Adult learners are human. In most countries, and notably across Europe, they are also citizens. They have rights under international and national law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, specifies ‘the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives’, to participate in ‘periodic and genuine elections … by universal and equal suffrage’, ‘to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment’, ‘to form and to join trade unions’, ‘to rest and leisure’, ‘to education … directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms’, and ‘freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement’ (United Nations, 1948, Arts. 21, 23, 24, 26, 27). Though some of these rights also apply to children, many are achieved or expanded during the transition to adulthood.

We seldom, if ever, referred to international human rights law as a building block for the Enliven research. In retrospect, however, it seems a key normative foundation. Adults are entitled to live fulfilling lives and to shape the government and culture of their societies. They are entitled to a rich education, partly because it contributes to their full human development and also because it enables them to play an active part in society and government. We have taken a similar view of adults as learners: they are entitled to develop as human beings and to play an active and creative part in shaping society; one function of education is to support their doing so. We have found ourselves reaching back to educationalists and social theorists who have taken a similarly broad view. Dewey, Tawney, and Freire inhabited a similar axiological space to the authors of Universal Declaration.

It was partly in this light that we embraced theories of bounded agency. Their analytical value is matched by their recognition of adults, and adult learners, as active and creative. They sit comfortably alongside contemporary trends in the theorisation of learning as active, situated, and social (e.g. Brown et al., 1989; Illeris, 2007; Jarvis, 2009; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Mezirow, 1991). At the same time, they recognise the role of institutions in structurally constraining agency.

Social structures and institutions can be seen as the natural outcomes of human interaction—every society has them—but how they are organised in any society reflects, and usually reproduces, its systems and distribution of power. European societies today are organised, albeit in varying ways, with broadly democratic (or ‘liberal democratic’) political structures, broadly capitalist (or ‘free market’) economies, and civil societies broadly accepting of such personal and collective rights as freedom of expression, religious observance, dissent, and organisation. (International organisations such as the European Union and the Council of Europe endorse these forms of social organisation.) These broad categorisations, of course, gloss over wide variation, which whole disciplines—political science, political sociology, and others—are devoted to exploring and explaining. A common feature of their political and economic structures, however, is hierarchy. Those who manage businesses organise employees to generate income and profit for their owners. Politically, our rulers are elected, and elections (and sometimes other laws) make them ‘accountable’ to the people. But once elected, rulers are expected to govern, and this involves organising society and its institutions to ‘deliver’ what, in their view, the people want.

Asking what citizens ‘look like when viewed from the vantage point of the state’, Poggi reflects on the paradox that, ‘citizens are in the first place, from the state’s standpoint, its “subjects”’:

It is often said that one of the most critical aspects of political modernisation is constituted by the fact that rulers ceased to treat individuals as subjects (suditti, Untertane[n]) and learned to treat them as citizens. Yet … the subject-ness of individuals persists …. For the state is essentially … a set of arrangements and practices whereby one part of a divided society exercises domination over the other part, whether or not the individual components of the population are vested with the attributes of citizenship. (Poggi, 2003, pp. 39–40; italics in original.)

Even as citizens, therefore, adults are not only agents; they are also objects of policy. Those who govern, even benignly, must organise, control, and use citizens. Democratic accountability requires that rulers rule, and in modern states, this typically requires delivering services—from defence and policing to health and welfare. However much we repudiate the implications of viewing people as ‘human resources’—and in many respects, this perspective has been pernicious (Bowles & Gintis, 1975; Brown et al., 2020)—citizens are a resource for the state, just as employees are for businesses.

This throws light on—though it does not entirely explain—a key tension. Those in government and in international quasi-governmental organisations, such as the European Commission, are expected to ‘deliver’. They owe this to the citizens who have—if often at some distance—appointed them. In order to ‘deliver’, however, they must engage these citizens. For instance, in delivering adult education, rulers must engage them as professionals (to teach and so forth) and persuade them to be learners. This implies exercising a degree of control, or at least influence; services and provision must be planned and managed. At the same time, and in contrast, if adults are to learn well—and if they are to learn as citizens, and indeed as human beings—they must be able to shape their learning in meaningful ways: what they learn, why they learn, how they learn, and so forth. Similarly, if professionals are to organise and teach well, they must also be allowed a degree of autonomy.

