The Role of Higher Education in the Professionalisation of Adult Educators

Maria N. Gravani · Larissa Jõgi · George K. Zarifis

Nov 2019 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

About this ebook

This collection of essays focuses on the important, but under-discussed, role of higher education institutions in both delivering academic programmes that provide relevant cognitive and professional skills and competences to future adult educators, and in being more actively involved in the current dialogue with regard to the professionalization paths of adult educators and trainers. The topics discussed here vary from the initial education and training of adult educators in higher education environments, to the role of universities as validating agencies of existing psycho-pedagogical competences for in-service adult educators. Particular attention is also drawn to the ways in which adult education policies and initial education and training opportunities for prospective adult educators affect the role of higher education institutions in terms of academic orientation and programme delivery.

About the author

Maria N. Gravani is an Assistant Professor in Continuing/Adult Education at the Open University of Cyprus, where she is also Academic Coordinator of the Master’s in Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning and the International Master’s in Adult Education for Social Change. Her main research interests include adult teaching and learning in different contexts, professional training and professionalization of adult educators, lifelong learning, and methodologies of qualitative research.

George K. Zarifis is Associate Professor of Continuing Education in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His research interests focus on adult educators’ training and professionalization, university continuing education, comparative examination of adult learning, and vocational education and training (VET) policies and practices in south-eastern Europe. He extensively researches and publishes in the field of adult and continuing education and VET.

Larissa Jõgi is Professor of Andragogy and Head of the Lifelong Learning and Non-Formal Education at the School of Educational Sciences of Tallinn University, Estonia. She has been involved in many national and international research projects, and her work focuses on adult learning, professional identity and the professionalization of adult educators, learning during the course of life, teaching and learning in the university, and methodologies of qualitative research.