Transforming Adult Education from Neo-liberal to Holistically Inclusive Adult Education in Baltic States

After regaining the independence and entering the market economy the Baltic states went through the neo-liberal changes resulting in some new developments in adult education taking the main direction in mobilizing people for transforming learning into a desirable consumer commodity. Active citizenship has been operationalized in adult education largely through developing citizens’ entrepreneurial attitudes and ability to be less dependent upon the state. The recent trend in adult education is promoting educational opportunities for developing job skills and work-embedded learning, non-formal and informal education as the means to proactively advance competences through project work, voluntary activities, self-employment and enabling the validation of competences learnt at job situations in formal adult education institutions. As a new direction, adult educators in the Baltic states have started to practice sustainable and holistic approaches in adult education practices that highlight personal self-development besides their employability goals. In this chapter, we explore how changes in adult education in the Baltic states appear at micro level, focusing on three dimensions of active participatory citizenship in the observed educational programmes and among the programme stakeholders’ reflections. We posit that holistic approaches in adult education may be illustrated through three dimensions of active participatory citizenship concept – politico-legal, socio-cultural and socio-economic.