Educational policy—and adult education policy in particular—must negotiate this tension. Yet another tension underlies educational policy: the aims of education. What is (adult) education for? Though many answers are possible, the principal tensions have been between (adult) education for production and productivity, for social purposes (such as community and national cohesion, and democratic government), and for human growth and (in a non-financial sense) enrichment. Periodically, claims for the primacy of one or another are made; in the age of neoliberal globalisation, education for work and production has been at a premium (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010).

Underlying this view of the education’s purposes being chiefly economic—not perhaps in logic, but certainly in policy and practice—has been the theory of human capital (Becker, 1964; Brown et al., 2020; Mincer, 1974; Schultz, 1961). ‘Economic rationality’ implies that investors seek to maximise the return on their capital, and other things being equal, the longer capital remains invested, the greater will be the aggregate return. The implication was to invest in education for children and young adults: one has more years to reap the benefits of what one learns at the age of 10 or 20 than at 50 or 60. Such thinking remains influential although—as Freire was to point out in criticising what he called, not by accident, the ‘banking’ model of education—it also makes invalid and damaging assumptions about the passive nature of learning and the transmissibility of knowledge (Freire, 1972). Nevertheless, it clearly plays a role in the EU’s emphasis on young adults as the main target of lifelong learning.

Common-sense is a great persuader. A quarter century ago, the European Commission enrolled it, declaring ‘the demise of the major ideological disputes on the objectives of education’. Debates on ‘the organization of education and training systems’ and on ‘content and training methods’ had ‘come to an end’. ‘Everyone’ was ‘convinced’: the ‘crucial problem of employment in a permanently changing economy compels the education and training system to change’ (Commission of the European Communities, 1995, p. 23). Claims about ‘the end of ideology’ (Bell, 1962) (or of ‘history’ (Fukuyama, 1992)) often prove hubristic, but the Commission was not alone. Something of a consensus developed internationally in the early 1990s that a ‘new vocationalism’ would happily marry education’s ‘inescapable occupational purposes’ with its ‘political and moral’ aims (Grubb, 1996, p. 546).

We now know this marriage—neither equal nor harmonious—would prove unable to resolve fundamental tensions in the relationship. Governments—as predicted (Boshier, 1998)—have pressed education systems to deliver work-related skills, paying little more than lip-service to wider aims.Footnote 1 As we argued in Chap. 1, this strategy has remained impervious to challenge in ‘policy communities’. ‘Groupthink’ (Janis, 1982) rules: as with First World War generals, defeat bespeaks lack of effort in implementation—typically by subordinates—or inadequate technology. Radical re-evaluation is unthinkable. Hence the popularity of ‘evidence-based policy’, ‘implementation science’, ‘deliverology’, and similar panaceas (Auld & Morris, 2016; Barber et al., 2011a, b; Nilsen & Birken, 2020; Saltelli & Giampietro, 2017; Schleicher, 2018). Hence also the lust for new artificial intelligence technologies (Federighi, 2013). The solutions cannot be wrong.

The Adult Education Europe Needs

One central finding of Enliven is that the problems persist: these panaceas have not worked and will not do so. Europe—and we suspect the message is applicable more widely—must revivify its education for adults. Though our focus has been on young adults, this is true for adults of all ages. It means reimagining adult education in all its richness, rather than slimming down provision to the (imagined or perceived) needs of one particular element of human life—work and earning a living—, or on one particular age-group—the young. It means organising adult education so that learners—citizens—are central in shaping what they learn and how they study. It means acknowledging the different levels at which adult education policies are developed and implemented—European, national, community, institutional—and the tension-laden interactions between them. It means that even when scarce resources must be targeted on specific social groups—and given the inequities of adult learning participation, and of European societies in general, this seems inevitable in the short term—those groups should not be told what they need, but empowered to play an active part, individually and collectively, in designing it. It also means embracing the importance of informal adult learning, recognising how large a part working life plays in this, and finding ways of enabling people at work to develop the full range of their capabilities in learning-rich workplaces.

Such a reimagining of education would involve seeking solutions to the challenges of today—and, insofar as we can predict them, of the future. But being ‘future-oriented’ does not mean jettisoning the lessons of experience. There is much to be harvested from the collective wisdom of European adult educational experience (Holford, 2017). (And we mention Europe here only because our research has focussed on Europe: the same could be said of most nations and societies.) This is not to discount the value of current social research—indeed, we advocate it—but rather to say that we understand contemporary developments better when we view them with knowledge of their past: fortunately, knowledge of, and a sense of, adult education’s history—present in the Enliven team throughout—was enriched by a deeply experienced advisory group.

