ESREA Research Network on Working Life and Learning

Convenors:
Keith Forrester
School of Continuing Education
University of Leeds
E-mail: K.P.Forrester(at)leeds.ac.uk

Professor Henning Salling Olesen
Adult Education Research Group
Roskilde University Centre
P.O. Box 260
DK-4000 Roskilde
Tel: +45 4674 2672; fax: +45 4674 3070
E-mail: hso(at)ruc.dk

Research Themes:
The research network on Adult Education and the Labour Market is based on a double commitment of developing a new interdisciplinary research field and involving in political and practical collaboration and discussion. This commitment ties together a plurality of topics as well as theoretical and methodological approaches. Many papers are concerned with theoretical and methodological questions expanding and challenging the research traditions of the field and its sub-themes. The most recent thematic framework comprises:

Social Exclusion - Alternative Labour Market and Cooperative Economy
Social exclusion still seems to be the most important question of capitalist countries and may well be in a global scale. Are there alternatives to the simplistic integration in the labour market on the lowest position in a job hieararchy? Where could we look out for anticipating alternatives: In Social Welfare Schemes, Cooperative Economy, or in Self Help Entrepeneurship?

Learning - Experience - Social Practice
The inclining development of work related training and formal continuing education has also exposed the significance of learning in everyday life, not least work life - in industry as well as in the new professions in the social and health sectors. There is a need to clarify concepts and to research the learning of social practice, and the interaction between different contexts of learning.

Workplace Democracy - Self Regulation - Trade Unions and Civil Society
In the socialist tradition Workplace Democracy has been transferred from being a direct attack on the social order into a demand for an additional humanization of the work place. In the discussion of workplace democracy there has, however, been different positions to the question of the significance of workplace democracy beyond the work place. In the new democracies of post-communim the relation between labour interests and the constitution of a civil society becomes a practical and theoretical question of urgent importance. There is a need for a new discussion about the basic political aspects of work life.

Socialization by Work - Social Erosion when the Significance of Work changes
Is work society coming to an end? - if not because work is becoming less important for economy, power and social structures, then by its changing influence into basic organizaton of everyday life and so into socialization and normative regulation? Is there in fact an ongoing change in the relative importance and/or the qualitative influence of work?

History of the network:
The research network met first time in 1993 and has been regularly active since then, with a core of individuals and research groups continuously participating. The format of the network is based on intensive and informal discussions of papers and topics related to the engagement of participants in similar types of work. There are normally few lectures.

The network has for many years worked under the headline: Adult Education and the labour market comprising a broad variety of themes of learning and education related to work on a specific level or in the wider sense of societal and labour market relation . Participants in the network have typically been politically engaged researchers who were interested in the practical perspectives of their research, but during the years of operation a more theoretical and methodological interest in the development of the research area as such has emerged.

Meetings:
The network organizes its conferences in varying places in order to facilitate a real European participation, and also in order to reflect the various social and political contexts as well as different research traditions.

The last meeting was held in Leeds, June 26. - 28. 2007

Publications from the network:
The network has published volumes with papers from all conferences, all with the title Adult Education and the Labour Market and the appropriate number.

Adult Education and the Labour Market (editors Tanja V. Klenovsek/H.Salling Olesen) with papers from the first seminar in Ljubljana 1993 (available from Slovene Adult Education Centre (E-mail: info(at)acs.si. Fax: +386-61-445881).

Volumes Adult Education and the Labour Market, II/III/IV/V/VI/VIIa+VIIb respectively, with papers
- from the 2nd seminar, 1995, at the Bundesinstitut für Erwachsenenbildung St Wolfgang, in Austria
- from the 3rd seminar at University of Leeds, March 1996,
- from the 4th seminar at IUC, Dubrovnik, in May 1998
- from the 5th seminar at IUC, Dubrovnik, in May 1999
- from the 6th seminar in Benelauria near Seville, in October 2000
- from the 7th seminar in Roskilde, Denmark, in May 2002 (2 volumes)

are available from University of Roskilde (E-mail: lindorff(at)RUC.DK - Fax +45-46743070). Each volume: 50DKK or 7 EURO. The volume VI is half English, half Spanish.