Marco Paz

Marco Paz, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal

Marco Paz is an Adult Education Technician at QUALIFICA Center - INOVINTER in Lisboa.
He is a PhD student at the Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal) since 2025 and holds a Master in Education and Training.

His focus of research has been adult education policies in Portugal and in Europe and the links between the funding of the policies and how it impacts the practices in the field.

CG6: Adult Education and Learning systems in national contexts

Co-Moderator: Prof. Lucas Pacheco Campos, Prof. Paula Guimaraes

Adult education and learning systems are increasingly central to comparative education because they reveal how different societies respond to policy problems when considering national, regi-onal and local matters to be considered in policy. The existing systems intend to present, orga-nize and give coherence to possible education pathways (offers) that might offer solutions to adult learners. In general, adult education and learning systems are stressed in policy discours-es, specifically that adult education and learning can occur life long and life wide. Unlike school based systems geared to children and youth, adult learning encompasses a highly diver-se mix of formal and non formal pathways, within diverse offers such as the ones within the following poles:
a) literacy and second-chance education,
b) vocational education and training as well as workplace learning, as well as
c) community, popular and education referring to local issues, and
d) political and civic programme (or liberal adult education as named in several countries) within formal and non-formal education.

Adult education and learning systems may vary according to supranational and international organizations, policy priorities and aims es-tablished in legal frameworks, programes and policy strategies, as well as funding in what re-fers to main sources. These characteristics have an impact on offers proposed to adult learners, such as adult learners themselves and participation patterns across countries, as well as adult educators (from initial education through continuing education and learning in workplace). A comparative lens makes it possible to identify both structural and contextual similarities and differences (e.g., from democratic emancipatory to modernization and state control to human resources management trends) as well as divergent and convergent trends, such as the rise of lifelong learning discourses vs lifelong education/humanistic approaches, and policies and strategies such as programs promoted by supranational organizations or national Governments. These trends have an impact on participation patterns in lifelong learning. They also impact on adult educators preparation (initial and continuing education).

Within this frame, when considering historical trajectories of the different countries, critical junctures – moments of significant change -, institutional key actors and institutional configura-tions can allow the problematization of changes occurred in recent decades.