This revivification of adult education is needed for the challenges we live with today: climate crisis; migration by refugees and others seeking better lives; disease and pandemic; poverty and inequality, between and within nations; war; faltering systems of governance and the growing authoritarian and populist threat to democracy; ageing populations, decaying pensions, and inter-generational tensions; growing insecurity of employment and incomes; artificial intelligence and its implications for human work and incomes. And the future will, of course, throw up new challenges and others, itemised perhaps on ‘risk assessments’ (global pandemics come to mind) but barely considered.

One of the virtues of adult education, properly so-called, is that it widens and deepens informed discussion of social problems. While we may think human societies are always likely to fall short of ideal kinds of ‘communicative rationality’ (Habermas, 1984, 1987; Rasmussen, 2018), there remains vast potential for an enriching of the deliberative capacity of the European public sphere and its ability to generate informed and intelligent consensus around strategies for human survival and flourishing.

Lessons of Enliven

The range of explorations conducted by Enliven researchers has been extensive—the chapters above provide space to discuss only a few—but here we try to distil some essential core messages. This will necessarily be synoptic, sidelining important nuance and leaving much unsaid. Nevertheless, we attempt to give some sense of what our research contributes both to policy and practice on the one hand, and to scientific understanding of our field on the other.

First of all, we have argued for the importance of lifelong learning for all aspects of adults’ lives and the poverty of giving precedence to its economic and instrumental purposes. For adults, perhaps even more than for children, education has vast transformative power. To the privileged, this has long been a commonplace: children, as young adults, are shepherded to colleges, universities, and even ‘finishing schools’; indeed, much of ‘classic’ work on the nature of university education is based on this assumption (Ash, 2006; Holford, 2014; Humboldt, 1809/1990; Newman, 1910). But education can be transformational for people of all backgrounds, and throughout life. We have seen its power to transform the lives of ‘vulnerable’ young adults—though we have also seen that this transformative power comes when the young people involved have agency in their learning. With support from education, they can change their lives and reshape their environments. This provides, we suggest, a reliable basis for challenging those for whom empowerment—even when well-intentioned—is inevitably ‘a strategy for regulating the subjectivities of the “empowered” … toward an appropriate end’ (Cruikshank, 1999, p. 69). This view, influenced by Foucault (Edwards, 2002; Rose, 1999a, b), and particularly influential under neo-liberalism, sees rule as having become at the same time ‘milder and more humane’ yet ‘more penetrating and compelling’ (Poggi, 2003, p. 40). Even the most active citizens are seen as voluntarily incarcerated, albeit often in comfortable cells to whose design they have contributed (Holford, 2007). We repudiate this thinking, arguing that agency is important—even if constrained: listening to the voices of young adults, especially those deemed ‘vulnerable’, shows that empowerment is a participatory process and that adult education can expand their agency, enabling them to take some control not only over their environment, but also over how they develop as individuals and realise their potential.

Second, we are critical of the current fashion for framing the provision of education and training for adults in the language of ‘markets’. This was prominent in the European Commission’s Call for the research which we undertook; we aped it in our proposal, and in some of our writing, if only to avoid being regarded as eccentric in today’s policy communities. We regard it, however, as dangerous. It tends to reduce policy discussion of what education for the public good might involve to situations of ‘market failure’, expiates ‘policy-makers’ when their efforts come to naught, and plays to corporate capital’s self-serving hubris about technological pseudo-solutions. In the neoliberal world view, markets make adult education responsive to the needs of ordinary people. Rational human beings, faced with the need to prosper in free markets, will ‘naturally’ demand education and training relevant to finding a job or to improving their career opportunities. Those who wish to study for other purposes—or to investigate other more abstruse subjects—will do so only when they have met these more fundamental needs. (Popular psychological theory, in particular Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is also prayed in aid of this logic.) It is a short step from this to labelling non-vocational adult education as a mere ‘leisure’ activity, contributing nothing to the public good and unworthy of state support. This is not to argue that the provision of adult education does not involve markets: only that the existence of a market implies nothing about how it works, who benefits from it, or what the public good requires. By and large, adult education markets, in Europe as elsewhere, serve best the better-educated and the more affluent. This ‘Matthew effect’ is well-known and long-established (Blossfeld et al., 2014; Boeren, 2016; Walberg & Tsai, 1983): ‘older adults participate … at much lower rates, as do adults with low levels of education, low levels of functional literacy, low levels of socio-economic background …, and also adults who are foreign-born and/or whose native tongue is foreign’ (Desjardins, 2017, p. 190). Enliven research reached similar conclusions, yet uncovered important nuances. Adults with low levels of education seldom see participation in education, even as adults, as ways of improving their life or occupational situation; those with caring responsibilities are less likely to take part in education; there is a close relationship between how complex adults’ jobs or work tasks are and how much they are involved in non-formal education (Cabus et al., 2018). Those taking part in programmes targeted at the most excluded often have ‘cumulative vulnerabilities’, such as addictions, experiences of bullying at school, anxiety, depression, living in areas of low deprivation, and disabilities. At the same time, well-funded programmes using both group and individualised activities (such as counselling, guidance, and placements) can increase participants’ self-confidence and pride in learning, and widen networks, even among the most disadvantaged (Boeren et al., 2019).

