Existing public provision of educational opportunities for adults to gain knowledge and certificates equal up to upper secondary school levels is, for the most of countries, a State responsibility. But transnationalism, Europeanization and global governance in education have challenged the assumption that it is only dependent on national decisions and policymaking processes. Drawing on a study that examines the ways diverse actors influence and respond to international policy development in adult education, and their effects on state policies in different socio-economic and political systems, I will argue for a global tendency, in illiteracy-free societies, for public rationales to be shifting from adult education-as-second-chance to adult education-as-school-recovery; at the same time this tendency is also local, as the resultant of country-specific exogenous and endogenous factors.

Admission to the lecture is free.