Sofia Vaidivielso Gomez of data obtained in six countries - Canada, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the US, plus the Spanish region of the Canary Islands.
The second book - "New Patterns of Adult Learning: A Six-Country Comparative Study", compiled with Albert Tuijnman of the OECD - is complementary to the first and comprises statistical tables comparing the same data, the result of a detailed survey on adult learning involving 25,000 people in those countries, "It might not be very readable," joked Mr Tuijnman in his introduction, "but its utility lies in providing the same kind of analysis for every country."
One of the main conclusions to be drawn from these two publications is that adult education is by no means a marginal issue, with more than 30 per cent of populations involved and as many women as men.
But conflicting trends are revealed, as Ms Valdivielso Gomez pointed out at the launching. More men than women take job-related courses leading to professional advancement. And people with a higher level of education, she noted, are the ones most likely to seek more learning opportunities.
"It's a contradiction of the philosophy of adult learning," she commented, "which is intended to lessen the gap between the most and least educated. The data indicate that the gap is getting worse."
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