Third, we advocate—and take—a critical perspective on the dominant policies and modes of policy-making, in lifelong learning. Policies are made in, and shaped by, their social and ideological environments. By and large, they are made by well-intentioned people, doing their best, often in difficult circumstances: amid crises, with inadequate and conflicting information, under pressure from politicians, professionals, pressure groups, public, and media. Identifying a good policy (and perhaps still more justifying it to these competing audiences and implementing it well) is hard: a common ‘solution’ is to resort to experts, to legitimise a policy on grounds of its technical superiority. Allocation of tasks ‘to functionaries who have specialized training and who, by constant practice increase their expertise’ was, of course, for Weber (1978, p. 975), a principal merit of bureaucracy. To what extent this makes judgements more ‘rational’ has been endlessly debated; what matters is that, by and large, expertise seems to raise decision-making to a plane above the political. Strategies to ‘depoliticise’ political decisions are, of course, particularly attractive to international organisations, such as the European Commission (Louis & Maertens, 2021), which must navigate the divergent politics of national governments and peoples, without recourse to popular mandate.

A recent incarnation of ‘expertise’ has been ‘evidence-based policy’—strongly encouraged by the European Commission (Pellegrini & Vivanet, 2020). This is ‘a mantra’ (Pautz, 2020) but hardly an unproblematic solution to the challenge of making good policy. As Cairney (2016, p. 27) argues, there is ‘just too much evidence out there for anyone to consider’. The volume of data available to policy-makers today is enormous. Policy-makers have ‘too many problems to pay attention to, too many solutions to consider, and too many choices to make, based on more information that they can process’. And data demand more data: every statistic leads to questioning, to challenge, and to counter-challenge. Policy-makers therefore make ‘a selective use, adopting one specific criterion of efficiency and effectiveness or basing their decision on a particular piece of advice’ (Pabst, 2021, p. 88). It legitimates, partly because it de-politicises. The ‘field of policy-relevant knowledge’, as Colebatch notes, is ‘crowded and rivalrous’, and as with other claims to expert knowledge, being evidence-based ‘is invoked to demonstrate that action has been taken in an appropriate manner: it is part of the performance, not the determinant of the action’ (2018, p. 370). Evidence ‘risks being subordinate to ideology or interest after all’ (Pabst, 2021, p. 88).

We have shown that to develop an Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS), the nature of the data available to European lifelong learning policy communities would need to be much improved. But we have also shown that an IDSS must be designed for a defined purpose, to address a specific policy issue: when the purpose changes—and in the real world, the problems societies face do change, sometimes radically and unpredictably—new types of data and new technologies of analysis are called for. Thus in our work to develop an IDSS around the needs of young people not in employment, education, or training (NEETs), we found inadequacies in the evaluative data available: addressing these weaknesses would require investment, not least of bureaucratic and professional effort, time, and expertise. But having done so, fundamental difficulties would remain, as others are also recognising. The ‘replication problem’ means ‘a much-tested solution in one context with specific variables does not translate into a policy programme in another context with different demographics or socio-economic factors’ (Pabst, 2021, p. 88). A ‘tyranny of metrics’ (Muller, 2018) gives power to ‘detached researchers and policy-makers at the expense of frontline workers and users’: an ‘over-reliance on data and metrics that are disconnected from the everyday experience of workers and citizens whose needs and interests cannot always be measured or managed’ (Pabst, 2021, p. 88).

