Remaking communities and adult learning: Social and community-based learning, new forms of knowledge and action for change

One of the key issues highlighted by the book Remaking Communities and Adult Learning is that the primary objectives of adult education and adult learning, as perceived by policy makers, are largely focused on labour market training and skills development.At the same time, they often overlook informal and non-formal methods of learning that could serve the collective and individual development of society, and that could respond to major global problems such as climate change and environmental protection, environmental disasters, migration problems, populism and racism, gender inequality, social and economic inequality.The authors note that the book was written during the period of the CoVID-19 pandemic, and that in some chapters there are references to it.Furthermore, this period has also revealed additional problems that were not previously in the foreground, but which are present in human communities that play a key role in the construction of social structures.The authors posit that, since these problems are most visible at this level of society, it is here that the answers and solutions to these problems can be found, or can have an impact on or through the people living in these communities.The chapters in this book adopt a critical approach to adult education and adult learning, which demonstrate the capacity of communities to act in the face of local and global challenges and illuminate community learning from the perspective of those who can provide effective responses to them.The authors of the book are members of the research network "Between Global and Local: Adult Learning and Communities", which is part of the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA), a research network that operates in nine countries.The network provides a forum for researchers in the field of adult education and learning to explore and discuss theoretical and empirical research in the field and its changes, theory and practice.The results are presented at a conference every three years and published regularly in journals and books.