When priorities and public values change, mechanisms which may once have ‘worked’ become dysfunctional—as famously with ‘payment by results’ in the schools of Victorian England (Jabbar, 2013; Midgley, 2016; Simon, 1965), when, over a couple of decades, the priority for education shifted from ‘basic literacy and numeracy … to strengthen[ing] moral character and patriotism’ (Midgley, 2016, p. 697). We have seen evidence of significant shifts in European policy understandings of key terms over the last quarter century. So far as young adults are concerned, for instance, transition to the labour market has displaced personal and civic development (see Chap. 3)—with the notion of ‘vulnerability’ emerging as a particular concern. We may question whether this is wise, but such shifts throw considerable doubt on vaunting optimism that artificial intelligence could ‘foster policies … which deliver the desired results’ (Federighi, 2013, p. 89).

There is, moreover, the question of ethics. As a recent critique of ‘evidence-based policy’ comments, policies ‘concerned with enhancing social justice or welfare require qualitative and other forms of evidence’ and ‘involve philosophical reasoning or ethical judgement’:

Different concepts of justice underpin what we value individually and as groups, and they shape the way public policy decides between competing interests. Evidence-based policy either implicitly assumes a particular conception of justice focused on rights or utility, or else it is silent on these core questions. (Pabst, 2021, p. 89)

To take just one example—among many—from the Enliven research, we have seen (Chap. 5) that a recent EU policy document represents low-skilled young people as a problem but treats the labour market and employers as an exogenous force with needs that must be fulfilled. Pabst argues that ‘normative theories and concepts are needed to join up decision-making and improve public policy’ (2021, p. 89); we agree.

We do not, of course, dispute that policy must be based on evidence. Our argument is that the evidence base should be deeper and more informed by voices from across European society. The complexities of governance in the European Union present particular problems for the development and implementation of lifelong learning policies. The ‘actors’ in European public policy formation and implementation are innumerable, varied, and located at levels from the international (European), through national and regional, to local communities. At each level, they act within and through a range of institutions; these also vary between (and often within) member states. These present massive challenges of co-ordination, and of a policy’s achieving anything approaching uniform application. Even in policy implementation, institutions and actors are not neutral transmission belts: they respond, adapt, and challenge in ways that may be both functional and dysfunctional to the policy aims. (The problems of ‘parking and creaming’, discussed in Chap. 4, are a case in point.) Democratic societies and democratic institutions, however, rely on challenge and opposition: that is the base—by no means undisputed—of their claim to technical (as opposed to normative) superiority over authoritarian systems of government. What matters is that discussion and disagreement are well-informed.

Such thinking may have contributed to the long-forgotten white paper on European Governance (Commission of the European Communities, 2001); it may have played into early optimism around the Open Method of Co-ordination (Hingel, 2001) and the democratic nature of a European ‘educational space’ (Lawn, 2006; Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002). It certainly played a part in discussions within the Enliven team as to whom we should imagine the ‘end-users’ of the IDSS to be: crudely, bureaucrats, capitalists, or citizens? The very widespread use, almost universally uncritically, of the term ‘policy-makers’—an elite of which ‘we, the people’ are not part—represents an unconscious acceptance that the citizens can never hope genuinely to shape the policies to which their lives are subject. No adult educator can accept this proposition, however: the essence of adult education is the construction of an ‘educated and participating democracy’ (Williams, 1961).

Fourth, we have paid special attention to inequalities in participation in adult education and have argued for the need to listen to the voices of those most excluded. Evidence of the need for a more educated democracy is to be found, of course, in the rise of authoritarian and ‘populist’ political movements and leaders. These currently threaten human rights and freedoms, the stability and effectiveness of parliamentary governance, and the ‘rule of law’, in Europe as across the globe. They have also destabilised the entire European project: ‘Brexit’ is only the most substantial of a continuing series of challenges. A key contributor to this is intensifying inequality (Arnorsson & Zoega, 2018; Engler & Weisstanner, 2020; Inglehart & Norris, 2017; Piketty, 2014; Solt, 2012), in which pervasive new technologies are a powerful factor. The Enliven research has not only given voice to the excluded but pointed to how adult education can be strengthened to address some of its effects, particularly on young adults. One of the key features of adult education almost everywhere is the tendency for opportunities to be taken up disproportionately by the already well-educated (or, what is often effectively the same, the already relatively affluent). In Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7, and throughout Part III, we have deepened understanding of the nature and causes of these inequalities, exploring the determinants at individual, institutional, and system levels. We have given particular attention to dimensions such as gender and workplace technologies. In Chap. 7, we showed how different kinds of inquiry are needed to explore the complexities of how adult education interacts with empowerment for individuals and groups, and how the capability approach can contribute to this. The finding that adult education has a greater empowerment effect for learners with low educational levels than among those with medium and higher educational levels is remarkably important. In Chap. 4, we have also pointed to some of the ways these problems might be overcome: specifically, and in line with our thinking about the importance of agency, through engaging adult learners in shaping the programmes intended to help them.

Fifth, we emphasise the overwhelming importance of work, workplaces, and labour markets in adults’ learning. Our approach is novel. We stress—our focus particularly in Part III—not so much that education and training are important for skills and efficiency at work and for career success, but that work is central to adults’ learning. Most learning at work is informal. Paid work brings income and social status—high, middling, or low. It contributes powerfully to adults’ identities, friendships, social networks, and social capital. Without it, they are not only poorer financially (though welfare—or inherited wealth—may ameliorate this); they are also typically diminished in other ways. One of these is what and how much they learn, because so much learning takes place in and around employment.

We need, therefore, to discuss workplace learning not simply—as is the norm—in terms of the provision of education and training for working people to develop skills and knowledge for improved performance. Adults learn at work, not just for work; and while some of what they learn at work will help them at work, much will also help them in other aspects of their lives. Learning in one domain of life ‘spills over’ into others (Holford & van der Veen, 2006, p. 76). For young adults, participation in communities of practice means they adopt and contribute to standards of professionalism. They gain ‘organisational citizenship’ and, in doing so, also take on some responsibility for the nature of the organisation itself. They are confronted with problems on a daily base; they have to choose whether to take the ‘line of the least resistance’ or to stand up for what they think right or necessary. They become members of a trade or profession, perhaps of a trade union or professional association, and thereby develop specific kinds of knowledge; they become aware of policies that help or harm their field of work.

If we think of learning at work as involving making right or wrong choices, developing and defending norms of professionalism, speaking up, we see that learning for production and citizenship are not separate, but symbiotically related. The workplace is a key space where we act as citizens, and where we learn to do so. This is profoundly important for young adults, because how their work is organised shapes what they learn about citizenship. Some will learn how effective ‘speaking up’ can be—and how to do so effectively; others, finding it pointless, even risky, may learn the virtues of silence. ‘Exit’ may seem necessary for their personal survival or growth. They may translate what they learn into other areas of their lives; or—denied learning they find meaningful at work—they may seek compensation in other places. None of this detracts from our argument that richer and broader adult education provision across society is essential to personal growth, and to democracy and civil society: rather, given the realities of social exclusion and inequality in work and in adult learning, it makes that argument more urgent.

How organisations are structured, and what their cultures are like, shape the learning opportunities their employees have. That workplace learning environments can be ‘expansive’ or ‘restrictive’ is well established (Felstead et al., 2009; Fuller et al., 2004; Fuller & Unwin, 2003), though studied chiefly for its impact on learning for work and production. If jobs are narrowly defined, workers’ opportunities to contribute to innovation are limited; they may be seen as barriers to change, in need of tighter regulation and control. Many organisations (even those genuinely concerned to encourage employee learning) seem unaware of how much this matters—and of their capacity to show ‘agency’, making decisions in the interests of their staff. In an effective ‘learning society’ (Commission of the European Communities, 1995), employers will structure their organisations to offer expansive informal—as well as formal and non-formal—learning opportunities. Neither they nor policy-makers should be mesmerised by the ‘innovation imaginary’: it is not only high-technology, creative, innovative products and production that can be organised to offer rich learning opportunities to workers. And public policy needs to find ways of ensuring employers offer rich learning opportunities for all workers.

We have been able to reach these conclusions—and to draw them together—through our underpinning methodology. This has been both complex and, we believe, innovative. It has used mixed methods, bringing together both qualitative and quantitative data from documentary sources, from semi-structured interviews, and from large international datasets such as the Adult Learning Survey and the European Social Survey. It has combined organisational and institutional case studies with innovative methodologies such as the policy trail and provided new insights into the complex ways in which European lifelong learning policy is formed, implemented, and plays out in the lives of young adults.

We conclude, then, with a renewed assertion of the importance of a rich and broad education throughout the lives of adults, young, and not-so-young. This is essential if they are to flourish as individuals. It involves recognising that working life can be a source of empowering knowledge—though also that, far too often, it limits or diminishes people’s potential. Creating structures that support such rich and broad lifelong education is fundamental to building strong European democracies and vibrant economies, to countering social exclusion, and to embedding informed, intelligent decision-making and creativity among the peoples of the continent.